Friendships – and the fragility of life

My last post was a letter to our grandson, who was killed in a car accident when he was five. He was hit by a man who was speeding and talking on his cell phone. Driving distracted is now prohibited in many places.

Today, I found out that a friend of ours passed away last week. Bill Bennett was a good pilot and a good person. He and his wife, Caroline, lived in Newnan and later moved to Lake Oconee. Bill and I had flown for the same air freight carrier, and then I interviewed him and recommended him to Netjets. He and Bob flew together. Both of us have fond memories of Bill, and we were invited to his retirement party.

Bill’s wife, Caroline, is a twin. Her twin sister is a friend of ours, but I didn’t know that until I saw the post on Facebook that Bill had died. He had apparently been battling lung cancer for several years but his death was unexpected. The last time we saw Bill and Caroline was at Bill’s retirement party at Candler Field. Since the party, we’ve often wondered how Bill and Caroline were doing. It turns out that Caroline has Alzheimer’s and is in a personal care home.

Life is short. It is too short and too fragile to be stupid. Last year, I loaned our truck to a friend who drank too much and had an accident. She hasn’t spoken to me since. Not even an apology. It doesn’t matter. Life is too short to stay angry. I wish her nothing but the best.

Don’t let your last words to someone be bitter or angry. Be kind. Be thoughtful. Help someone. Hug someone. Do something nice for someone. Random acts of kindness feel good, and will help you build a legacy of love.

If you have a friend who is on your mind, pick up the phone. You never know when it is too late.

A letter to Glenn

Dear Glenn,

15 years ago tonight, I was trying to get a good night’s sleep but your mommy was fighting me, every step of the way. I had been away from home for six weeks in pilot training at Netjets, and I had just gotten home the day before. Your mommy was convinced that I needed to come and visit, the very next day. That would be March 22, 2000. I kept telling her I’d be there in a few days, but I needed to rest. Late that night, she called me and said she was in labour. I told her, I’m almost embarrassed to say I told her to go to sleep and call me in the morning. To my surprise, you made your appearance that very next day. From the moment you took your first breath, the people who loved you surrounded you with so much love and affection. You were a beautiful and beloved baby boy.  The light of our lives.

As you grew, you were even more beautiful each day. Your curls and those big brown eyes were perfect, and you were as sweet a child as there ever was. You were our Boogie Bear and we all adored you. You had a great mom and your personality was a light to all who knew you. We took you everywhere, places I still can’t imagine little boys enjoy going, but you loved meeting people.

From the time you were about three, your mommy and I owned a hospice and you went with her, sometimes, to see patients. Everyone commented on your excellent manners. At the same time, you were telling us things that should have been a forewarning. You told us your angels told you to pack up your toys and your clothes and give them to the poor children; you would not need them. We didn’t understand and we thought this was just cute.

It wasn’t too long before your little brother came along. Once when he fussed, you packed up your clothes to come and live with your Memaw and Bebob. That was so funny, and we happily picked you up so you could have a little break. You made your mommy promise that she would never let your brother look like he came from the Children’s Home. I hate to tell you this, but this is a promise she has not kept!

Then the worst happened. We will never know why you crossed the street that day, because that was something you did not do. Our world changed in an instant. Life would never be the same, as we lost our Boogie Bear. My prayer is that you didn’t suffer.

You would be 15 years old today. We should be celebrating with cake and balloons. Your mommy should be teaching you to drive and I would be teaching you to fly. You always loved that I was a pilot teacher. One of our funniest memories was when we all went up to Jackie Torrence’s memorial service, and you told everyone that your Bebob was just a pilot but that your Memaw was a pilot teacher. As if that wasn’t funny enough, at the memorial service, you stood up and loudly exclaimed, “You mean we flew all the way to North Carolina just to see a gold box?” We still laugh about that. You were five. A very precious five.

We have wonderful memories and you are frozen in time as a perfect little boy. I have no doubt that, at 15, you would still be a perfect boy but you would be a teenager. You wouldn’t want us to call you Boogie Bear, and you would probably have times when you would be grumpy and temperamental. It is highly possible you would be a challenge, but in our mind you will always be our perfect, precious little 5 read old.  We have every confidence in the world that you would have grown up to be a fine young man, but we did not get to watch you grow. I’ll bet you would still love raw oysters, though, and that you would remember how to stop a stampeding elephant.

