My Brother's Funeral

Well I’ve missed two Sundays in a row at Parkway. Last Saturday night my brother died unexpectedly and we drove up to Bulverde to break the news to my mother. Yesterday we had the funeral for my brother. I don’t like to miss our services.

The funeral was well attended. It was standing room only and the attendance was estimated at about 230 or so. We had relatives come in from California, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oregon and from all over the state of Texas.

We had Christian friends from Houston that we had grown up with make the drive over. We had some of our Parkway family there and some former members like Linda Yanta and Doug and Paula Mokry. My old college friend Ben Lucas was there. A lot of these folks I hadn’t seen since my dad’s funeral in 1998. One of Scott’s dentist friends made the trip from El Paso. He said Scott was so proud of his family and talked about us all the time and that he wanted to come meet us all. He also said Scott taught him a lot of dental techniques and one time he was having trouble with a patient and called Scott and Scott dropped everything to come and help him.

My emotions were in pretty good control until someone walked in that I didn’t expect or someone walked in who I hadn’t seen in a long time. The Perkins family is pretty close and one of my friends said they were a little jealous of that. Here’s how close we are. Lauren had major surgery on Wednesday and still made it to the funeral on Saturday. She wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

I made some opening remarks and had the closing prayer. My cousin Mark led us in “Amazing Grace”, “I’ll Fly Away” and “I Surrender All”. Walker talked and all six of Scott’s kids had something to say. I learned some things. My brother Greg did the eulogy. I begged off of doing anything because I knew I would break down emotionally but I was assigned opening remarks and guess I did okay.

There were a lot of Church of Christ people there and the singing was awesome. A friend of my brother’s widow was there and said she came to comfort Mary Jane but found herself being comforted instead and was amazed at the singing.

My friend John Gambino who has preached a lot of funerals said this… “The service today was the "BEST" memorial I have ever attended. The candor, honesty, love expressed by so many was such a blessing. The understanding of and expressions of REDEMPTION struck a deep cord with me”

I’ll tell just one story about Scott. He spent a week in jail one time and he flourished in whatever environment he was in. When he was bailed out all the other inmates stood up and gave him a standing ovation. That was my brother.

Our dad died in 1998 after a yearlong battle with cancer and we had a year’s time to shed tears and say good bye. Four days before my brother died I called him and sang happy birthday to him (66th birthday). The day he died he was active in our Texas Perkins text message group. I wish that somehow I could have talked to him just one more time and told him how much I loved him.