Losing Friends (Appreciating Relationships)

Henry Writes of Loss

As we age it seems the impact of losing friends hits like a sledgehammer. At least this is the reality

I face. Having lost three friends in the last few weeks led me to emotional lows I have rarely visited.  Incredibly joyous memories of these friends and of their disappearance from this world take me on a roller coaster ride of thought, vision, and faith.

One is a friend from birth with whom I shared experiences growing up, in school and through adult life. His view of the world was very different from mine and served as a check on any attempt by me not to see how the world can differ for the individual. We shared joys and disappointments without judgment. He had the best memory of any of our friends and could remind us all of those moments shared at seven or nine or twelve. He seemed to remember everything about our years as kids. It was natural that when I shared a memory of our childhood he was not surprised because he too remembered the moment.

                     

The second was a neighborhood friend.  We were separated by three houses and although he was a year older, I remember much about our days as kids. He was the self-proclaimed “concrete contractor” who construct-ed small roads between our neighborhood houses on which we rolled toy cars and trucks. We also made bows and arrows with arrows that disappeared into sky before falling back to earth. There were the nightly runs around the block and the daily baseball, football, and basketball games. He managed difficult health problems as an adult and left suddenly.

The third was a colleague on the bench and one of the most fun-filled people I've ever met.  We shared stories of our very different lives and after we both retired kept in touch. He loved Mexican food and we almost always communicated on Cinco de Mayo.  

                 

Each of these friends contributed immeasurably to the quality of life I have been privileged to enjoy and thus the loss is greater.

Although my spiritual universe provides a kind of comfort, my mind searches for more explicit explanation and I move in and out of competing visions. Loss, or being without, describes a condition and feelings so it brings much of our complex existence to the front of our consciousness.  When we are no longer able to relate to the physical incarnation of our friends this feeling of absence, for me, is unavoidable. But loss seems to be much more than this absence. At the zenith of this struggle my faith collides with doubt.

I do believe that these friends remain with me because I carry memories of them in an almost tangible sense. They are with me and those memories give me solace.

I find it difficult not to ask whether friends will carry memories of me.

As I write this and experience an avalanche of emotion filled with grief, I realize it may be time to express thankfulness and celebrate the joys of friendships remaining.  This is especially true because of the opportunities presented by an upcoming reunion of all classes from my high school.  There WE will be able to share our lifelong memories and celebrate those bonds having lasted a lifetime.  Of course, we will all grieve the loss of classmates over the years but the presence of those remaining will help remove the sting of loss.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” Perhaps these times are not as separate as we envision.  This, now, may be a time to remember, grieve and celebrate.  We can embrace our losses and celebrate memories and joys of present relationships. I don’t believe we lose the past by celebrating the present.  After all, these moments are precious.

PASSIONS-A JOURNEY

Now we present the final installment in our passion series-personal explorations of what motivates each of us.  It’s Henry’s turn.

Unlike my coauthors, Rob and Woodson, my passions are not so agenda specific or definable.  My passions may be

easier to describe than declare. Permit me to start with a statement and then provide some history required by that statement. When dealing with passions my mind is like a rigged roulette wheel, where the slots allow the ball to only settle for a moment, then move on to the next slot, drawing attention instead to the wheel - the circle pointing toward meaning.

As a youngster I seemed to have two overriding interests,

baseball and learning about this world and its inhabitants.  If I wasn’t reading or asking questions I was playing baseball, watching baseball games, listening to baseball games on the radio with my father, debating baseball issues with my friends, committing baseball statistics to memory, or dreaming of a major league career.

As I matured, I read more and more. Walking into a library

always resulted in pure and overwhelming joy because of all those shelves contained. I wanted to know how individual bits of information related to a bigger picture I knew nothing about.  My mother and dad attempted to answer every question and I’m sure I was a complete nuisance.  My teachers and other adults did the best they could with my insistence on answers and I thank them all. 

My interests about which I can say I was or am passionate, have multiplied over the years. They have included volunteering in my community and church, golf, tennis, and spiritual inquiry.  I list these only as examples of interests I could label passions.

As I grow older, I still experience joy when I enter a library or bookstore, but I feel a twinge of sadness because I realize I can’t consume all that is there.  That discomfort has helped me perhaps gain some understanding of my passions. The discomfort requires that I choose the joy I experience each day rather than hover in the cloud that regret or ennui produces. 

