In the mid-years of my life, my father often made trips to Nashville for meetings.  If it wasn’t the Tennessee Funeral Directors Association Board of Directors it was the Tennessee State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, and if it wasn’t the State Board it was the Board of David Lipscomb University, and if it was the board of Lipscomb . . .

You get the picture.

He always traveled what I lovingly refer to as The Turnpike—mainly because I think that’s its actual name.  You know, the stretch of country road/highway that you turn left onto way outside of Waynesboro that takes you through Henryville and Summertown.  At least you should know if you’re from these parts.

In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t do highway numbers—or directions such as north, south, east, or west.

We did, on occasion, travel with him, but generally he was alone and generally he returned earlier than expected because he was a race car driver at heart.  But one night he didn’t arrive at the appointed hour.  Since cell phones were non-existent, my mother had no choice but to pace the floor and fret.  When she was just before calling the highway patrol and every hospital ‘twext Savannah and Nashville, he pulled into the garage and walked into her wrath.

As a point of information, there was a house on The Turnpike—a quaint little country home that pretended to be nothing more than just that.  Its mailbox was across the road and surrounded by the most beautiful array of flowers you could possibly imagine.  I always looked for it when I had reason to go that way, and the bed just seemed to grow prettier and larger every year.

On this particular day, my father, who was equally taken with said garden, had decided to stop and tell the homeowners/gardeners how much he appreciated their efforts and how he always looked forward to seeing that one spot in an otherwise routine drive.  I’m not sure any of us would do that today for fear of being perceived as a serial killer or perhaps finding ourselves face to face with one.  But times were different then—and so was my father.  He hadn’t anticipated that a very sad and lonely man would answer the door.  He never dreamed that the gentleman’s wife—the one solely responsible for this roadside beauty—had died just a few days before, her life taken by a young man they had tried to help over the years.  That young man had taken a fancy to a necklace she had always worn . . . an inexpensive piece of jewelry given to her by her husband . . . a necklace with a tremendous amount of sentimental value but not much else.  When she had opened the door for him that day, he had taken what he wanted, and her life in the process.

Nothing would do the gentleman but that my father come in.  He showed him her pictures and the garden she had planted out back of the house and everything she had already managed to harvest and can.  He talked about the flowers that surrounded the mailbox—the ones that had drawn my father to his door—and how she had lovingly tended them every day.  He was trying to keep it as she would have, but he could tell the flowers were already suffering from her absence.  He just didn’t have her touch.

I can’t begin to imagine the direction of my father’s thoughts when he finally continued on his journey home, but as he told the story his voice grew quieter than usual and his ever-present handkerchief came out of his back pocket at the end for a good nose blowing and possibly a swipe at his eyes.  Because he had simply wanted to extend a compliment and continue on his way, he had given someone who was suffering greatly the opportunity to unburden himself, even if just for a few minutes.

So what is the moral to my story?  Well, I’m glad you asked. There are people all around us who are hurting, people we don’t even know who offer us opportunities on a daily basis to help ease their pain.  And the only cost to us may be a bit of our time—and possibly the wrath of a worried spouse.

I hope we’ll always look for the opportunities . . . and that we’ll always take the time when those opportunities find us.

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