So many things are going through my mind. Would you have been good at sports? Where would you want to go to college?   Would you play the piano? Who would you take to your first prom? How would you like driving the Porsche, your favorite car to ride in to school. Would your mommy let me teach you to fly? You had so many friends and so much promise, and you left a profound mark on so many people. From a spiritual perspective, even at 5 you knew the meaning and the words of the Sacrament. More than once you reminded our ministers that they weren’t saying it correctly. They did not realize what Holy Communion meant to you and how important it was to you. It was truly a Holy Sacrame

You have four brothers and sisters who remind me of you, each and every day. Your sweet spirit lives on. We had James’ photo professionally made at three years old, and when they showed us the photos, I burst into tears. It was just like looking at you. Carly saw the photo of you on your tombstone and thought it was Jacob. Sarah Catherine has so many of your characteristics.

I think we all struggle, at least to some degree, with the loss we suffered the day you were killed. It was a senseless accident and I personally have problems forgiving the man who so recklessly drove down Happy Valley Circle that day, talking on his cell phone. I know what my Christian beliefs tell me to do, but it is not easy. There are times I wish he could feel our pain, and that I hope he is haunted by his actions. I remind myself that you would, even at 5, tell me that was not right to feel that way. You were wise beyond your years.

As we reflect today on our gratitude, it is important for us to celebrate what was and the profound impact you had on so many people. We miss you. You gave us so much joy and laughter. You will forever be our perfect little boy. Your legacy lives on, though, in the service your mommy provides to other people who have lost their children.

Happy birthday, sweet Glenn. Today we will focus on our good memories. We will celebrate and we will give to the children at the Children’s Home, whom you were always so concerned about, even as a little boy. We will keep your legacy alive.

We love you, Glenn Milton Price. March 22, 2000 – November 2, 2005. You were gone too soon.

Love always,

Memaw and Bebob

The Choice to Live

This has been an amazing weekend.  I just completed the runDisney Glass Slipper Challenge, with a 5K on Friday, a 10K on Saturday, and a 1/2 marathon today.  I am here and I did it.  if you believed the doctors in 2003, this wouldn’t have happened.

2003 was an incredible year.  I had started a hospice and was working with the best people you can imagine.  I married Bob, my Prince Charming, in June, with 120 of our family and closest friends present.  We built our dream home.  My children were all living close by and we had one 3 year old perfect grandson, Glenn.  We were on top of the world.  Then my daughter noticed these awful bruises, up and down my legs.  I looked like I had been beaten.  She wanted them checked but I said no.  Then, at a health fair, I found out that my cholesterol was elevated.  It had gone from 125 to 225, seemingly overnight.  It was time to get the bruises checked out.

My first stop was my medical director, who was surprised that my liver enzymes were elevated. After all kinds of tests, I was sent to Crawford Long Medical Center to the “grandfather” of liver disease in Atlanta.  He looked at me and said, “Young lady, I believe you have a rare autoimmune disease, something called PBC.”  I was scheduled for a liver biopsy, the very next week.  I started researching, and what I found wasn’t particularly encouraging.  The biopsy was done and the doctor confirmed it; most people with PBC had a life expectancy of 10 years, unless they received a transplant.

I joined an online support group, but everyone was so negative and they all shared a litany of ailments.  It seemed all were either on disability or were trying to get on disability, and this was not how I intended to live.  I made a conscious choice, that I was going to live.  I knew that I needed to take charge.  I am an RN and knew about the liver’s role within the body, so limiting chemicals and processed foods made perfect sense to me.  I am also a spiritual person, so prayer and a positive attitude were two of the other strategies I chose.  Finally, I decided I needed exercise. The doctor wanted to wait three months before placing me on the medication that would hopefully delay the progress.  My strategy worked, and after 3 months my labs were all normal, except for one.  My alkaline phosphatase was just a couple of points high, nothing concerning.  The doctor placed me on Urso Forte anyway, and everything went back to normal.

In the meantime, I began searching for options.  If I was going to have a transplant, who had the best results?   I became friends with a woman, on the PBC support group, whose husband had recently had a transplant at Emory.  We “clicked” and we met for lunch.  She recounted the process, but I had one question.  How much was the private jet that was required to get him to Jacksonville in time?  $3000.  That settled it.  I was going to Mayo, but I would still continue with my own treatment:  diet, exercise, prayer, and a positive attitude.

Since I was diagnosed, I have earned my PhD, started another business, had a total career change, and now have run a half marathon.  Bob is still my Prince Charming and we now have 10 grandchildren. I go to Mayo once a year and the tests at Mayo say that I am at Stage 0 (I was 1-2 when I was diagnosed). The docs say I will die with PBC and not from it.  Tonight, while I am spraying myself down with Biofreeze, I will offer a prayer of thanks.  My legs hurt and I have shin splints, but I am alive and have just accomplished something pretty darn amazing, even without an autoimmune disease. I choose to live.

