The Ultimate Transition of My Friend Jason

         My friend Jason Akers passed away last Sunday.  His wife Christine asked me to speak at his memorial service. I tried to memorialize him in a respectful, heartfelt way.  It was very hard to talk because of my profound sense of loss, but I managed to get through it.  Since learning of his death, I've kind of been in a somber mood.  This loss has been an affirmation of my knowledge of how fragile my existence is and of the importance of living in the moment.  So here is my funeral talk.

Jason and I were friends.  I was very open about my life and he was open about his.  As such, we would sometimes discuss very personal matters.  Because I opened up to him and he to me, I came to have a sense of who he was and what was important to him.  I felt privileged that he trusted me enough to share his inner thoughts and feelings.  Whenever he would open up with me, I felt I was on sacred ground.  I came to really understand this man, my friend.

As he pondered his mortality and impending death, we would sometimes talk about his life on a macro scale.  In other words, we talked about what he felt he had accomplished and hadn’t accomplished, and what he had become and what he hadn’t become.  He lamented to me that he felt that there was so much he hadn’t accomplished and hadn’t become, and that he was trying not to be bitter about being deprived of the balance of a lifetime to accomplish and become.

I would like to share with you this solemn day what I saw that he had accomplished and what he had become.  And even though ultimately his life was cut even shorter than he expected, I would propose that he leaves a legacy of accomplishment and becoming.  Accomplishing in life does not necessarily equate to becoming.  A person can be very accomplished in their work or career, or even in responsibilities in their church congregations, without becoming a good individual with good values and character.  Jason would say that he didn’t accomplish much. I choose to focus on what he became, and I only wish (and I’m sure he would agree) that he had been given more time to become even more.

The first becoming I would like to share is how he became a good and caring man.  It would be a great understatement to say that His upbringing was challenging.  He would sometimes share with me how his family of origin was full of dysfunction and abuse and it would have been easy for him, and understandable for him, frankly, to live in that dysfunctional world for the rest of his life.  Instead, he made the choice to escape it and to try to have a meaningful life.  He used his upbringing as a bad example, as something not to allow himself or his family to become.  Sometimes, that can be a huge motivation for us and it certainly appeared to be a great incentive for good in him.  He became a caring man.  I marvel at how he was able to become so caring.   I knew he was a caring man because he cared for me, and I will always hold that caring in my heart.

The second becoming I am witness to is how he overcame challenges and adversity.  He was blessed with a dogged determination, or even, a stubbornness of spirit.  Perhaps his family would occasionally see a stubborn father or husband, but that same tenacity was useful in stoically sticking with changes he wanted to make in himself.  Once Jason put his mind to do something, it was eventually going to happen if it were in his control.  He obviously had many challenges and adversity, especially near the end of his life.  But for me, his determination was something to behold.  I have learned more about determination from his example than I have learned from just about any other person.

The third becoming would be how important his family came to be for him.  Having had such a challenging childhood, with an absence of family role models other than a kindly grandmother, he could have believed that life’s cards were stacked against him and given up.  But being the fighter that he was, he determined to give his children what he had not received.  Did he always do the right thing in his child rearing?  Nobody always makes the right decisions in the excruciatingly difficult job of raising children, except for God.  But he tried the best that he could.  His intention was be the best father possible.  He would tell me how deeply he cared for Aaron and Linnet and Mallory.  Christine was his childhood sweetheart and the key to a more normal family life than what he had experienced.  She was and is very important to him. And now that he is in heaven, I must think that he deeply misses them all.

The fourth becoming I would like to touch on was his great, insatiable thirst for knowledge.  He always seemed to be reading something.  He never seemed to get enough.  He loved to learn and anybody who talked with Jason for any length of time would soon understand that he was well-read.  He could wax eloquent on any number of subjects and not superficially.  He was always open to new ideas, new concepts, new ways of looking at things.  Even in the last difficult time of his life, he seemed hungry to know about what was happening to him.  It is a humble person who realizes that he or she does not know it all and wants to become better informed, and Jason personified that humility.  I have to believe that part of Christine’s attraction to Jason was that desire to learn more and use that knowledge to benefit himself, his family, and others.

Living each day to the fullest would be the next becoming I perceived.  This was something that became important to Jason in the last few years of his life.  He came to appreciate being alive and being completely aware of those around him.  He grieved over not having been more awake and cognizant of each day.  Especially at the very end, when he knew that his time here on earth was drawing to a close, he sincerely wanted to enjoy each day and to experience life as fully as his failing body would allow.  His pain would sometimes get the best of him, but that determination and positivity would kick in.  No wonder that he went to Disneyland last Friday.  That alone speaks volumes.