I find now that although learning is a passion the other

interests may or may not be defined as passions.  They are pleasures I enjoy but what I derive from them may be more important.  I now find I am consumed with helping others feel the joy I receive from life each day no matter what the particular interest. My passion is finding

ways to help move me, my wife,children,grandchildren, friends and all whom I encounter toward this joy.    Whether I’m experiencing a quiet time with my wife, greeting a stranger with a smile or following my grandkids to their many activities this desire is always present.

I wish to learn as much as I can for as long as I can and to transfer my joy to all those I can.

WHO WE ARE (PART I): Mastering a Craft

To give our readers a better sense of us as people, we begin a series of posts on our cherished values.  We want you to know what matters most to each of us.  ROB starts with his ideas about CRAFT.

A few months ago, we looked back at our legal careers, asking what we would do differently, knowing what we know now.  I wrote of my regrets about not having done more to develop my trial lawyer abilities. I’ve come to see development of a craft – learning to do something really well -- as essential to human fulfillment.  It means doing something with real skill.  In my sunset years, I happen to have found something – writing -- for which I have great passion for learning to do well.   I’ve thought a lot about how to accomplish that.  So, what does it take to develop a craft?

Read. Study.

Before I started my legal studies, I asked a lot of lawyers for

advice about succeeding in law school.  Some of what I got was useful, some wasn’t worth the dinners and drinks I bought for those telling me to do this or that.  One helpful piece of advice I received came from a friend named Booker Morris, then a Texas Assistant Attorney General.  He said simply, “Read. Study.”  There was more to law school than that, of course, but following his admonition laid a great foundation.  I see no reason that rule doesn’t apply in most endeavors. 

So, as I work at being a writer, I inhale novels, memoirs, and non-fiction works that provide background for what I’m writing about.  Want to write a novel about a female Navy pilot?  Read the memoirs of the first women fighter pilots.  Want to write about a political career in a state where you’ve never lived?  Go on Amazon and buy books about the political history of that state. 

The reading and studying also must include the “how to” of the craft.  Browse Barnes & Noble or other bookstores and find works that teach writing, accounting, being a computer geek, etc.  In my present effort, each quarter I try to read at least one book on how to write.   

Seek and Accept Mentoring

Some people learn by doing, some learn from mentoring by others. Woodson, for example, recently related to Henry and me his experience as a teenager of learning welding from a

master welder through watching the man work and talking endlessly with him about how to improve.  In my life, I’ve had great mentors in each of the two things I put the most effort into learning.  Two wise and talented lawyers, Ed Clover and John Hill, both now deceased, taught me the practice of law.  What I didn’t learn is my fault, not theirs.

As I transition into a writing career, I’m being nurtured by a talented writing group in my church and by my novelist daughter.  She writes under the name Bianca Sloane and I know her now as “Coach Sloane” (check her out at www. Bianca Sloane.com).  Her sculpting of me as a writer brings home the importance of apprenticeship in learning a craft.  We all need someone to teach the rules of the road, help us avoid potholes, and understand when to slow to a crawl and when to rev it up and let ‘er rip.  Everyone needs a Coach Sloane and I’m incredibly fortunate to have mine.

 

The 10,000 Hour Rule

Regardless of reading and studying and regardless of mentoring, in the final analysis, success depends most on doing the craft.  I’m a great believer in Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule -- the suggestion advanced in his bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success – that doing anything really well requires doing that thing for at least 10,000 hours.  I realize the number might be 8,000 and it might be 22,000.  The point Gladwell makes so well is that learning a craft requires repetition – doing something over and over again until you get it right.  Since I keep up with the time I put into writing, I know I don’t have my 10,000 hours in yet.  But, I’m working on it on a daily basis and I’ll get there.

I also have my own corollary to the 10,000 hour rule.  Developing a craft resembles playing a sport at a high level.  Great coaches – football’s Nick Saban, basketball’s late, great Pat Summitt, golf’s Butch Harmon – I think would all say that if you don’t enjoy the grind of practice, the odds are you’ll never be very good, let alone great, at your game.  In the writing context, if you don’t enjoy the grind of reading, drafting, and editing, then reading, re-drafting, and editing some more, you really ought to find something else to do.   

 

As I work daily at my new craft, I say to young people, old

people, and people in between, “Figure out what you want to do really well and work at doing that, remembering the old adage that success is a journey, not a destination.” One day, you might get to say to yourself, “Well done.”  Then, start again on getting better.  This is who I am.  This is my formula for a fulfilling life.