Eleanor Rigby

It was a Friday when everything seemed off. I had brought my brown paper bag lunch to the same bench that I sat at. I went through my usual lunch routine. There was nothing unique, but when I got to my bench I had not seen her outside of the church. She had always spent her afternoon outside, keeping her mind occupied with actions that made everyone else think that she was a mentally unstable person.

But I knew otherwise.

That was the day that I had decided to change my mundane routine. Wrapping my lunch up tighter, I pushed myself off of the bench and headed to old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I was a Catholic but I was far from religious and the last time that I had been in a church was at my grandmother’s funeral six years ago

Walking in I saw the choir standing up front. They sang beautiful religious melodies that only ever sounded good when sung at church. But I had forgotten all of it once I had seen Eleanor Rigby sitting there by the window.

Her eyes had told me that she was lost in her own thoughts. She was sitting there waiting for someone, that was clear, and the smile on her lips told me everything. I had never seen her with anyone and no one ever visited her but maybe there was reason for it.

Maybe she had isolated herself; maybe there was someone at a certain point of her life. Maybe they had left her and she had turned her life to God, but waited for them to come one day and save her once again.

My mind created an elaborate story of what had happened in her life to make her the lonely person that she was. My thoughts danced around her as I stood there watching her… that is until a pen falling on the floor caught my attention and I turned to see Father McKenzie sitting at the first pew.

He was listening to the choir. But in the process, his worn out bible sat on his knee as he flipped through the pages and would then periodically take his pen to the paper. He was writing a sermon, but I knew that no one would hear it. People would come to church and sit there, pretending to listen. But no-one really cared and no-one ever got near.

His pant leg rode up as he scratched at his knee and I saw the sparkle that his white socks had. I had a vivid imagination and I had seen him sitting at night washing and working over them, making them spotless.

But the ring less wedding finger told me a different story. I knew that he was just as lonely as young old Eleanor Rigby and I had questioned who he was putting the effort to look good for and to sound good for if he had no-one. That day I had realized something about old Father McKenzie.

He was just as lonely as young Eleanor Rigby.