Lastly, the becoming that might be the most important was his embrace of the Gospel plan.  Even though he was quick to downplay his knowledge of Gospel doctrine and scriptures, he knew that what he had been taught was true and eternally important.  He believed in the power of prayer.  He knew that Heavenly Father lived, that Jesus was His Son, and that the Savior had performed the Atonement, and Jason was determined to live Gospel principles the best way he could.  He took pride in belonging to the Church, and dearly wanted his children to be blessed by its teachings.

So you and I are left with this great legacy of this good man.  Funerals are not for those who’ve passed on but for those who remain.  What shall do we with his life?  Or perhaps more importantly, what shall we become because of Jason Akers?  Shall we not be more good and caring?  Shall we not overcome adversity and challenge with dogged determination as he did?  Shall we not hold our families close to us and put them as the highest priority in our lives?  Shall we not hunger and thirst after knowledge?  Shall we not live each day as if it were our last—because it might be?  Jason’s untimely death reminds us of that fact.  And finally, shall we not seek truth and determine what God’s plan is for us?

Let us hold close and sacred his memory and allow those memories to influence us to be better people—better parents, better children, better citizens, better disciples of God.  What will be said by others at our funerals of our becoming when we pass through the veil and embrace Jason? 

   

My Favorite Time of Year!

In my home growing up, there always were a set of four pictures on some wall.  The four were often in some hallway, and they were of the four seasons from one perspective.  In other words, some artist had painted folksy scenes of one panorama of rural life, with a stone bridge that spanned a stream, a prominent fruit-bearing tree, a church in the background, and trees and hills in the foreground and background.  The same view was what might have taken place from this same early 20^th century vantage point in the spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons.

I always liked it, and when Mom and Dad passed away, I made sure that I got these four pictures.  Today, they are prominently placed in my home, and they hark back to simpler, gentler times in my life and in the world in general.  Of all of the views, however, my favorite is of the fall.  Maybe it is because autumn is my favorite time of year. 

In fall, the heat of the summer is ebbing yet the temperatures for the most part can still be moderate and not too cold.  A frost often appears, and with it, the deciduous trees begin their yearly ritual of shedding their leaves.  Before they fall, however, nature puts on some of its prettiest colors.  Depending on the type of tree, some leaves merely lose their greenness and turn a pale, dirty brown while the leaves of others offer many different and splendid shades of red, yellow and gold.  

For me, I remember different fall seasons in my life.  I remember raking leaves into a pile only to jump into them and rake them up again.  I remember cheering myself hoarse at football games.  I remember trick or treating at Halloween.   I remember making Thanksgiving boxes for my kids to write what they and I were grateful for.  I remember not the not-quite-cooked turkey of our first Thanksgiving.  I remember picking berries off of pyracantha bushes and throwing them into holes or garbage cans or under cars (or at my wife’s back on our walks!).  I remember the smells of Halloween and Thanksgiving.

It is a time of kids returning to school, of football games on Friday night or Saturdays, of preparing to put away summer items like boats and picnic tables, of getting out the warm weather clothing and putting away the short sleeves and shorts (except if you live in Southern California), of making plans for the coming holiday season, and in the end, of taking stock of what needs to be done to make the transition from the busyness of summer to the slowing down of fall and the eventual housebound season of winter.

As each year begins winding down to its close, I usually reflect on what has happened during the previous months.  I consider the changes that have transpired, such as in the housing of family members.  I reflect on the year’s accomplishments and disappointments, and wonderful times of vacation and nature excursions.  I mull over how I have changed and how others around me have changed as well.  I think about changes that have occurred and are in the process of occurring in the social, economic, and political worlds at home and abroad.  I begin to wonder about the inevitability of winter and cold and Christmas shopping.

Of course, people who read my blog regularly will know that I tend to look at deeper meanings in things, even to metaphors—those occurrences in life that have nothing to do with a set of circumstances or a given situation, but to which comparisons of some sort can be made.

In keeping with my tendency, I see the seasons as a metaphor for “seasons” of one’s life.  When life is new, in our childhood and young adult years, temperatures (and hormones) are warming up.  Life is new, colorful, exciting, and can be idyllic.  It is a time of little responsibility, of lots of fun, of curiosity and discovery, and usually, of falling in love and finding a partner.  Life’s possibilities seem endless and it is time for idealism.  We, like the trees and flowers, are blooming and showing the world who we are.  It is our Spring.

