I might have thought that cynical once upon a time, but after this summer, I could only agree with my wife's sentiments. First, an uncle who had never been sick a day in his life, died of kidney cancer at 74. Then in July, a friend and colleague, Mike Scrogin, pastor of First Baptist Church, died of stomach cancer. Mike was 50. Then just last week, Elizabeth Reid, a former Residence Life director here at WPI, lost her long battle with cancer. Bitsy, as her friends called her, was 33.
In my friend Mike Scrogin's case, all the healthy guidelines were useless. I never knew anyone who watched what he ate more than Mike. He never drank or smoked. And he ran daily around the WPI and First Baptist neighborhoods as many of us can attest as witnesses to his jogging along. Surely, no one I know took better care of himself, yet cancer claimed him at an early age. My cynical side wants to say at Mike's death, "well, so much for exercise and diet." Take that, New England Journal of Science and Medicine. But I know better. I suppose it is helpful to know what kind of lifestyle, what sort of diet, what regimen of exercise will allow us to live healthy lives. Certainly, even a little exercise and being cognizant of what you eat does help you at least feel better. But will they do all that much to prevent premature death as The New England Journal of Science and Medicine suggests? Who knows.
No matter what we or our friends do, eat, exercise, or meditate, we will die. People we love: parents, friends, colleagues, even ourselves, will die. Life is our experience of gains and losses. No amount of studies or diets or regimens can prevent our losing people we love. We don't always get much warning; friends move away, a parent or sibling dies, a colleague we counted on isn't there anymore.
It seems the older we get, the more retirement parties, funerals, or bon voyage celebrations we attend.
After a while, one is tempted to pull the tentacles inside, not reach out to anyone, not make any more friends. Such a prescription of loneliness and safety is fine for rocks, lousy for people. Neither life nor friends nor jobs nor anything but God is permanent. Instead of pulling in, we need to believe that each person who comes into our lives adds to us, teaches us something, makes us a better person.
This belief is best said in a poem JoAnn Van Dyke, a friend of Elizabeth Reid, gave me.
It seems wherever I go
people come into my life or go out of it
touching me where I can feel
then leaving me only a memory.
Like the gossamer fairy tales of children,
easily forgotten
and I wasn't through knowing them.
How do I know
when I am seeing you for the last time?
How do I halt your life to gather and keep
those around you
that you've ever known,
and how do you keep fairy tales from
losing their magic?
So come
brush against the walls of my life
and stay enough for us to know each other
even though we'll have to part sometime
and we both know, the longer you stay
the more I'll want you back when
you are gone.
but come anyway
for fairy tales are the happiest stories
we read,
and are good books made of
little chapters...
All of us should be fortunate to have books with many chapters.
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