Copyright 2014. All rights reserved.
He sat
staring at nothing, his leg bouncing up and down, up and down while he tried to
quiet his mind. This was a difficult task for a man who made his living by
thinking and sharing those thoughts with others--a man who enjoyed nothing more
than time spent in his own head. But today, at this moment, in this office,
thinking was the last thing he wanted to do.
His
sweet Rosemary sat beside him mindlessly flipping through the pages of her May Oprah
Magazine. It was still April but the next month’s issue was faithfully
delivered two weeks early. “It’s like words from the future,” she’d said once
while lazily reading it after breakfast one Saturday morning. “Yeah…now if you
could get them to include some lottery numbers and the forecast we’d be in
business,” Ray had said with his usual sarcasm. A practical man, he had little
use for meditation and conscious living. “I’ve never seen so much energy
devoted to what should come naturally,” he’d say in response to the magazine’s
invitation to live, breath, eat and act consciously.
Reading
the magazine was a highlight for Rosemary, and now she wanted nothing more than
to take her time diving into the neatly bound words of wisdom. Her eyes though
had suddenly abandoned all ability to focus. She started, and restarted reading
Suze Orman’s column advising 23-year-old Lauren against marrying her
debt-ridden boyfriend. But by the 5th restart, she gave up the
pursuit and settled for moving the pages back and forth seeing only the passing
of time.
The
door opened, snapping Ray & Rosemary to the here and now. They adjusted
themselves in their seats, sitting up straighter and shaking the vacant look
out of their eyes. The khacki panted,
starch shirted doctor brushed past them at a brisk pace and sat down behind the
large mahogany desk. It wasn’t the cluttered desk of an overwhelmed worker bee,
but the neat space of a man who liked order and precision. Rosemary took
comfort in this telling herself, “A doctor who likes order is a doctor you can
trust.”
Dr. Timothy McCoy looked down at the sheaf of papers that were Ray’s
test results for another moment, sighed and leaned forward, his arms resting on
the desk. “It’s cancer and it's bad.” Five words, each weighted like steel
anchors assaulted Ray’s ears and churned like an angry bullet up to his brain
where it was received, and stuck too large, too destructive to process.
Ray felt like a boulder had dropped into the pit of his stomach
and he lurched forward as the breath shot out of him. He heard himself gasp and
yelp, and felt Rosemary’s hand on his as she instinctively reached for him.
Rosemary could feel the tears hot and burning, tickle her eyes.
Blinking quickly with considerable effort, she cast them away and told herself,
“This is not a time for tears….This is not a time for tears.”
“You have stage 5 metastatic carcinoma of the pancreas,” Dr.
McCoy continued. “It’s one of the most aggressive forms I’ve ever seen.”
Each word cut deeper than the one before. Ray was trying to steel
himself against the news, commanding his tears to maintain their position, but
his defenses had quickly eroded under these enormous, heavy-fisted words and he
was overcome with reckless tears flowing disobediently from his reddened eyes.
Rosemary’s heart was racing like a warm Talladega night, and
the dark clouds of a migraine began to form. “It’s ok…it’s ok,” she repeated as
her mouth opened & closed speaking words that had not been fact checked for
accuracy, only dispatched to salve the wounds of this verbal assault. This was
a time for speaking the words, any words, Ray needed to hear. It was not a time
for truth.
“Treatment,” she finally said as her voice broke, it clearly
too frail to bear the weight of conversation. She cleared her throat and tried
again, “When do we start treatment?”
Dr.McCoy’s
head dropped slowly and he exhaled a sharp breath. Rosemary thought she saw him
shake his head, but quickly dismissed the thought as a notion slipped to her
brain by failing senses. “Unfortunately
cancers of this type don’t respond well to treatment. We’ll make your husband
as comfortable as poss-- .”
“Wait--what’re you saying,” Rosemary interjected, “What does
that mean? ‘Doesn’t respond to…to…’ She
shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Traditional treatments of chemotherapy and radiation have
proven--,” he stopped abruptly. For a moment he looked into space as if
searching for the words that would make sense in this impossible light. He
sighed, looked into Rosemary’s eyes and stated simply and with finality,
“There’s nothing we can do. We can make him comfortable but…that’s it.”
