“Sweet songs don’t last too long on broken radios.”—John Prine

ROLLING FORK—Don’t expect a lot of rhyme or reason in this space this week, ‘cause the fellow whose job it is to fill it feels neither rhythmical nor reasonable as he attempts to do so.

For a great many years now, I have first trained, then disciplined myself to be a most detached, coldly logical, reason-governed individual, who keeps his emotions in check and at arms length, so as to not complicate the thinking process upon which I rely.

As point of reference for those of us of a certain age, I always admired Sherlock Holmes more than James Bond and preferred Mr. Spock to Captain Kirk. Emotionalism, it always seemed to me, rarely helped anything, and quite often tended to make bad situations considerably worse.

I can solve a murder mystery, fictional and otherwise, but a crying woman almost always leaves me baffled and looking for help.

Little did I know that life, ever patient, had simply been biding its time, and decided that 2013 would be just the right moment to smack me right dead between the eyes with its ever poised and ready 2×4. Take it from me, for all of its attributes, stoicism is (a) of remarkably little use and (b) exceptionally hard to maintain when one finds himself  smitten with a life-wielded 2×4.

For about the last six months, a very unemotional man has found himself on an emotional roller coaster, the heights and falls of which have provided me a decidedly unwanted understanding of what people meant when they said that World War I veterans were shell-shocked or that prize fighters were punch-drunk.

To paraphrase the great Bob Dylan and bastardize the English language in the process, a hard rain’s a’ done fell.

One of the better psychology professors I had in college told us something in class one day that I have never forgotten: “The human organism cannot exist, unchanged, during periods of unrelenting stress.”

And since that certainly describes my past six months, I suppose that I, too, must now be changed, although I am not quite yet sure in what ways. I feel a little different, somehow, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you exactly in what way, and I can’t, of course, discern whether that change is transient or more permanent.

I guess, as Joni Mitchell said, “And I don’t know who I am, but life is for learning.”

And there are a couple of things I surely have learned, or rather been reminded of, through the course of all this that I must admit I could have done without—the truly humbling number of friends that I have and the basically good and decent nature of the people of this little town.

As Harper Lee wrote in her masterpiece, “friends bring flowers with sickness and food with death and little things in between,” and there has been all of that and so, so much more. I have been hugged more and handed more than any old ink-stained curmudgeon has a right to, and to all who did either, know I shall not forget it. Neither will I forget the contingent of “Who’s Who” in Mississippi journalism who traveled from all over the state to come honor my wife.

If there is a better representative of the good Lord walking around than the Rev. Beth Miller, I don’t know who it might be, and if there is a kinder and more accommodating group of people than those who make up the congregation of the Rolling Fork United  Methodist Church I look forward to meeting them. Their collective outreach to one who has been, at best, their prodigal parishioner was warming to even this old  cold heart and on behalf of my entire family, I thereby sincerely thank them.

At the  end of “It’s A Wonderful Life,”  Clarence the Angel writes to George Bailey, “no man is a failure who has friends,” and it is in that sense, rather than any awards or honors or over-flattering words of praise, that I must view myself today as a very successful man, indeed.