A couple of crows, startled from their perch in a tree, fluttered away, loudly cawing complaints, their black wings flapping frantically across the soft spring sky.

The flag-draped casket before me should have tipped me off that this was a military funeral. But my mind had long left the cemetery just west of Winston-Salem. It had traveled back in time to our youth together.

As is so often the case, sibling does not translate into similarity. He was the athlete, the fleet-footed high scorer of the high school football team. I was the bookish one, first runner-up in the four-year competition for class valedictorian.

He loved to fish and bowl. I enjoyed reading and putting words on paper. He pulled for the Blue Devils; I, for the Tar Heels. Politically, he retained the family's affection for the elephant. Somewhere along the way, I strayed after the donkey.

But despite differences, the bond of blood brotherhood is rarely if ever totally severed. He was my brother. Although we went our separate ways, we shared the same beginnings, the same memories. Eventually we were able to overcome the male taboo of expressed affection and end our long-distance telephone calls with "I love you."

He was one of four sons my widowed mother wept off to war: two Army, one Marines and one Air Force. When all four came home in one piece, my mother, for the first time in many years, went to the polls where she voted for Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower for president, in gratitude for "bringing my boys home."

The service was well attended by many nieces and nephews, the natural product of a large and prolific family.

An older brother, on a walker, sang "Amazing Grace," his voice breaking. The voice of our sister rose sweet and clear from the audience, sustaining him.

The minister took his text from Genesis, reiterating the uncomfortable reality that we all will die. According to the minister, only Enoch, who "walked with God," did not die, causing me to wonder, "What about Elijah, who was swept off to heaven in a whirlwind?"

At graveside, straight-backed but graying VFW and American Legion representatives perfectly executed the military rituals, pacing smartly to and fro with studied precision. The flag was meticulously folded and presented to my brother's only son, who stood erect and proud.

From a short distance away came a bugle's haunting notes of taps, that heartbreakingly beautiful, achingly sad farewell to America's fallen soldiers since 1862. Even the hum of traffic from the nearby highway could not mute a single painful note: Day is done, gone the sun ... All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Afterward, someone handed me two cartridge casings from the rifle salute, intended, perhaps, as mementos either of the sad occasion or of my brother himself. I needed them for neither. The casings felt coldly foreign to my hand and to my mind. I passed them off to a nephew standing nearby.

One by one, the living drifted away, each to his own destination, each to his next appointment with life, leaving behind the vast expanse of headstones as bold reminders, no matter our age, of "time's winged chariot hurrying near."

We drove on to the foothills, where I had made reservations at the new Hampton Inn at the edge of a large vineyard, the new agriculture where once King Tobacco ruled unchallenged. It is less than a half-mile from the pre-Civil War homeplace where we all were born.

In our spacious room, my wife and I sat in silence, watching the sun slip ever so slowly behind the long horizon of purple peaks.

As dusk settled softly over the rolling green hills dotted with ghost-white newly blossoming dogwood, a serenity of a sort found its way into my troubled soul. It was as if from some mystic place, a reassuring voice was saying, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh mine help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

Selah.

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