“I’m dying?” Ray asked, as he lifted his head from Rosemary’s
shoulder. His eyes searched Dr. McCoy, pleading with him to reverse this path
they’d been set upon, to tell Ray, who hated to be wrong, that in fact he was
very, very wrong. His eyes implored Dr. McCoy to tell him he’d reached the
wrong conclusion--that certainly his situation was bad, but he was not dying.
Instead the doctor’s eyes searched back looking for hope where
none was to be found. “I’m afraid so.”
The
ride home was interminable. Ray stared out the window seeing everything, but registering
nothing. This time he didn’t have to command his brain to stop thinking--Dr.
McCoy’s words had silenced his thoughts more effectively than Ray ever could.
Rosemary navigated the Camry through the busy downtown streets and interstate
before rolling to their picturesque Chesterfield home. Neither of them said a
word, but Ray could tell from her tense grip on the steering wheel and impatient
breathing that she was angry. Incredibly, impressively, “get out of the way
before Bertha rolls through” angry. It was a characteristic he’d always
appreciated about her. She didn’t cry or wallow in misery--she got mad and then
she got to work.
Pulling
into the driveway, Rosemary threw open the car door, and marched inside the
house like a woman on a mission. Ray sat for a moment willing himself to get
out of the car. He felt heavy and lethargic, like he’d been slow dipped in
concrete.
It was
a beautiful mid-April day. The sky was clear, the sun shining warmly, and there
was no hint of the humidity that would oppress them as the Virginia summer wore
on. It was the kind of day that made you want to breath it in and give thanks
for simply being alive. It struck Ray as immensely unfair to be handed a death
sentence on such an exquisite day. “It should be raining,” he thought. The
heavens should be soaking the earth in tears…there should be angry thunder and
lightening bolts zapping the sky--hurricane warnings and environmental havoc.
Instead, there was this beautiful mismatch: the world glistening and budding
and sparking new life while his own was dimming…fading…ending.
Ending.
Ending. Ending. The word echoed through his mind trying to burrow into his soul
and take root, become real…true. But the mind is not built to accept such utter
finality and so the word, the concept just rattled about, ricocheting off every
conjured thought.
As Ray
walked into the house he could hear Rosemary in conversation with someone. He
assumed she’d called Sharon or Amanda to share the awful news. It seemed a bit
premature since they hadn’t talked about it themselves, but the woman he’d
loved for three decades was about to bear a bigger burden than either of them
could imagine and he wouldn’t begrudge her reaching out to someone who would be
there long after he was gone. As he walked closer to her voice though he
realized her tone was too formal to be speaking to a trusted confidante.
“Yes of
course…I understand… Tomorrow perhaps…No, I understand…of course.”
“Who
are you talking to?” Ray asked but she only ignored him. “No…no…he has to start
treatment right away. Yes, please
check--we’ll take anything.”
“Honey…who’re
you talking to,” he asked again. This time she covered the phone’s mouthpiece
and impatiently whispered, “Duke.”
“No…no..that’s
fine. We’ll wait as long as we have to. Uh-huh…perfect. Thank you!” There was
relief in her voice as she hung up and looked at Ray. “We have an appointment at
Duke,” she said smiling. “Monday…8am. We’ll
have to leave by 4am unless we go down tomorrow afternoon and get a room.”
“Rosemary…”
he let his voice trail off. He was tired and was most definitely, positively
not up to a fight with her. But he did not want an appointment at Duke or
anywhere else. There was too much to get done-- lesson plans to finish, final
exams to make…not to mention meetings he needed to have with their attorney and
financial planner. There were so many tasks always left waiting for tomorrow.
But his tomorrows were now in short supply and there wasn’t a moment to waste
with false-hope-givers.
“We
have to get a second opinion Ray,” she insisted in the tone that meant “I
really want this and you’d be wise not to stand in my way.” And usually he
didn’t--standing in her way was futile at best--but this was
different--everything was so bizarrely different now.
“I
don’t want a second opinion,” he pressed.
“Well I
do,” she snapped. “I’m not going to just accept this….and you shouldn’t either.
He could be wrong you know. Doctors are wrong all the time.”
“And
what if he’s not? We go all that way to hear the same thing?”
