Life is Precious and Brief

I love visiting the Brierfield Café.  Located in Brierfield, just southwest of Montevallo, the Brierfield Café has the finest pork barbeque and the best, fried, green tomatoes in Alabama.  The café is the dream-come-true work of a former church member and friend, JoAnn.  The finest barbeque, the best fried green tomatoes, and a hug from JoAnn is hard to turn down, especially when she says, “You will always be my pastor.”

Each time I dine there, JoAnn always asks, “Who died?”  It seems that most of the time when I patronized her establishment, I am back home to attend or conduct a funeral.  This particular time, I was there to spend a Friday night and Saturday working on my farm, Sugar Ridge.  As I entered the café, Mary, another old friend, hollered to us.  Mary is the president of a bank in Montevallo and wife of a famous Birmingham radio Deejay.

Mary said she needed me to do her a favor.  “Would you go visit Truman?”  Truman, her ex-husband was dying with cancer.  Mary said that he did not have long to live. 

I worked with Truman for eighteen years.  He was a short, thin man with a beard and mustache.  I will never forget the first time I met him.  He asked me if I had my union jacket.  It was my first day at the cement plant.  I was under a ninety-day probation period and not a member of the Union.  I gave him a puzzled look and he said, “You need to ask the plant manager to give you a union jacket.”

Having worked on union jobs before, I replied, “I may look like a dumb country boy, but I did not fall off a turnip green truck yesterday.” Truman laughed.  That same day while shoveling cement from top a roof, Truman told me to ask the plant manager if he could get us one of those big roof fans to blow the cement dust away from us when we dumped it off the roof.  I have never figured out why little men think big men are stupid.

Truman was a Viet Nam vet.  I would tell him from time to time that I appreciated his service to our country.  Viet Nam Vets were not honored, as were Vets of other wars before or after Viet Nam.  Like most Vets, he did not talk much about the war.  I would tease him, along with several other Viet Nam Vets that one of the reasons we did not win in Nam was because they were all little men like the Viet Cong.  He would remind me that I was too big a target.

I visited Truman the next morning as I promised Mary that I would.  As I entered the room where he lay, he smiled.  I forced a smile seeing a small skeleton with skin stretched over it laying in a fetal position.  I reminisced of all the pranks and fun we had together.  One of the things coworkers and I would do is when Truman started his aggravation, and he was worst than a gnat on a hot sweaty afternoon, was to grab him up and clean the floor with his bottom side.  He would always jump to his feet and yell, “My pants are on fire!”  By the way, the tile floor looked good afterwards.

After becoming a pastor, I convinced Truman to attend church with me at Brierfield Baptist.  It tickled Mary that Truman was in church.  Truman had an addictive personality.  He was addicted to smoking, drinking, pornography, and gambling.  These, especially gambling, led to the divorce of Mary and Truman.  I felt that if Truman accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, he would be a dynamic believer.

With these memories racing through my mind, Truman and I shared what would be our last moments together.  He tried so hard to talk, but the drugs and pain mumbled his speech.  I had to know if he was ready to meet God.  I leaned close to his mouth trying to hear what he had to say.  I thought he was trying to tell me he wanted me to do his funeral.  His wife said that Truman had accepted the Lord a few months earlier.

On the night before another visit to see Truman, I bumped into another former coworker.  I told him that I was going to visit Truman.  He said, “They buried Truman last Wednesday.”

Don’t live carelessly, unthinking.  Make sure you understand what the Master wants.  Don’t drink too much wine.  That cheapens your life.  Drink the Spirit of God, huge draughts of him.  Sing hymns instead of drinking songs!  Sing songs from the heart to Christ.  Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:17-19 The Message)