I Left for Two Years

In 2021 I asked my steward for a period of separation. The request was granted the same evening, kindly, with no argument of any kind. I have since spoken to four others who left and all four describe the same thing: it is astonishingly easy to go, and this is offered as evidence that the door is open.

It is easy to go. What is not easy is being gone. Within a month I had stopped being told when people were ill. Within three months the rota no longer included me, which is correct — I was not there — and yet the effect was that a set of obligations I had spent six years acquiring simply closed over like water.

Nobody telephoned. This is our procedure and I defended it for years. Item 6 of the standing guidance: the visitor is not telephoned afterwards. Somewhere the same courtesy has been extended to members who leave, and I do not think anyone decided this. It accumulated.

We say that leaving is permitted. It is more accurate to say that leaving is unopposed, and that these are not the same kindness.

I came back in 2023 and was welcomed by name at notices, which is the procedure, and which made me cry in a room of people eating soup. Nobody asked where I had been. I understand why. I would still like, once, to have been asked.

The stewardship has appended a reply to this essay. I asked that it not be printed on the same page and this request was granted.