There I was, sitting on the Greyhound, wiping my eyes and waiting for our departure to Charlotte.
It was Thursday, 24th March, 2005, and I was on my way to a funeral.
I’d gotten the call from my sister Lisa the week before, on St. Patrick’s Day, telling me that our dear friend Steve Beacham had died earlier that morning. Steve “Coach” Beacham was a missionary colleague of our parents (in our mission) and coach/Bible teacher/discipleship-leader at our school, Hillcrest. He’d returned to the States the year before when he’d begun to have medical problems, and he’d been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive type of cancer. Coach had once-upon-a-time taught me to rappel, which came to be one of my favourite things to do in the world. He’d also taught me about Aichan’s sin and the “ripple effect” (in the book of Joshua). The morning of 17th March, he had died suddenly while driving to the doctor’s office from chapel.
I had the next week off school for spring break, so I informed my employers that my “uncle” had died and that I would be attending his funeral. I didn’t have any idea how I’d get there without driving by myself the whole way (15+ hours), so I debated for a few days about going. My parents finally convinced me to go, so I took my car, Annie, in to Midas on Wednesday to get her oil changed and just get checked up.
After his exam, my mechanic said bluntly, “I wouldn’t drive this car back home to Wheaton [20 minutes away], let alone to North Carolina.” Great. Not only did I now have to find another way to Charlotte for the Friday memorial service (plane tickets were over $1000!!), but I had to worry about getting a new car when I got back. I can’t describe the next 24 hours other than to say that I cried a lot.
On Thursday afternoon, I was at my sister’s, crying, when she said, “Okay, Saralynn. Get in the car. We’ll grab some of your clothes from home, and I’m taking you to the bus station downtown. You can just make the last bus to Charlotte if we hurry.”
I was one of the last people on the bus, having packed my bag haphazardly and rushed to Chicago with Lisa and both her kids. I bought my ticket two minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave and ran to my gate. I made it on just in time and sat down, only to cry.
Across the aisle, a woman asked if I’d gone to Wheaton. (I realised I was wearing my Wheaton sweatshirt.) I told her I had. She asked where I was going, and I told her to Charlotte for a funeral. She said she was going there, too, for the same reason. When I asked to whose funeral she was going, she told me Steve Beacham, and so began our adventure together.
She introduced herself as Marj, and she was not only a Wheaton grad living ten minutes from me, but she had also attended Hillcrest and had grown up in my mission! For the next several hours, we chatted about our connections and the Beachams. She told me that my friend Micah (then 18) was flying all the way from Nigeria for the memorial service. That was welcome news, and I became eager to reach Charlotte, if only to be surrounded by my friends and mission family.
In Cincinnati, our connecting bus to Knoxville was delayed. One bus came and got a load of passengers. A second bus came and got another load of passengers. Marj and I were in the next batch. We had waited three hours for a 45-minute layover, experiencing the delights of an urban bus station (for example, the man urinating in the middle of the terminal and being arrested). Ahead of us in line were an older couple and a man who looked to be a late teen. They were traveling separately but had struck up a conversation in line, so we joined in to keep from falling asleep standing up. It turned out that the boy—a student at the Chicago Art Institute—was on his way to his father’s surprise birthday party in Charlotte later that day (this was 3 a.m. Friday). The couple lived near Asheville and were on their way home from visiting their daughter’s family (and her ADHD children).
As we boarded the bus that finally arrived around 03:30, Marj and I were worried. As our original schedule had worked out, we would have just connected to our Charlotte bus in Knoxville; as it was, we were over two hours late. So we brainstormed about what to do and finally agreed on a plan. When we reached Knoxville, Marj would rent a car and drive us the rest of the way to Charlotte. We invited the older couple and the young man to join us if they so desired.
When we reached Knoxville, we all got our tickets refunded at the counter, and Marj called Hertz to pick us up. Within a half hour, all five us had piled into a white sedan and were on our way. Once we got on the road, we introduced ourselves—not having even known our passengers’ names before we’d started out! We dropped off the older couple near Asheville and the young man in central Charlotte, then drove to the South Carolina border, where the memorial service was to take place.
There was a slight hitch (aside from our getting lost on the way to the church).
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