I was standing at the bathroom mirror, combing through wet locks, when the telephone rang.

Jan, a widow from town, had dialed my number. I could hear the sorrow in her quiet “hello.” The men had rung her church’s bell for the very last time, and they were lowering it from the tower. It would never ring here again.

She needed to process the pain a bit with someone. She wondered if I would listen to a poem she had written about her old church bell. To her, that bell’s familiar ring always sounded like home. Like Jesus.

I sat on the edge of the bed to listen, cradling the phone to my ear. She had barely begun reading when the raw emotion of it all grabbed her voice in a vice. And it wouldn’t let go.

“I don’t know if I can get through this whole thing,” she said, apologizing through her tears.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” I repeated, as Jan unzipped a bit of her heart over the phone.

Her poem, she said, was a love offering to a place where a piece of her faith story unfolded. She dialed my number because she figured I’d understand. Because writers do this sort of thing: We try to make sense of this wild world by putting down words like anchors.

She set her pain to rhyme, and began:

“They took the church bell down today,

To carry it away.

I heard it ring for one last time

as I turned and walked my way.”

The 125-year-old bell — which signaled the start of worship in the church  where her husband used to preach — had been sold. Workers climbed up to the top of the bell tower, loosened the bolts and made arrangements to send the bell to buyers in Colorado.

Before they took the bell down, the men rang it one last time. Jan heard the  ringing from her house, two doors down from the church. She walked to the corner to witness the dismantling of a memory.

Then, she went home and found a pen:

“There’ll be no call to worship

Each Sunday morn for me

The silence speaks so loudly

My teary eyes can’t see.” 

Jan and her church family whispered their last Amens inside that old Methodist Church in 2009. The church had been locally known for welcoming anyone, regardless of reputation, status or financial standing. From the outside looking in, all that seemed to matter to those folks was Jesus.

But membership dwindled. People got old, died, or just moved on. Young families, new to town, picked other churches. And then one day, the church closed. A local couple bought the building, to use as a residence. Naturally, they didn’t need a church bell in the tower anymore. So they sold the bell on eBay.

Jan’s voice wavered through the words:

“Perhaps it will be placed

To beckon God’s children to see

and welcome them to come and hear

God’s call ring out for you and me.”

When the ringing in your ears sounds like love, you never want it to end.

Jan remembers how that green velvet felt when she ran her fingers along the pews. She remembers how the sanctuary looked, dressed in Christmas Eve candlelight and greenery. She remembers who sat where, and the way folks would bow at that sturdy communion rail to taste forgiveness. She remembers loving Jesus there.

And she remembers the bell.

She read the last stanza, and a single tear slid down my cheek.

“Yes, they took the church bell down today.

It will not ring again at dawn

But somewhere that sweetest sound

will be heard throughout your town.”