HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Two somber hearses sit parked side-by-side under a sprawling shade tree, waiting to take away a pair of brothers inseparable in life, now inseparable in death.
Anthony and Terry Jackson learned their life of service to others, sharing what little they had, from their late mother, Irene Jackson, said the Rev. Cheryl Blankenship, who will officiate at the funeral for the brothers at West Huntsville United Methodist Church, 3104 Ninth Ave. in Huntsville on Friday, May 24, 2013, at 2 p.m. (Courtesy of West Huntsville Methodist Church)
Two battleship-gray caskets are inside the West Huntsville United Methodist Church, a place barely large enough in which to rest one casket, much less bear the size and pain of a second.
The caskets hold the bodies of Terry Jackson, 70, and his brother Anthony, 69.
This church was the focal point of their lives.
"They felt safe here. This was their sanctuary," said the Rev. Cheryl Blankenship, the church's pastor.
There is the cruel irony.
In the place where they felt most safe, on the day of the week they most eagerly anticipated, their lives were taken.
On Tuesday, their regular day to work the church's food pantry, they were killrf in the fellowship hall, stabbed to death by an assailant yet to be arrested.
"We come with anxious hearts, we come with anger in our hearts, we come with sadness and great loss," Blankenship said.
It takes a deep breath to keep you from feeling more anger than sadness for what happened.
West Huntsville United Methodist sits at the opposite end of the megachurches, with their multimedia presentations and coffee bars.
There are a dozen pews on the left side, a few more to the right. A back-lit cross hangs on the wall in front. The old windows are stained in rich smudges of sea green and sunset orange.
Two crimson choir seats have paper doves attached to them. Those were the Jacksons' chairs.
"Blessed Assurance" is played, grabbing your soul in that unmistakable sound that is an upright piano in a small church. It's surely the way God intended for that song to be played.
The church lives in one of those aging neighborhoods that didn't get the memo it was supposed to start becoming trendy like other wedges of old Huntsville. It's ignored by the commuters whizzing past. It's populated by people who have fallen on hard times, or by those never blessed by how you or I might measure good, easy times.
That might describe Terry and Anthony Jackson.
Terry worked for years at Martin Stove Company. He was retired. He had an eighth-grade education. Anthony had cerebral palsy. Sometimes, Blankenship said, it might take him three or four times to get across his point. But he'd always make sure he did. Terry was his caretaker. They didn't have much money, their car was on the verge of collapse and they were often hungry themselves.
But they were the backbone of the food pantry ministry. Said Blankenship, "They saw people who needed help more than they did." Without them, the pantry could be in jeopardy. Finding volunteers to staff the operation once a week will be a challenge.
Terry and Anthony Jackson brought what Blankenship called "a new understanding ... of what is truly important in life. Not a PhD. Not a big house. Not cars and other things. But a pure heart that they possessed."
"They had this world figured out," said J.W. Whitworth, who ended his eulogy by looking to the heavens with tear-stained eyes.
We spend a lot of time and space lauding those who can make big things happen in this big world of ours. We often overlook those who make big things happen in small places.
Here were two good men who did good work and who could well have lost their lives at the hand of someone whom they had served.
Until Tuesday, we never knew them.
Now, may we not forget them and the work they did.
Contact Mark McCarter at mmccarter@al.com