Saying Goodbye to Butch

Today was Butch's funeral, and it fit him perfectly, although his pastor said Butch would have been embarrassed to have so much attention. I think that is true. At least thirty people were standing in the small church, which was missing a back pew because Butch had unscrewed it and removed it a few months ago. He’d noticed that there was no good space for people in wheel chairs; they had to sit behind everybody or in the aisle until he made a place for them. He paid attention to things like that.

Butch and his family did more for me than I did for them, and it was such a simple thing they did. They were glad to see me. You may think that isn’t much, but it doesn’t happen all the time.

When people are dying, they don’t usually have a lot of energy; and they don’t have a lot of reason to want to spend what they have getting to know strangers. That’s a fact.

Butch made the effort, and so did his family, even though their pastor came frequently as well. It was as if life was a banquet to Butch, and he didn’t want to leave any dish untried.

His nurse came back to the office a few weeks ago with chocolate peanut clusters he had made. She told me to try to get his recipe. When I asked him, he offered me a box of the clusters too. The pastor said today that Butch never gave out the recipe to anyone, and he supposed God was trying to get it out of him now.

In the eyes of the world, Butch was not an important man. He lived in a modest house filled with many tables and book cases he had made. He loved to work with wood. He held several different jobs, and I’m sure he did them all with honesty and fairness. He managed to get an AA degree, and wanted to finish four years of college, but hadn’t been able to. He had children to educate by then. Those children asked him recently how he could give up his dream like that, wasn’t he sorry. He looked at each of them and said, “You are my dream.”

There’s a saying that goes something like this: Your life may be the only Bible some people read. I’m glad a lot of people ‘read’ Butch's life.