It was a warm afternoon when Elmer and Wilma drove up the mountain from Brenzone through Prada. As they drove behind another tourist, whom they recognised as a tourist from the British number plates, for some reason his thoughts turned to his elder brothers, Barney and Homer. He missed them both, though they were quite different both in the characters and their careers.

He had lost Barney some thirty years earlier to malaria which he had contracted whilst working with indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin. He and Wilma had nursed Barney in his last months at their home and then in Elmer’s clinic in their home town, Milan, in Georgia. It was the name Milan had initially brought them across to Lombardy, but it was the coffee and gelato, which never failed to please that brought them back year after year.

Homer had taken a different path. Early in life he studied in seminary and taken up a pastoral role in a church simply known as Bethel not far from the family home. Upon the retirement of the senior pastor, he took up that position and remained in it for the next forty-five years. Upon his retirement the congregation asked him to remain with them, which he did supporting the new pastor in whatever way he could for a further ten years. Elmer spoke warmly of his elder brother at the funeral celebration only a few months earlier. He had few words to say however as he strongly believed that both Barney and Homer had wasted their lives and though he had often said it to them, he did not wish any hint of that to be heard by the outside world.

Intellectually he regarded them as his superiors, and not simply because they were his elder brothers. He had often tested them out and had never found them wanting in their thinking and reasoning when they were in possession of the correct data, which most often they were. They were also, and especially Homer, ready and able to show him where his own thinking and reasoning was deficient. Homer often corrected him to strengthen his arguments even when his arguments were counter to Homer’s own beliefs. Elmer had greatly valued their help for it had greatly benefitted him in his academic medical work. Homer was never slow to praise where it was due, and so was always quick to read his papers. In addition to giving appropriate praise, he would point out where his argument was weak, or the evidence he had provided did not support quite as well as he had hoped what he wanted to say. Elmer puzzled at times over this as Homer had had absolutely no medical training whatsoever, but when he examined matters again, Homer was never off the mark.

Elmer was ten years younger than the two of them. As a teenager he had watched them grow into men and make their choices. They had all grown up in Milan at the local SB congregation. His two brothers had been baptised when they were twelve, but it was some years later that the faith they professed began to take shape in their lives and influences their choices. Their behaviour changed in their late teens as they became serious, committed believers. At twelve Elmer had refused to be baptised. Despite his brother’s efforts to persuade him, he wanted to play ball and the training matches were Sunday morning. The Sunday morning training was frowned upon by most of the community, but there were enough families who participated to make it happen. It also resulted in better team play and consequently more wins for Elmer’s team.

Leaving college Elmer went to medical school in the north states where he obtained distinctions in all of his exams. He had planned to be simply a local doctor, but his time of study changed his thinking. He went on to become qualified as a surgeon and then took an academic position. In his thirties he became a professor at which point he decided that as to be a local doctor had been his target, that is what he would become. Such was his reputation however that his colleagues, both local and international, persuaded him that he should not do that. He therefore compromised.

It was that compromise that led him and Wilma to set up the clinic in Milan. It would be a new type of clinic, offering both local medical services as well as conducting specialist research and surgery. It was ambitious, but his academic community supported him in it, as did his local community when they eventually understood what he was trying to do. It was in this clinic that Barney had spent his last few weeks.

Barney’s presence in the clinic had had a big impact upon the staff. He was quite different to Elmer. He knew how sick he was. He knew that he was dying, yet he had a quiet confidence in the God who raises from the dead. Though Milan was a religious community most of its inhabitants would not be looking forward to death preferring to find a way, any way, to put it off. Barney was expressing what few could say: Komm! du süße Todesstunde! which some of the Lutherans recognised but not many others. Some of the staff tried to talk with Elmer about this, but Elmer dismissed in the most polite way possible, but privately saying to himself: Nonsense, Barney.

Elmer had often rebuffed his brothers who had questioned him about his world view. He could not argue against them successfully, he knew that, and as related above Homer when pointing out the weaknesses of his argument would show him how to strengthen it. Even when he did follow Homer’s advice, Homer still managed to unpick the argument! Elmer dismissed their thoughts of eternity as religious phantasy. He would do what he did in his way for the good of those around him.

Then it happened. A vehicle coming down the road, misjudged the road as much as the British driver did in the car ahead of them. There was a passenger in the car who had taken much of the force of the impact. Elmer stopped.

The British driver got out, and Elmer shouted: I am a doctor. You need help?

Clearly they did. Elmer moved over to the vehicles as quickly as he could where he realised that they must get the passenger out without any delay. The other vehicle had to be moved back. The passenger, a young lad of barely sixteen years was dazed and bled greatly. Elmer tried to staunch the flow. Wílma ran back to bring tourniquets from their car in the hope they might be of use, but too little could be done.

After a short while the young boy opened his eyes. His father’s countenance brightened, but Elmer knew otherwise.  The boy spoke only briefly: Don’t worry about me; I’m with Jesus. It was the last moment of his breath. In the thrall of death the young fight, but cannot overcome. The old acquiesce.

Elmer reflected: If the British car had not been there, I would have been in that same seat as the young boy. If the car in front had not been British, the boy would have not have been in that seat. He had come from Milan to Milan to hear what his two brothers had told him for sixty years from a boy who was only a little older than he had been when he had stopped listening to his brothers and had dismissed their teaching, from the same boy who had now died in his place. He remembered what John had written to Gaius: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. It burned through him. In his life he had focussed simply on prosperity and being in health, he had not seen before that John premised Gaius’s external well-being upon that of his soul. Elmer knew he had neglected, even rejected, the well-being of, his soul.

It was not Barney and Homer who had wasted their lives as Elmer now saw so very clearly. He returned to Bethel to be baptised, and to follow Jesus just as Barney and Elmer had done.

_{Based upon a true story….whose origin Coco has forgotten}