“Then
we’ll get a 3rd opinion and a 4th. We’ll go to the Mayo
Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic and anywhere else until we find a doctor with a
plan.”
“Rosemary--”
“I won’t
lose you Ray! Not like this--not without a fight. And if you don’t feel like
fighting, that’s fine--I got enough for both of us.”
He
looked at her standing before him, voice breaking, chest heaving not with
despair but with bitter anger. He walked to her and pulled her against him. She
cried angry tears against his chest, and he breathed her in with every sense he
possessed.
This
sweet, 5’4, 130 lb featherweight would fight any Goliath, and stand against the
very gates of hell to protect the people she loved. It was that mid-western tenacity
wrapped in her delicate frame that had drawn him to her from their first
meeting at VCU. She’d clawed and scrapped her way to the school that was 3,000
miles away from the world she knew. Not because she was running from an
insidious hate of small town America, but because she was running to the life
she dreamed of having. A guest speaker to her 11th grade art class
had been a graduate of the university and said, just once, that VCU was one of
the best schools in the nation for designers and artists. From that moment on
she’d put her shoulder to the proverbial plow and made her way to Richmond, VA.
And
here she stood ready to put up the same fight but this time for him--to save
him even if it only meant an extra month or day. He wanted to fight with
her--to stand in battle shoulder to shoulder--and scrap together enough minutes
and seconds to keep him here another 30, 50, 100 years.
But his
heart told him that was not to be. While his mind continued its stern rejection
of the ugly bullet his heart had been left defenseless. The seed had travelled
south and found fertile soil to germinate and grow. He would die. He knew this as well as he knew his name or birth date.
He would die…he would leave her…he would end.
He
would end…and there was nothing to be done about it.
They
made the 4 hour drive to Durham, checked in at Dr. Bashir’s office and waited. And
waited. Had blood taken, an MRI, ate lunch at a nearby café, and waited some
more. Now, here they were waiting again. “At least we’re in a room now,” Ray
thought as they patiently plugged away the time until the doctor could work
them in.
“I have
a good feeling about this,” Rosemary said aloud. Ray nodded but said nothing.
He did not have a good feeling about this. He had in fact been feeling a heavy
sense of dread since they woke in the pre-dawn hours to make the drive down
I-85. But Rosemary had been in good spirits, and if you looked beyond the fact
that they were waiting for news about his pending death, you could say they’d
had a lovely day together. So he kept his thoughts and bad feelings to himself,
and tried to find hope in hers.
Part of
Ray’s mind was with his classroom of AP History students, and the lesson he’d
planned to teach that day about the resistance during World War II. He would
teach the necessary facts and historical figures, but would throw in a great
deal of secrets, code, and intrigue to keep the young minds wanting more. He
imagined their eyes filled with surprise and wonder as he shared one little
known fact after another. But instead they were watching Charlotte Gray and taking notes for a follow up discussion on Cate
Blanchett’s performance. It was not a
lesson plan he was proud of, but one that was easily launched on such short
notice.
Ray had
been a teacher his whole life and he loved it. He’d never been tempted to try
another career or leave the classroom for more money. When retirement options
came, or opportunities to leave the dredges of the classroom for the glory of
administration he’d always turned them down without a moment’s hesitation. In
front of a class filled with tomorrow’s promise was the one place he’d always
known he was meant to be. He sighed. The thought of leaving it, of leaving
them…. There were so many lessons left to teach, so many things he still needed
to say. So many things.
A heavy
rap-rap at the door jarred him, and he snapped his attention to the door as it swung
open and Dr. Adam Bashir walked in. “Mr. Timmons, Mrs. Timmons,” the
dark-haired, olive skinned doctor said by way of greeting. He spoke without an
accent and Rosemary chided herself, but thanked the Lord nonetheless, that his
voice didn’t match his name. He sat down on the black wheeled stool and crossed
his legs.
“I’ve
reviewed your file and the tests we’ve run today. I talked to your doctor at MCV
and a colleague I have here.” He paused and continued, “I’m afraid I won’t be
telling you what you want to hear.” Rosemary flinched but remained stoic.