Cleaning and deleting – Not an easy task

I’ve spent the past several days trying to delete photos from my computer and also clean out some of the boxes that we packed up in Newnan and moved down here, and haven’t touched in more than two years.  We probably packed some of them long before that.  It was easier to pack it up and put it in the basement or attic than deal with throwing the stuff away.  But deleting and throwing away was not so simple, especially when it came to deleting photographs from the hard drive on my computer.

We are coming up on what would have been Glenn’s 15th birthday.  The realization of this brings to the surface memories of what we would be doing, were he will with us.  Glenn loved the Porsche and he loved sitting in the driver’s seat of any of our cars, pretending to drive.  I have a great photo of he and my mom, in my Miata, pretending they were taking a trip.  He had such a great imagination.  If you know me very well at all, you know that Glenn was killed when he was 5 years old.  We won’t be teaching him to drive and we have missed the experience of those tumultuous teen years.  Glenn was a sweet little boy, perfect in every way.

As I was going through the photos on my computer, I found that I had three and four copies of many of the photos of the grandchildren.  It should have been simple to delete, right?  But as someone who wishes I could recapture every single minute of Glenn’s short life, even deleting a blurry image or a duplicate was difficult.  I know it sounds crazy, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.  Our other nine grandchildren are beautiful, healthy, happy, and smart, and I know we can’t live in fear that something will happen.  Yet there is a dark place in the back of my subconscious that remembers our loss, and doesn’t want to part with anything.  Not even a blurry, duplicate image that is almost unrecognizable.

My rational self has won this battle, but the battle was hard fought.  Pieces of broken toys in boxes have been thrown away.  Random pieces of paper with children’s drawings have been discarded.  I realize these were great works of art at the time they were created, but at this point I don’t even know who scribbled on the paper. My rational self and my even more rational daughter assures me that it is fine to throw these things away.  I’ve moved the random Legos to the Lego box, but most everything else from this corner of my office is going away.  I’ve deleted the duplicate photos and I’ve deleted the photographs of unknown blobs.

This job isn’t complete, but I’ve gone through six boxes and thousands of photographs.  I’m happy with my progress.  At the end of the day, I think that’s pretty darn good.

On Teaching – Excited for a New Term

Tomorrow is a new term and I will have students again, for the first time in six months.  I feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus, I am so excited.  I’m already thinking about what I can do differently in my courses, and I’m thinking about all of the great people I will meet.  I do a lot of video in my classes, and  I’m thinking maybe each student will receive a personal video welcome to the class.  I don’t know.  All I know is that my goal is to start the course off with a bang and to engage students so that they have a positive learning system.  My goal is that they look at different perspectives and that they come away feeling like they have learned and their time has been well spent.

Teaching is something I love.  I started teaching piano and dance when I was 13 and I was a flight instructor when I was 18.  I’ve taught people to do a lot of things, but nothing is more meaningful to me than my leadership and entrepreneurship courses.  The information in my classes can be used, daily, if students are open to applying knowledge.  These are very practical courses, although there is a huge theoretical basis in each class.

Why am I so passionate about teaching? Think back for a minute, and try to remember the teachers you had who really pushed you and really made a difference.  I vaguely remember Mrs. Mollineaux, my first grade teacher, but not because of a really great experience but because she also taught my mother and my grandfather.   I vaguely remember Miss Smith, my second grade teacher, but only because she made Vicki and me sit at the back table and copy the dictionary, because we got in trouble for talking.  I remember Miss Ellington’s class, in fourth grade, but only because my mother came running into the classroom with a television, on November 22.  My first real teacher who made a powerful impact was Mrs. Jolene Settle, in the 6th grade.  The next teacher who inspired me in a powerful way was Mr. Hudson, my World History teacher and debate coach.  It was not until nursing school that I encountered Dr. Sheila Englebardt, who turned a girl who really just wanted to fly into a nurse with a capital N, and inspired the passion in me for something other than horses and airplanes.  There were lots of other teachers and professors, and the last one was my dissertation mentor, Dr. Corty Cammann.  He was amazing.  He guided me through a very difficult period in my life, as I started my dissertation just a few months after our grandson was killed.  With all of these years of education, wouldn’t you think there would be more teachers who were memorable?

So why were these few so memorable?  How were they different from the others?  First, I think, is that each one took the time to know me personally and to meet me where I was.  There was no hiding from these few.  I was always a good student and I never had to work or study for an A, but these four did not allow me to hide and they pushed me.  They engaged their classes and forced everyone to think and explore whatever it was we were studying.  I worked for my grades in their classes and I respected that.  They were all extremely intelligent people, subject matter experts, and they were all passionate about what they were teaching.  Teaching was never just a job for them, or if it was, we never knew it.  These four people were interested in our success.

When my former students look back on their educational experience, I want to be one of those memorable teachers.  That is my goal.