What a Week End!

It has been two or three months since I have been able to go up to see my mother. That doesn't mean I've had no contact with her, we've talked on the phone and over the Internet, we met them at Grove and spent a day with them, They have even come down here once. But, because I have three nearly adult boys to coordinate live with, we haven't been able to get up to their house. And she was starting to do the, "You never come to see me no more" thing.

I finally arranged to get it done though we hit a few snags along the way. So we get there and after only one day away from home I get a call from a friend to tell me that two of our older friends had died during the night and a third had shot and killed an intruder that had broken into his home during the night. My first thought was I have only been gone a day, how could this happen?

I couldn't leave my mother's in time to get back so I missed one of the funerals. I hate that because his family was so good to us when my father was in Viet Nam. If my mother needed anything, he and his wife where there. The night my mother got news that my father had been wounded he and Mary came and stayed all night. He was just a simple, old fashioned country boy, but he was good people and I liked him.

I guess he liked me pretty well too because one day he came to my father when I was about 14 or 15 and tried to arrange a marriage between one of his sons and me. My father recover fairly quickly and said "Wayne, I don't even let her date yet. Don't you think this is a little soon?" When my husband retired from the Army and came back to look for a place for us, Wayne couldn't help but brag about how I had nearly married his son. I couldn't understand where he had gotten that from until my father enlightened me about Wayne's attempted marriage arrangement. Wayne could be a little territorial. I guess that was his way of telling my husband that I belonged to them before I belonged to him and that he had better take care of me. I'm going to miss him.

The other friend who died was Edward. He was older and had been sick for a long time. He was a good, strong Christian and was ready to go. His biggest worry was his church. He had been the pastor there for years, even when he felt that some one else should take over the responsibility. He had gotten someone to help preach every other Sunday, but it was a little bitty church and it's so hard to get pastors for small churches. A few years ago his grandson, who had been a bit wild during his high school days, got saved and a couple of years ago he felt called to the ministry. So for the past year he has been leading the church. Now the church which was graying and dieing has started to grow. I'm glad Edward got to see that before he died. I know it was a blessing to him.

The last incident involves an older gentleman who was a friend of my husband. He had been robbed two nights in a row and on the third night they came back to do it again. I don't know if they had gotten braver or for some reason just didn't know that he was there this time. Anyway he was home when they broke in and he shot and killed one of them.

He had been selling fireworks to help raise money for the Senior Center. That was what they had taken the first two nights. Everyone thinks that that was what they were after on the third night but he really didn't have much left. Maybe they thought he would replace the fireworks but he really couldn't afford to. The kids were in high school; the boy who died was a junior. There are no winners in this situation; not the boys who were so foolish, not family of the boy who died, not even the man who shot boy. He only wanted to frighten them and now he will have to live with that boy's death the rest of his life.

That's an awful lot of sadness for one 24 hour period, especially in a town our size. Pray for these families, they will need it.