“I agree with Dr. McCoy’s assessment,” Bashir
continued. “You have a virulent cancer, and the scans show it’s spreading
faster than we could’ve anticipated.” There was a heavy pause as his words spun
in the air like a malicious tornado, inhaling every ounce of faith and hope in
its path.
“This
is a teaching hospital,” Rosemary said. “I know there’s something. A clinical trial…an experimental drug…something we can try.” She was wounded but
would cleave to the smallest shred of possibility, an infinitesimal glimmer of
chance for as long as she could. “There has to be something.”
Dr.
Bashir was quiet as he thought for a moment, his eyes scanning the chart as if
he were looking for a missed clue. “We never expect medicine to fail us,” he
said quietly, his eyes locked on Rosemary’s. “But sometimes it does…I’m afraid this
is one of those times.”
“I
don’t accept that!” she yelled back. Ray
startled at her outburst. “Honey… he said reaching for her. Tears began to stream
down her cheek. She grabbed a tissue instead of Ray’s hand and began furiously wiping
at her eyes.
Ray let
his hand rest on her shoulder. He knew he should get up from the table and wrap
his arms around her, but he felt numb. Felt that if he stood his knees would
buckle and drop him to the floor. So he reached, instead, for an answer he absolutely
did not want to hear. “How long?”
There
was another silence before Dr. Bashir sighed and replied, “Weeks. You have
weeks…6…maybe 8.”
Rosemary
gasped and heaved a fresh stream of sobs. Ray too felt the wet, salty droplets
avalanche his cheeks. The small room was suddenly hot and closing in on him. He
felt a wave of nausea and darkness descending upon him. Then a hand pressed
against his chest and gently guided him to lie back on the table. “Deep
breaths, Mr. Timmons…I need you to take some deep breaths,” the doctor called
to him through the enveloping fog.
Ray
closed his eyes and tried to heed the instructions. In and out, in and out, in
and out. The memory of the time when Rosemary’s appendix burst flashed to his
mind. She in excruciating pain, and he by her side, stroking her hair and
encouraging her to just keep breathing. “Breathe through the pain, baby…just
breathe through the pain,” he’d dutifully instructed. Now, he tried to heed his
25 year old advice and breathe…just breathe. But the more he inhaled the more
it hurt and he thought he just might die today, right now, in exam room
#3.
“Ray…Ray…”
he heard Rosemary call to him. He reached for her frantically like a drowning
man, and pulled her towards him. She shuddered against his chest, the tears
having no regard for her command to be strong. They held each other and cried
and cried until there was nothing left.
A couple of months--the reluctant prognosis Dr. McCoy had
offered after Ray’s insistence. Ray had taken that to mean six--three was more
realistic, but six was not far fetched. When you thought about it, half a year
was a lot of time to work with, and Ray had found solace in that nice round
number. Six good months would let him see old friends and take a trip or
two--even knock a few things off the ol’ bucket list. If he allowed himself to
hope, then that kind of time was enough to maybe, just maybe, even see an
improvement in his health. Six months gave you possibilities and options. Not a
promise but enough maybes to keep you going.
That was gone now--the months with their maybes and hope-sos
replaced with mere weeks. Ray felt a constant tightness in his chest and a
sickening emptiness in the pit of his stomach. The harder he fought to breath
the tighter his chest felt until he thought it would explode or he’d pass out.
Six weeks,” he thought. “At this rate I might only have six hours or six minutes.”
He and Rosemary arrived home late, completely spent. They’d
made the trip from Durham in complete silence, and continued the solemnity by
going straight to bed. They were exhausted, but neither could sleep. Rosemary
tossed and turned and Ray lie awake staring at the ceiling. Several times he
reached for her but stopped himself before making contact.
Her anger was starting to wear on him. He loved her true
grit--it was needed and had an important place--but it was time to put it away.
This was a time for acceptance and making peace--a time for making the most of
every second they had and he couldn’t do that with an angry woman tossing and
flailing about and refusing to take his hand and just…be. Be…in his hour of
darkness he needed her to put down the fight and just be.
