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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday April 15, 2002 Volume IV Number 15 |
FOCUS - Lou Gehrig II
When I spoke to Judy by telephone on Monday, I could tell, her breathing was labored. She was glad to hear from me, she said. She asked about my family. We chatted some about the progress of her illness and the goodness of God’s presence and how it won’t be long before I can get over there and we can spend some time just talking, just like before.
The call came on Wednesday, late in the day, well after the dinner hour. I was still at my desk chasing down files, crunching numbers at the computer screen and producing enough paper through the laser jet printer to take out a Brazilian rain forest, making my own personal contribution to global warming. “Judy’s gone,” the voice said. “No. Not so soon” was all I could say. I guess I knew it was coming. The Lou Gerhig’s disease they called “terminal.” “Fatal.” But up until the end, Judy was alert, attentive, witty. The good people from hospice joked and laughed with her as they took care of business. Frequently, when we talked, she would tell me to be sure and listen to the people I love, to be thankful for the things in my life that make me privileged and bring me joy, and occasionally when I told her about a disappointment, sometimes, I could see tears in her eyes.
I put my telephone back in the cradle. For a moment, I just sat there. Still. Then I called Dana.
“I was there, Ken,” he told me. “Just past four o’clock this afternoon.”
Dana sat by her bedside, holding his sister’s hand, talking to her. And praying. That’s when she took her last heavy breath.
She was fifty four.
She told me her greatest desire was the hope that she might see her nephew, Morgan, Dana’s son, graduate from high school. She fully expected that he will be number one in his graduating class of 2002, and she believed he would get the honors and make a valedictory speech, and she wanted to be there. She was so very proud of him.
She missed it by a couple of months.
She told me he’ll be a doctor, a physician, someday.
I know Morgan, too. I think she’s right.
Morgan will likely set out on the hunt for a cure for Lou Gehrig’s.
* * * * * * *
When I wrote about Judy October 29, 2001, our talks had just begun. She spent her life as a religious skeptic, she told me then. She believed in spirituality, and knew there was more to life than the physical universe. But she believed that religion of all kinds was a distortion of true spirituality, and in history had been a handy tool for despots and tyrants to rally commoners to swear allegiance under a common banner and demand loyalty. She had little time for folks who, throughout her life, suggested that she needed to consider her own relationship with God. For starters, she wasn’t sure it was possible to know God, or which god among the gods, much less have a relationship. She was much more comfortable as an agnostic, one who simply says, well maybe God exists, but we’ll never really know.
We had long talks about misconceptions. And the Bible. And a God who is there and who is not silent.
Then one day she told me… sometime before Christmas.
“Last night, it was one more interminable night, and I was wrestling, and annoyed, and couldn’t sleep, and finally, I talked to God. I told him I couldn’t take it any more. That I needed help.”
“Wow, Judy. Then what happened?”
“I can’t explain it. I just felt this peace. An incredible peace. And then I slept.”
“Sounds like a turning point to me.”
“Definitely,” she said.
* * * * * * *
Not long afterward, I stood beside her bed. Her caretaker, Ralph, stood with me. I talked to her about how it is that we need to make a choice. Take a stand. We drive a stake in the ground, right there on our own personal time line, and say it out loud.
“Are you ready?” I asked her, knowing the answer.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to pray? Or would you like me to lead you?”
“I’ll pray.”
She astonished me with her prayer. It was as though she had rehearsed it for years. A flood of emotion and confession and affirmation came from her heart right there on her therapeutic bed. She gave herself over. She embraced the living God. She claimed the finished work of Jesus as her only hope.
Through our tears, we all embraced.
It was a sweet moment in time I will never forget.
* * * * * *
I’m reaching a place in my life (Judy and I were almost, to the day, the same age) where priorities are re-arranging. Almost on their own. I don’t think I’m giving up. It’s more like letting go.
The hopes and dreams that fuel a young man to build a home, and create a place for children to grow, and somehow stay ahead of the creditors and present a respectable image of success and relative prosperity, well, they are useful and good. But eventually, the fantastic gets sorted out from the real. Those fantastic goals serve a purpose. They energize. Inspire. Bring focus. But at my age, I guess, many of them are exposed as imposters. It’s like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. And it’s such a relief to belly-laugh, and know that reality is so much better than the game.
It’s only recently, it seems, that super-stardom has faded from my list of expectations. And the best part is this - it’s ok. In fact, it’s rather liberating.
What we have is enough.
Now it’s time to focus on quality.
Let quantity go.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Today is the day many Americans frantically search for forms and instructions and look here and there to find some semblance of ready cash to keep Uncle Sam from initiating some sort of ominous scrutiny into our personal lives… hopefully you are signed, sealed and delivered.
With that behind, you can once more take a look at the larger issues in your life.
We will memorialize Judy. Her life touched so many others. Especially mine. Maybe yours.
Whatever it is that is distracting you these days from the big picture in your life… well, pull back the curtain. Check it out. The Wizard’s just a roly-poly big guy with gray hair and a white beard and an impressive voice and he’s really no threat; he just likes to make you think so.
Get past it. Like putting that tax return in the mail. Or hitting the “send” button on your Internet browser. It’s done. Over. Finished.
There’s a whole world out there waiting for you.
Take a deep breath. Drink it in.
It’s yours.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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