NOW!

     I stood over the lifeless body that lay in the casket in front of me.  Here was my best friend.  A buddy that I had grown up with.  Now he lay motionless in this glorified box.  All the mourners standing around trying to cope with the present situation, as was I.

     Maybe I should have sent flowers before I had arrived.  Maybe at least a card to his family with some remarks about how I was feeling.  Or maybe some words that would have made them feel better.  Now is probably not the time to be thinking of what I should have done!

     What words could I have said?  Here lay my best friend, her husband, their father.  Now only a shell of the man he used to be.

     How many times had I enjoyed riding around in his car after school and seeing if we could pick up some girls?  I don’t recall if I had ever thanked him for that since I didn’t own a vehicle and was rarely able to even provide some money for gas.  But we kept going on these rides and he never complained that I was merely “along for the ride”.

     We graduated from High School and went our separate ways:  Me to a job in Washington, DC and him into the military.  I was so concerned about all the adjustments that I was having to make so I could keep my apartment and have some food on the table.  I never gave any thought about how he was spending many sleepless, cold, wet nights in a muddy marshland, just trying to keep himself alive.  Maybe I should have written to him and let him know how I felt about our friendship.  How sometimes when I was trying to get through one of my work nights I would think of how we had laughed together at the drive-in on a Friday night watching a movie that neither one of us really wanted to watch.  Or how on some other nights we would lay out by the lake and just stare up to into the starry night.

     I could hardly believe that both of us found ourselves married with families after only a few years.  Things had really changed for us both, but we seemed to be dealing with these changes the best we could.  I had found studying the Bible and growing closer to God with my family was making it possible for me to cope with various trials that I had to face.  He had turned to drugs and crime to try to hold together the ever dicey pieces of his life.  Maybe if I had taken the time to rekindle our friendship it would have made an opportunity possible for him to find a better to deal with the crisis that continued to plague him?

     Life seems to play with us in this fashion.  Now I stood before the lifeless body of my friend.  Why couldn’t I have been a better friend in his times of NOW when he really needed someone?  Someone to help him to improve his conditions, someone to help him make better decisions!  Why could I have not had these thoughts THEN when I could have perhaps provided that helping hand that was so desperately needed by my friend?  Yet, now I stand before this lifeless body and ponder all these thoughts NOW!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"NO ONE can get through life on their own!"