As morning approached, he felt her throw back the comforter and
leave the room. He glanced at the clock to see 3:43am. He sighed but didn’t
move. His mind swirled with a million thoughts--the lawyer, insurance…could he put
all of his affairs in order in such a short period of time. And work--there was
so much to do in the final six weeks before school let out. So many lessons to
teach, assignments to give, and the rush to prepare for the state’s Standards
of Learning tests. He had enough sick leave to stay out until….well until the
inevitable happened but that didn’t feel fair and besides--what would he do but
sit home and watch enough court and reality TV to numb him into oblivion?
Eventually he drifted to sleep, only to be roused a few minutes
later by the hawking of his alarm. 5:45am. He wearily slapped at the alarm
until it quieted, sighed, and threw back the covers.
“Wait,” Rosemary quietly called to him. He jumped not having
felt her presence before that moment.
“Here,” she said handing him a set of printed papers. He looked
through them, his fatigued brain not fully comprehending. “What is this?” he
asked.
“Our Australian adventure. Plane tickets..hotel reservations--everything.”
“Australia?” He questioned as he stared at the dates and times,
and tried to wrap his mind around it all.
“It won’t be the way we imagined but it’ll be ok..great even.
We’ll make it great. We’ll go to Sydney and the Outback…snorkel the Great
Barrier Reef. Everything we always planned.”
“There’s too much to do here, Rosemary. I can’t just drop everything
and run away.”
“We’ve always been planners--dreamers. Well now it’s time to be
doers.”
She was right of course. They’d talked of taking an amazing
trip to Australia for years, had researched and planned where they would go and
what they would see but had never gotten around to taking the trip. There just
never seemed to be enough money or a good time. They’d never worried about it
though--it was always going to happen…when the mortgage was gone or the car
repairs done or Ray had retired. There was always time to make it happen
until…well until there wasn’t. Until you realized you’d blown a million good
opportunities waiting for the perfect one.
“What
happens if I get sick?” he asked. “What happens when I’m puking my guts out in
the Outback? It won’t be so magical then--it’ll be awful and scary and
miserable.”
Ray didn’t want to say no, she was losing so much already, but
how could he agree to a trip half-way around the world with a weakening,
sickening body? How could he go now when there was so much to do here?
“You don’t know that’ll happen,” she said.
“And you don’t know it won’t. He said 6 weeks but what if he’s
wrong, huh? What if’s 4 or 2 weeks…what then? I can’t take that chance.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then suddenly burst out
laughing--a loud guffaw that started in her belly and kept coming and coming.
“What,” he asked. “What’s so funny?”
But she couldn’t answer, couldn’t catch her breath as the
laughs kept coming and coming. She bent over to try to stop, but she looked at
him and started all over again.
Ray watched her response to the best inside joke he’d never
heard, and kept asking “What is it?” He looked in the mirror half expecting a
cartoon face had magically appeared in the middle of the night or perhaps his
hair was standing on end in a most ridiculous fashion. But he looked as normal
as always. Finally, she caught her breath enough to half-speak.
“Oh, Ray…” she said, still chuckling. “You can’t take the
chance….What’s it gonna do, kill you?” And she emitted another loud burst of
laughter.
Ray
boarded the plane and never looked back. After he and Rosemary had finally
caught their breath and stopped laughing, he’d looked into her eyes and known
what needed to be done. He called Principal Stuart while she packed and
apologized but explained that he would not be back--at least not physically--to
finish the school year. His lesson plans were complete through the remaining
six weeks--a perk of being a veteran teacher--and most materials could be found
in his filing cabinet. He stayed on the phone until they settled on a plan
whereby he’d do his lectures via videos he’d upload to Youtube. The principal
agreed to hire a substitute teacher to be a warm body sitting in class with the
students, and to handle the logistics of emailing him assignments and
distributed the ones he would grade.
Ray
apologized again but trusted everyone would understand. They did, the principal
reassured him, but was he sure he couldn’t, wouldn’t come by the school to say
goodbye. No…he was afraid he could not
do that; their plane was leaving in four hours and there simply wasn’t enough
time. “There just never seems to be enough time these days,” Ray quipped with
his boss.
Ray
knew he was breaking the social contract he’d signed with is students and
colleagues many years ago; knew they deserved an opportunity to tell him what
he meant to them and how they’d miss him. He was supposed to give them closure.
And though Ray had always been a man to do exactly what was expected of him, he
had no interest in that now.