When that “season” ends, the temperatures turn decidedly warmer, even becoming hot.  Summer is here.  We are in relationships now, children may have come our way, and the heat of responsibility beats down upon us.  We have bloomed and are in full flower in our families, our careers, our abilities to make money, our physical bodies.  We likely have a mortgage, maybe a student loan, a car payment, and all of the other adult bills that we incur as we take on responsibility.  Illnesses and childbirths and accidents all bring a certain “heat” to our lives.  Arguably, it is the optimal time to accomplish things because we have vitality and energy and enthusiasm for life.  And we need those attributes because most of us have children who are now engaged in their own spring times.

Soon, however, while the temperatures are still warm, there are occasional mornings of coolness.  As I am wont to say, there can seem to be a “nip” in the air at this autumnal time of year.  Our physical bodies have endured the heat of our summers and are starting to show signs of a transitional time.  We are not quite so energetic, brought painfully to mind whenever we are around grandchildren who are in their springtimes as our children transition into their summers.  The hair on our heads like the leaves on the trees might be starting to turn colors—white or gray, that is.  There are aches here, doctor appointments there. 

We have managed to launch our children (hopefully) and we see what characteristics good and bad we have advertently or inadvertently bequeathed upon them.  We are usually in a fairly comfortable place financially and may be engaging in harvesting our retirement fruits of the work planted in spring and nourished by the heat of summer.  We usually have figured life out and are fairly comfortable with what we have chosen or what we have been dealt, or both.  We simply have quite a few years under our belts (literally and figuratively) and we just know more than we did during those fallow and fun days of youth and those blistering hot days of responsibility and requirement.  Hopefully, we are wiser than we have been, if only because of what has happened to us.

Winter lies ahead.  It is when the cold of sickness, illness, loss of companionship, loss of mental acuity, and loss of endless opportunities rears its inevitable head.  It can be a time to be quite housebound.  It is a time of forgetfulness, of memories of events long ago but not what happened the previous day.  It is a time when the chill wind blows, emptying the trees of their leaves and killing many of the flowers of earlier times.  It leads to an inevitable time of death.

So here I am, transitioning into the autumn of my life.  Are the red “leaves” on my head turning gray?  Surprisingly, very little.  Do my bones ache in the morning?  Yes, they often do.  Do I have the energy that I used to have?  No, but as I attempt to stay active I find that I have enough (although I really like good naps that I rarely can take!).  Do I go to see doctors a little more routinely?  Yes, but that’s okay.  I am still as crazy and offbeat as I used to be?  Ask my children grandchildren.  Am I doing okay financially?  And retirement looms in the future and we look to have sufficient for our needs, the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. 

Am I comfortable with who I am?  That’s a loaded question, but overall, I am glad to answer affirmatively.  I am at peace with who I am.  As I tell many with whom I counsel and do therapy, I have given God my past because I can’t do anything about it.  Although I make plans for the colder days of fall and winter, I choose not to live in an anxiety-filled future either.  I am choosing to live in the here and now, and while I am not always successful in that endeavor, I feel a great serenity.  (Please read an earlier blog posting on the Serenity Prayer which I attempt to live by.) 

In this time of my life—this autumn of my life, I am really enjoying who I am!  I pray each day that God grants to me as many todays as possible because I am enjoying the one right now!

Why Not Just Sit Down With One Another?

Whether or not one wants to admit it, religion has been involved in much of the world’s wars and bloodshed through the millennia.  To be fair, the leadership of certain belief systems have often sought for personal power in their fervor, or they considered another groups’ theology to be evil or heretical and have incited their believers to take up arms to assert their beliefs.  Regardless, history is littered with corpses of religious men and women. 

As examples, the Crusades was an effort by the Christians to drive the Muslims out of Jerusalem and other lands.  The Spanish Inquisition saw the Catholic Church put believers of Islam and Judaism on trail to be executed.  In the early days of the Reformation in Europe, Catholics killed or burned at the stake hundreds of thousands who wanted that reformation.  I am keenly aware of the persecution and murders of believers of my Church’s doctrines in the 19^th Century by those who felt threatened by our presence in their lands.  The worldwide terrorism in the 21^st Century has theological underpinnings---between militant Islam and Jews and Christians.

