I’m driving the back roads from the house toward Warm Springs. My dirty windshield is making it a challenge to see through the glare of the morning sun. My cataracts are not helping.

My destination is the cemetery two blocks south of the main highway through Woodbury, Georgia.

Death is never a welcome visitor. It is untimely. Uninvited. Sometimes unexpected. And almost always unwanted.

I am well aware that as a people of faith we do not grieve in the face of death the way the world grieves. There is a joy to life that finds its way into the pain we feel. Eternity tells us that we are not made for this life alone.

Still, death has a way of undoing us. It is at the same time a grim reminder of how fragile life can be and a necessary harbinger to the reality of our own mortality.

I will not live forever on this earth.

I’m thinking through these things as I head up the mountain ridge that overlooks FDR’s Little White House. A white Dodge 1500 comes around me in the passing lane. I am puttering along, taking my time.

I don’t recognize the man driving. He could be headed anywhere, I suppose. Ingles. The gas station. Maybe up the road toward Gay. But for some reason I assume he’s headed to the same cemetery.

I assume this partly because I know the far reaching impact of the man whose graveside service I am attending. He was the last of the old fashioned country doctors that I have personally known over the years. He not only cared for his patients, he cared about his patients.

Years ago, when my children were little, one of them had an ear ache. The youngest or the middle one. I can’t remember.

It was after hours on a Saturday, I think. The child was inconsolable and in pain. I called the doctor and he said he’d meet us at the clinic.

When we got there, he met us at the door and took us into the exam room. The child was whimpering.

He was a tall man. Stout in stature. The large man picked up the small child so he could talk at eye level. He touched her forehead. No fever. He made her smile and then laid her on the table.

Obviously, I’ve concluded it may have been my youngest.

He rolled her on her side and took a look in her ear with his scope. He turned with a big smile on his face.

“I think we can fix this pretty easily.”

And with that, he reached down inside her ear with a pair of tweezers and pulled out a popcorn seed.

We had popcorn the night before at the house. A Disney movie on the VCR most likely. She evidently decided to shove a kernel in her ear and no one noticed.

The doctor added a few drops in her ear to soothe the irritation. An hour later the world was good again.

As I pull into Woodbury, the white Dodge is three vehicles ahead of me. He turns right toward the cemetery as do all the vehicles in front of me and behind me.

I pull off on the grassy shoulder down the hill below the cemetery. The sun is already sweltering. The crowd gathered among the headstones is considerable. They have come from all over.

The one good thing about a day like this is that it carries with it the feeling of a reunion. I’m shaking hands with people I know well. I’m reintroducing myself to a few I haven’t seen in decades. There is a collective and lively remembrance of the country doctor we knew as a friend.

The preacher did a fine job, which was made easy by the man of whom he spoke. He spoke of the time when he first met the doctor over thirty years ago. He recounted the memories of each member of the family. By all accounts, he made us feel honored to have known the man.

The son-in-law remembered how his father-in-law never played to the status of being a physician. His position in the community was not a badge he wore. It was a responsibility he felt to serve all who came to him for help.

As the preacher closed with the 23rd Psalm, the late morning sun was beating down. No breeze at all. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back. Some of the ladies were fanning themselves with the small paper program for the service.

I have two more of these to attend within the next eight days. The longer a man lives, the more often he finds himself standing beside a burial tent. My dad commented on this many times when he was alive.

I think that what makes life bearable is the Hope that carries us through this journey of ours. We don’t always see it. Unfortunately, we sometimes don’t even acknowledge it. But it is always at work in the background, even in the shadow of death itself.

Most of the family will not remember much about this day. Most of it will be a blur. There is a mixture of sorrow and relief as sadness gives way to laughter around the stories told.

The loss is hard. Hardest on those left to carry on. And although the absence will never go away,  they will always remember the man.

I know I will.

In memory of Dr. Mack Clements. 1940-2026