{"id":186,"date":"2011-07-21T22:16:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T02:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.2soar.info\/word\/?p=186"},"modified":"2012-07-27T17:27:34","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T21:27:34","slug":"of-grace-and-good-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2011\/07\/21\/of-grace-and-good-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Grace and Good Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today it was my honor to attend a reunion, of sorts, between my friend Jay and the colleagues he hasn\u2019t really seen since he\u2019d been diagnosed with cancer. His cancer has since become terminal.\u00a0 He visited his workplace and surprised (kind of, the word seemed to have gotten out) many of them in the midst of their workday.\u00a0 They gathered around him in a mix of excitement, tentativeness and love.\u00a0 This is a man truly well-loved and very much missed at this dealership.\u00a0 This man is an anomaly; a gentleman in the car business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The word terminal hangs in the air without much belief to most, but Jay understands.\u00a0 He has conversations with God and prays for solace and forgiveness.\u00a0 All of which is unnecessary as Jay is not in any danger of being on God\u2019s bad side.\u00a0 This is a true family man, a gentle soul who\u2019s guided many of these colleagues for dozens of years.\u00a0 He will continue to pray, to drink his goji juice and exude optimism simply because that\u2019s who he is and he is, indeed, at peace.<\/p>\n

He understands his peace is a blessing to him but he worries for those left behind.\u00a0 The gentleness he showed to his colleagues as their emotions ran the gamut of excitement, sorrow, discomfort, and unease was as remarkable as any of us would have expected.\u00a0 He was the comforter no longer needing to be comforted himself.<\/p>\n

This is what I love about Jay.\u00a0 Always pragmatic, always fully grounded in reality he just knows how to live and be in the world and when he does leave us we can take many lessons from him.\u00a0 Love your family, live by example and leave the world a better place.<\/p>\n

So there he was holding court, giving each person the attention they needed in a setting that gave him just a bit of \u201cnormal\u201d to take home with him to the hospice nurses and the hospital bed.\u00a0 Of course, I had to give him a bit of the car hag in me as just a bit more normal for him to laugh about and hold on to.<\/p>\n

As for grace, thy name is Wanda.\u00a0 I love meeting someone for the first time and knowing that we are already old friends.\u00a0 I love being able to give someone something so personal and unrelated to their current circumstances that it will come to define their present anguish but transition to their future comfort. I will be here for Wanda well into the future whether she chooses to call on me or not.\u00a0 I raise a glass to you my friend and look out over my enchanted forest with you in mind.<\/p>\n

I will keep texting Jay and posting to their caring-bridge until there is really nothing left to say.\u00a0 But I can hear Jay, a devoted Beatles fan, listening and knowing that his legacy and our love for him will indeed be spread across the universe.<\/p>\n

Sounds of laughter shades of life
\nare ringing through my open ears
\nexciting and inviting me
\nLimitless undying love which
\nshines around me like a million suns
\nIt calls me on and on across the universe\u2026john Lennon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today it was my honor to attend a reunion, of sorts, between my friend Jay and the colleagues he hasn\u2019t really seen since he\u2019d been diagnosed with cancer. His cancer has since become terminal.\u00a0 He visited his workplace and surprised … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pause-points"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-30","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}