A GOD THING

MAP and I go way back. I'm not real sure when I didn't know Mark. I do know that most of our lives we were just a couple "good ol' boys" having a "good ol' time". We'd played music together before but our lives were too focused in different directions until I got out of the Army.

He stopped by my Mother's house as he'd seen me sitting on the front porch drinking beer with my brother. Asked me if I wanted to go drink some free beer at a jam session in Manly. That's where I met Leroy. Leroy played bass for Mark's band. Good bass player, better beer drinker. Decided he'd rather drink beer than play bass. That's how MA and I started working togther again. On and off we played music for the next twenty years...And played it damned good. The only problem we seemed to encounter was when we became better beer drinkers than music players...I got sober first. Then Mark moved to Texas and married his first ex-wife.....then got sober.

So it came as a real surprise to me to get a call from Mark. Seems Leroy was in the hospital in Iowa City dying of cancer. Mark wanted to come home and could I give him a ride to where Leroy was so he, Mark could pray with Leroy.

Mark is still a good friend and HE'S SOBER!!! You bet! I jumped at the chance to spend some time with MA. We played a lot of music together and did it well. A lot of friendships begin with a lot less in common than what Mark and I shared.

When he arrived he was with his sister and we had a short prayer in my back yard before we jumped in my van to begin our adventure. And an adventure is what it became, but not in the fashion either Mark or I could have envisioned. You see it was a long drive, several hours. It was getting rather late when we arrived in Iowa City and though the Hospital Campus was easy to find, it was not that easy to find Leroy. When we did find his room there were two ladies waiting with him. One was his daughter, the other an daughter-in-law, I think. Seems he'd been home until the last day or so when the pain was to great to bear. That was when they brought him in...he was heavily sedated and probably would not awaken again. Not in this life anyway. We talked with them for awhile to let them know who we were and why we were there.

After a bit of time had passed a younger version of Leroy came in, we introduced ourselves and the ladies who had been there left to go home and get some rest. Seems the young man was Leroy's son. I don't recall his name though his name is not important to this tale. What happened over the next few minutes did a lot to reinforce the belief I hold in a Power Greater Than Me. For you see this young man inherited much more than his appearance from his dad. He had been in and out of AA for a few years and was a little shy of two years sober. His dad was dying and one of the ladies who'd been there earlier was his wife. They were having some serious problems and he was stuggling with whether or not sobriety was even worth it. So Mark had flown in from Texas and we had driven down from Mason City not to pray with Leroy, but to hold an AA meeting in the room of a dying man with his son. As we stood in a circle holding hands recitng the Lord's Prayer I had goose bumps and tears. The tears were not for Leroy, they were for this young man who, with the Grace and help of God would not have to live the way his father had. A coincidence? Maybe, but I heard at a meeting once that coincidences were just God performing His Works anonymously.