The inability of people of different faiths to sit down with one another to discuss shared beliefs and experiences has been very frustrating to me.  As people of faith, we seem unable to make a transition from fear and suspicion to shared humanity and peace.  I don't know that such a transition can take place on a global scale, although I am proud to say that my Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really makes an effort to reach out to other religions to establish commonalities, especially in shared humanitarian efforts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I want to share an experience that I had recently with some friends of another faith.  My wife and I are Christian and the other couple are Muslim.  She and my wife got to know one another and became friends while attending graduate school together to obtain Master’s Degrees in Mathematics.  The four of us have spent time together in each others’ homes, sharing our lives, eating food, and talking about the commonalities of our different faith systems in an effort to increase our understanding.  But in my estimation, our recent visit to their home took our relationship to a whole new level.

Our friends have two adult children, a daughter and a son.  They have loved both of their children but as they talked about their son that day, they talked about him in almost reverential tones because of how seriously he has taken their religion and its beliefs.  They reported that he always has wanted to do what was good, and would study the Quran to understand its teachings in order to be a better Muslim, even waking up at 5:00 am to study it of his own free will. They talked about how sensitive he has been toward them, toward his sister, and toward anybody around him.  Sadly, the son was involved in a serious automobile accident toward the end of 2010 and was hospitalized for three months.  Unexpectedly, the son then contracted pneumonia and soon thereafter passed away, at the too young age of 20.

We have shared our grief and pain with them through the years about our son who has been addicted to drugs for much of his life.  We have talked about our frustrations, our parenting errors, our discouragement and sadness, and during our discussion that day, how we have come to learn to turn him and his life over to God.   As I sat listening to our friends discuss their grieving process over the loss of their son, I was struck by the commonality of emotions that parents feel over their children.  I was also struck by the thought of how this life is a great laboratory established by a loving God to help Christians, Muslims, and all of His children to learn what we need to learn and experience what we need to experience.   

I shared my tender feelings with them about how I believed there was purpose for them, our friends, and for us, to have these sons.  They shared with us their heartache and sadness, but also shared their faith in a life after this life, free of pain and suffering.  We shared our faith in a post-mortal existence as well.  His mom even shared with us how a few hours before he died, he apologized to her.  Based upon a previous conversation she had with him , her belief was that he had been given a choice as to whether to live or not, and that he had chosen to move on to the next world.  Upon hearing that, I felt a spiritual witness that what she had just recounted was exactly what had happened, and I felt very close to her. 

I didn’t matter in these moments of shared pain and grief that our theologies were quite different.  It didn’t matter that our concepts of deity are different and that our belief systems dictate different ways to worship.  It didn’t matter that they are from Iran and we are from the United States.  It didn’t matter that they eat halal food and that we don’t drink coffee or tea.  It didn’t matter that she wears a scarf on her head and my wife doesn’t.  None of those differences mattered!  We have been and were united in spirit in those wonderful moments together because we were willing to be vulnerable and open with one another.  I felt that we shared an incredibly intense, spiritual experience even though we supposedly were so different.  I love these two people with all of my heart and I pray to my God who I know is their God also, to give them strength and understanding as they deal with their heavy burden.  As we departed, they expressed their love and appreciation for us and we for them.  I only wish that believers of all religions would allow themselves to be secure yet vulnerable in their beliefs and to just sit down with one another.

The Ultimate Transition

Pocatello Idaho Cemetary where Jeanne Harten is now buried

I guess death is the ultimate transition.  It is a transition that I would prefer not to experience at this point in my life although I do not fear it.  When loved ones pass on, we who are left are forced to make a transition in our own lives—to an existence now without them. 

The mother of a very good friend experienced that ultimate transition last night.  I have known this friend for 40 years, and over that long span of time he has always spoken in loving tones about his uniquely wonderful relationship with her.  Our conversations have always seemed to include an appropriate update on her.  Throughout his entire adult life -- through transitions of school, dating, marriage, children, career, and life’s challenges, she has been a towering presence. Early on, she served as mentor, guide, and confidant.  As time rolled by and he became more confident in his abilities and judgments, she appropriately receded into the role of cheerleader, supporter, and advice giver when asked.  In later years as she experienced a colossal number of health challenges, my good friend has become her cheerleader and caretaker, and source of supply of grandchildren whom she has powerfully loved.

I have always felt some kind of kinship with her as a result.  She was a significant part of him; he has been a significant part of me, so subsequently she has been a significant part of me.  And I feel a sweet loss this morning.  Life will still go on, but it will be a little less wonderful because of her transition.  I am grateful for my faith in the Plan, of life after death, an existence free of pain and suffering for her, and I smile as I think of her blessed reunion with her husband and the literal tens of thousands of relatives whom she came to know as a result of a life dedicated to genealogy.  What a fantastic woman she was…. J