the dirty old man next door - part two

When he kissed me today I knew there was trouble afoot. My dirty old man neighbor, if you remember my previous blog click here about Uncle Lybe, he came hobbling down the street after my car as fast as he could move with his cane. I got out of the car and he almost collapsed into my arms and kissed me on the cheek. This left me a little apprehensive since we are friends, but hugs and kisses between men are rare. In a broken voice he told me that his wife had died. I didn’t know his wife was still alive! I mean Uncle Lybe lives with his daughter so clearly he had a wife in the past, but since they never talked about her, I had no idea that until now she was in the hospital (for the last year) and had just died.

We don’t have funeral homes and all the shenanigans that you do in North America . . . folks are buried right away here or at the very latest the following day. So they had already buried her and I did not have any idea. Uncle Lybe was still clearly shaken and was holding on to me tightly. He said in the most pitiful voice you can imagine, “My friend, would you come to my house and share a drink with me in her honor?” I hate to tell you this, but I hesitated. I hesitated for all the wrong reasons.

I hesitated because I was pretty sure Uncle Lybe and his daughter were atheists or nearly so - thus a conversation about the dead wife/mother could only go one bad direction. I hesitated because the traditions concerning the dead here are a vicious cycle of burden to the remaining family members and I did not want to add to that burden. I hesitated (now it gets really bad) because I have so much work that has to be completed . . . it defies belief . . . this is super-crunch time and this week has only been one interruption after another after another after another (and I am not overly interruptable to begin with). I finally I hesitated because I am a jerk! and who knows how long this might take?

That is a terrible admission, but I agreed to go, thinking finally that I just as well get on the boat back to Georgia and become a farmer otherwise. If you don’t have time for a pagan when his wife has just died, then just go back to wherever you came from . . . cause you sure enough ain’t much use here. So with that bit of fortifying rationale behind me I squared my shoulders and said, “Of course I will come to your house with you.”

When we got there, his 55ish year old daughter gave me a hug. Yikes! This is even more unusual than the old man giving me a hug and a kiss!! Now since I am roughly the shape and size of a full grown Pillsbury Dough Boy, I am highly huggable, but this was off the map wild culturally. I mean I am only a neighbor, and a foreigner to boot . . . we don’t get many hugs around here. And so we sat down and cried a bit and talked about the “house woman” as they affectionately called her. We drank some of her finest in honor of her. We ate some grapes from the vines she had planted in honor of her . . . and then the questions started. . .

“What are your traditions in the States?” (please remember that these people have a cold heartless dislike for the USA) So it was kind fun making light of some of our horrible traditions concerning the dead . . . so they were properly mortified when I told them that we drain the blood out of our dead and we then we pump them full of formaldehyde so that we can look at them for the next three days or so . . . I thus completely restored their faith in the Macedonian “you call, we haul” form of burying folks here. Americans are truly barbarians, and I first of all.

But then we got to the interesting (and hard) questions. “Does a person have a soul?” This question is super loaded because of their near atheistic beliefs . . . I decided to go straight and hard rather than dance . . . “I believe a person has an eternal element within them, a soul a spirit, call it what you may, and that this part of each one of us stands before God at some point and gives an answer for their life, how it was used and spend or wasted.” Their response was, “you are serious, aren’t you?” And my answer was “more than you can possibly believe, life has zero meaning if there is no God and no next life.” It was quiet for a long long moment . . . and then they took the questioning in a safer direction . . . “so you believe in reincarnation.” and on and on it went.

On the way home I was reviewing this whole affair and once again realized that I can’t save anyone and that only Holy Spirit can draw them to the King. But at least I know I am pretty high on their list of friends. Who knows were this will go? We can only pray that their hearts will open enough to hear the gospel - that ever so good news.