They
loaded their bags into the cab and headed for Richmond International Airport.
The good part about being planners was that they had nice shiny,
never-been-used passports ready to go. On the way, Rosemary called her sister
and asked her to keep an eye on things. They were leaving and she didn’t know
when they’d be back. If was really the appropriate word to use at least for one
of them, but they were in high spirits and why let such a tiny word ruin all
that?
As
the seat belt light dinged on, and the captain and flight crew finalized
pre-flight inspections, Ray grabbed Rosemary’s hand and settled into his seat. He
smiled at her and said, “Better late than never.”
Ray
had 7 blissful weeks in Australia before he died. The first two went by in a
haze of beer, barbecue, surf and sand. They’d originally only planned to stay 2
weeks, but he was feeling better than ever so they decided to stay on. They
traipsed across the continent like two 20-something lovers drinking in the
sights and as much of each other as they could.
Each morning at 5am, Ray faithfully rose and
recorded his lecture for the day. Initially Rosemary tried to sleep through them,
but the pure passion in his voice was not something she wanted to miss. So she
would sip her coffee and watch him for a distance. After the recording he’d sit
for another hour or so reading the assignments from the day before. She was
never tempted to ask “Why? Why in God’s name are you spending your preciously
few hours working?!” She didn’t have to--she knew why..understood implicitly
and loved him all the more for it.
By
the end of the 3rd week Ray started to feel tired, and by the end of
the 4th week he could barely get out of bed. They’d rented a small
house by the beach for 2 months so when he went it felt like home and not the Holiday
Inn Express. A local doctor was good enough to take pity and stop by to check
on him and provide enough pain killers to keep him comfortable during his final
hours. When he could no longer move about he spent all day in bed recording
lectures, grading assignments, and writing as much as he could before drifting
back into oblivion. Though it now took him all day and into the night, each
morning there was a new lesson for his students.
Ray
Timmons died on June 1st, exactly 7 weeks after he’d sat down in Dr.
McCoy’s office. He went quietly in Rosemary’s arms, surrounded by a few “mates”
who’d befriended them during the past month. There weren’t a lot of final words
and “Remember-to-dos.” They’d blissfully said it all before. When the time came
she kissed him softly, caressed his cheek and whispered in his ear, “Goodbye my
love. You’re the best thing I’ve ever known.” She felt the smallest movement of
his head--the slightest nod--and then he was gone.
The air
conditioned gym was warm with crowded bodies and youthful exhilaration.
“Ready?” the Superintendent, a short, balding man leaned over and whispered in
her ear as they sat onstage. She nodded and smiled back. She was no public
speaker--just the thought of standing in front of a crowd of people was enough
to give her the dry heaves. But today she felt calm and steady. She felt Ray with
her, guiding her, and she knew she would be fine.
Robert Stuart, the principal of Patrick-Henry High School, was
at the lectern giving the students and the 2,000 family and friends in the
bleachers an eloquent introduction. He spoke beautifully about Ray and how he
changed lives and nothing was quite the same since he’d passed only 2 weeks
before. Rosemary felt a tear tickle the back of her throat, but she quickly
dismissed it, cleared her throat and took a sip of water. This was a happy day,
a momentous occasion that Ray always enjoyed being a part of. “Oh, how I love a
good graduation,” he’d say after returning home from the ritual marking the
official end of the school year and the transition to adulthood for those who’d
been mere children months before. And while she’d been given an opportunity to
read Ray’s final words to his students, this day was not about Ray or her. It
was about the hope and promise staring back at her. “No tears allowed,” she
told herself. “This is not a time for
tears.”
“…and now please join me in giving a warm Patrick-Henry welcome
to Mrs. Rosemary Timmons,” he said and stepped aside. As she rose to take her
place behind the podium the gym erupted into wild applause and clatter as
everyone rose to their feet. It caught her off guard, and she stopped, staring
as she felt herself carried away by the strength of their welcome. She
remembered Oprah saying to take in the big moments, and she tried that now.
Tried standing and just feeling the love. It was big and awkward but warm like
an old soft blanket. She smiled slightly and said to herself, “This is for you
Ray. This is all for you.”
