A Friends Obit - - By Observers

Seems like just right along now, someone I've known gets their name in the newspaper. Another one of my high school classmates has died. I saw his obituary in the days paper. He was a banker who was fond of saying, “I rent money.” Though he had never smoked, he died of lung cancer. He was four months younger than me. He was also a very nice guy who had fought his cancer - fighting the good fight right up until the very end. Actually, though we weren’t close friends in high school, we had known each other and were in a couple of classes together, but that was just for my sophomore year and then I was transferred to another school. Forty some years later, he became a customer at the store where I work and we had re-bonded, reminiscing about the good times we had enjoyed and remembering the names and commenting on the status of many of our former classmates. I had witnessed my friend’s quick, yet gradual deterioration, seeing him for just a few minutes when he came in on his monthly visits. I had watched him yo-yo from periods of holding his own against his disease to other periods where it was obvious that he was physically succumbing to it. Physically, but not mentally. And though I could tell, through the brief conversations that we had, that he both realized and accepted his eventual impending fate, he never quit being his same optimistic self. His passion to work with people and to make sure they were successful, not only within business but also in life, was very important to him. Reading his obituary brought to mind a You Tube clip that was recently sent to me. It was a clip taken from an Oprah Winfrey show and was an on-air repeat performance of a professors lecture. His presentation included a slide show of pictures, most of which were of him, both as a child and as a man and of his families.
The edited (- - -) transcribed transcript from that You Tube clip goes something like this. - - - - -When 46 year old Randy Pausch, husband and father of three young children, was confronted with his own imminent death from advanced pancreatic cancer, the Carnegie-Mellon professor followed the academic tradition of giving his students the typical final class called ‘The Last Lecture’, which is based on the hypothetical that if you knew you were going to die, and you had one last lecture, what you would say to your students. For Randy Pausch, the lecture had a very special, yet ominous meaning. "Let’s be clear", he starts, "This stinks. ............. But I can’t do anything about the fact that I am going to die. I’m pursuing medical treatment, but I pretty much know how this movie is going to end. And I can’t control the cards I’m dealt, just how I play the hand. - - - There is an expression I like, ‘Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.’ - - - The brick walls that are in our way are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. They are there to give us a way to show how much we want it (whatever it is we are trying for). - - - First off - Life is about having fun. There is a notion of ‘Have Fun All The Time’. Have a sense of fun and wonder that should never go away. Never, ever, underestimate the importance of having fun. I Am Dying and I am choosing to have fun - today, tomorrow, and every other day that I have left. - - - If you want to achieve your dream, you’d better work and play well with others. And that means you’d better live with integrity. Simple advice that you’ll find hard to follow, ‘Just Tell the Truth.’ - - Second thing - When You Screw Up, Apologize. There are a lot of bad apologies. - A good apology has three parts. ‘ I’m Sorry’ - ‘It Was My Fault’ - ‘How Do I Make It Right?’ Most people skip that third part - though that is what makes it sincere. - - Third thing - - We all have people we don’t like, that have done things we don’t like. And what I’ve found is that no one is pure evil. If you wait long enough, they will show you their good side. - - Also, Show Gratitude - Gratitude is a very simple thing. And it is a very powerful thing. And lastly, I don’t think whining and complaining really solves the problem. You can choose to take your finite time and energy and effort and you can spend it complaining or you can spend it playing the game hard, which is probably going to be more helpful to you in the long run. - - - It’s not just about how to achieve your childhood dreams. It’s much broader than that. It’s about how to live your Life. Because if you lead your Life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. -The dream will come to you. - If you live properly, the dream will come to you .... Thank You"-------- This is where, when I first watched the YouTube video, I stood up and applauded. I was very moved by Randy Pausch. And upon reflection, I was moved as well by the attitude that my old classmate displayed, or should I say the attitude that he ‘lived’. For, indeed, he lived with a smile on his face just as though there was no tomorrow. And now both of these courageous individuals provide me with an example of how to live my own life as it unwinds and brings me nearer and nearer to my own end. . I can only hope that when my time comes - when the doctor looks at me and says “It’s terminal!”, I can only hope that I will have the intestinal fortitude to be able to face my imminent demise with the same positive attitude that both my friend and Oprah’s guest were able to possess with such incredible certitude....... I can only hope........

As It Comes, So It Goes. That's Life. By Observers

I was reading the day’s paper earlier today - the TV was on in the background. I had just switched it from a news channel. -CSI, Las Vegas was on, a rerun I believe. It was in the last few minutes of the show, and Grissom was doing his typical closing mono-moral scene. He was reading from an unknown book, and I missed the first few words. (Wish I had TIVO). Anyway, I don’t know if the story he was reading were words written by a real or fictitious person. It was a story about a person’s view of watching Nature. It went something like this;
‘ ’ While standing in my favorite spot upon a large shelf of rock in a clearing of the tall trees, high upon the side of my mountain, I spy upon the morning sky just above the distant horizon, a familiar sight. It is a distinctive black dot, zigzagging through the midmorning sky. I say to myself, “Here It Comes.” Then I watch the black dot as it grows ever larger. I know from past experience that this little black dot is, in fact, a magnificent great bird, one with a wingspan wider than I am tall. It follows the crease in the mountains where the river runs like a wavy ribbon upon a velvet pillow. Back and forth. Back and forth. Up and down and up and down. Sometimes so high it is almost out of sight, and other times skimming along just above the upper branches of the tall trees, becoming nearly invisible amongst the steely treetops. I stand perfectly still, knowing that in a little while, this beautiful flying lifeform will pass right near me, just as it always does on its morning way up the river. It must be the lay of the landscape that brings it so close to me, or maybe it is something else - I don’t know. But I do know that it is always a thrill when it happens. It always flies, majestic like, in my direction, almost like it knows I am there waiting. It takes its time, growing ever larger as it nears - then in what seems like a flash There It Is - big and bold and beautiful and mulit-colored, too - and looking directly at me, just as if it was bidding me both a happy hello and a sad goodbye in one big swooping gesture - and then, in the blink of an eye, it has past me by, though its scent lingers just briefly before dissipating into the forest air. What a thrill this is. Even though it’s just a few fleeting moments and then it’s gone, it is a thrill I love. And so it goes. I watch as the big bird follows the zig and the zag of the winding river, growing ever smaller in the distant sky. And then it disappears, and with the same degree of awe I had at its coming, I strain my eyes and say to myself, “There It Goes.”
And then I smile at the memory and at knowing that, undoubtably, somewhere not to far from me on another mountainside on up the river, another lucky soul is looking to the downstream horizon and exclaiming, “Here It Comes” ‘’.

I like that story. Mine, unfortunately, is longer and not nearly as good as the one Grissom read, his was much more poetic. However, my version expresses the same parable about Life. Both people and things come into our lives and then are gone. And for that matter, Life, Itself, comes to us, and then is gone. And so the moral of this little story is that Life is short and, indeed, we should enjoy every moment while its here, because soon enough this too shall pass.