"It is sad to see our old friend, 2012, leaving us so soon," wrote my friend on Facebook, but as I scanned his post, I didn't see the 2012 and thought that someone had died. Well, now someone has. We got the call about an hour ago and we haven't been back to sleep. My husband has been asked to do the graveside rites for his old friend, so he is in the other room looking up scriptures.
"Look at the first thing I opened to!" he exclaimed a little while ago. It was Romans 8:18, which says, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." I suggested he mark it to use in the services.
Our friend's wife called last evening, fearing that his time was short. We spent an hour or so with her as nurses and aides ministered to her husband. He had been in the nursing home for several years. In fact, it is doubtful that he, an Alzheimer patient, ever knew who we were over the last couple of years that we visited him. Still, Howard was hopeful as he played the guitar and sang to him on every visit, always coming away with the impression that he saw improvement.
We had known this couple way back in the 60's and hadn't seen them since 1970 when they visited us in New Orleans where we had moved. Then one day at one of my book signings, I was called to the phone. Unbeknownst to us, this couple had relocated to the same town we had returned to a few years ago. She had seen my name on the bookstore marquee, called and asked me if my husband's name was Howard. That's when we found out about her husband's condition.
Talk turned last night to those early years. We had gone to the same church, and Howard and his friend had shared a love of music. They played guitars together, even then. Waiting beside his sickbed, his wife reminisced of how they met, at ages 15 and 17, marrying a few months later. "I knew when I saw his blue eyes that that was the one I would marry," she said. "And he went home and told his mother he'd found the girl he would marry." I think she said they had been married 67 years.
So as the old year passes, a bright new year awaits us tomorrow. Our friend is already in his bright tomorrow, experiencing freedom from earthly bondage "into the glorious liberty of the children of God." Romans 8:21
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