She finally began to move forward, walking slowing towards the
anticipating faces. She placed the bronze urn near the front of the podium, opened
the sealed envelope, and unfolded the handwritten pages for the first time.
They were Ray’s last words--pages and pages of thoughts and final lessons to
his students. “There’s so much left to say,” he muttered as he willed himself
to write as much as he could while he could. “Why don’t you let me do that?”
she’d asked. “You talk, and I’ll do the writing.”
But he’d only shook his head. “No..no…I need to do this…I have to do this.” When complete, he’d
sealed it in an envelope and made her promise not to open until she was about
to deliver his message. He wanted everyone to experience it together, for the
first time.
“To the Patrick-Henry Class of 2014--Congratulations! You made
it! What an amazing time to stand at the pinnacle of success and yet have your
whole life ahead of you. This is a rare moment so enjoy it--soak it in--and
carry it with you. I’ll let you in on a little secret: graduation isn’t about
celebrating the end of your winding, hormonal high school journey. No…it is but
a mile marker, a chapter index, to remind you that you already have everything
you need to go anywhere you want to go. When the inevitable fears and doubts
arise--can I do this? Do I really have
what it takes, stop and reflect back to this moment and say yes… I do. I always
have.
To those in my AP History class…I’m sorry we didn’t make it to
the monster at the end of the book.” There was soft laughter as the members of
that class enjoyed the inside Sesame Street joke. “There’s so much I wanted to
tell you, so many valuable lessons I wish I had time to convey. But after
sitting through all of my lectures I think you’ll all appreciate it if I just
cut to the chase.” More laughter. The kind where you aren’t sure if it’s
permissible but you can’t help yourself because it feels good like a soothing
cup of noodle soup.
“Spoiler alert: The good guys win. There will be wars and
bloody battles; evil exists and terrible, inhumane things happen to innocent
people. But always, always remember light tramples darkness, love conquers
hate, and the good guys win. The good guys always win. Remember that, and
always be the good guy.”
“There are a lot of practical points I could make about
lifelong learning or following your dreams. You’ve heard it all before and
you’ll no doubt hear it again so I’ll leave that to someone with more time than
I. The one thing I will leave you with is this: make each day count. I’m not
saying live each day as if it’s your last--as someone who has recently done
that believe me when I say Don’t!” Again laughter spread throughout the
auditorium as each imagined just how wild and crazy ol’ Ray got in his final
hours.
“Life isn’t about the big moments because they’re just
that--moments. Minutes etched in time or captured by a photo. Life is about
what happens in between those moments, and let me tell you, there’s immense joy
in the mundane. I was just a regular guy--nothing special--but I had a job I
loved and I came home everyday to the girl of my dreams who I loved even more.
I had the precious opportunity to stand before hundreds of young minds day
after day, year after year, and be your guide down an incredible path of
discovery. That was my life. Millions of small moments where everything and
nothing happened all at once. Each of those days mattered. The work mattered.
You mattered….and because of that I know I mattered too.”
Rosemary’s voice broke and a sob hiccupped from her. She
reached for the cup of water to her left and prayed she wouldn’t spill it over
herself--or worse--all over Ray’s beautiful words. Though her hand was shaking
like the oaks in their yard during Hurricane Lisa, she successfully sipped and
returned the glass to its place. As she did so she took a second to look up and
out at the audience. She had their rapt attention; there wasn’t a whisper or
distracted face among them. No one fiddling with the program or playing with a
smartphone. She also saw in that brief scan, tissues..many, many tissues held
to many wet eyes. Graduates and young siblings, parents and teachers alike…but
though there was a sea of tears the air in the room was not heavy with grief. No
cloud of mourning hung low threatening to overtake her. Instead there was a
wave of radiant gratitude washing over her and buoying her through the address.
It was then that she understood why he’d sealed the envelope,
and insisted she not open early. He’d united each of them in a shared
experience, their tears connecting them just as surely as if they’d been
holding hands. The moment wouldn’t last beyond her saying the final sentence
and taking her breath, but it had
happened and they were all changed because of it. She felt a warm sense of
wellbeing rise within her. She’d felt this a few times since Ray left, and she
knew in those moments he was wrapping his arms around her in a sweet embrace.
She smiled to herself and continued.
The
End
