Something I am very conscious of is that it is so easy to postulate about how one might feel, or one might behave, when confronted with desperate adversity. I have no doubt that there is value to prepare – like a personal disaster plan, to brace one’s mind and self for the advent of the inevitable should help when the time arrives.
On the CNN website today was a story Facing death, CNN sports legend embraces life which was both heartbreaking and encouraging. Nick Charles, who was not known to me (La Calavera is not a sports fan) had a late life marriage to a younger woman, and they had a child when he was 60. Now, at 65, he is at the end of a battle with cancer. His desire to be present for his daughter in her life after he is gone has provided a lot of energy to him to find good things in his process toward death, which is chronicled in this story. I was taken by a comment he made in the video that is up with the story, “Never give up on life,” and by his tender kisses and love toward his little daughter.
Like Churchill said in 1941 during the early days of the Second World War, “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
And like my father in his last days, who would awake and see us sitting by his bed and say, “I love you” – all he could manage to say in his awful and sad state.
Never give up. Never give in. I love you. Beautiful words that give life and hope.
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