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? 

   

Challenging Myself

When Ann went away to be a grandmother for a time, I knew that I would be spending time alone.   I challenged myself to keep busy and accomplish some tasks that I had been putting off, but also, to do accomplish some things that were best accomplished without her being at home.  Such was my decision to hike a nearby mountain.

                Ann likes hiking more than I do.  I accompany her, and occasionally I will really enjoy doing it, such as our hike on a shore excursion in Juneau, Alaska during our cruise last year.  But for the most part, I don’t enjoy putting my body through the rigors of hiking, preferring much more to sit in front of a screen or driving somewhere.   I force myself to go because I know that the exercise is good for me and my heart, because I enjoy nature in its splendor, but more importantly because I want to spend time with her.

                So the decision to climb a mountain on a trail in the middle of summer that had a 2800 foot elevation increase was definitely NOT because I wanted to.   I really didn’t particularly want to.  But since I had told people that I was going to do it, on the 4^th of July no less, and because of wanting to challenge myself, I woke up and parked my car at the trail head at 6:30am, wanting to take advantage of some cooler temperatures and some early morning fog.

                I had made a peanut butter and jam sandwich the night before.  I likewise had filled my water bottle and belt, had prepared a bag of cherries, found some sunscreen (which I regretfully only applied to my face and part of my neck), and went to sleep determined to conquer Mt. Lukens the next morning.

                I started out with great determination and at a good clip.  I had made an announcement in the men’s meeting of my church congregation the previous Sunday with the hope of engaging a hiking companion.  But when a prospect had asked what pace I was going to keep, I informed him that I was going to keep a brisk pace, and I’m sure that scared away his wife and him.  In fact, not only did I want to walk briskly, I wanted to not take many “breathing” breaks that Ann feels obligated to take when we hike together.

                After about a half hour, I had gotten to the beginning of the true ascent, a series of switchbacks, a point in the hike that had taken Ann and me some 45 minutes or so to reach on a previous hike earlier in the spring.  And after about 50 minutes, I had gotten to a place where we had turned around on another hike earlier in the spring.  I was quite pleased with my speed and that I had not stopped to rest.  I hadn’t even stopped to drink, and when I finally did access the water bottle a little later, I barely slowed down.  I even took out my sandwich a little farther up and kept walking while I ate.

                Until the trail took me to the south to where I could overlook the town of La Crescenta, the path was quite boring.  There are no conifers, only chaparral, and the prolific flowers that had graced the trail a couple of months previously had all wilted and died.  The higher I got, the greater the mountain vistas were, but it really is a rather unexciting hike—at least at this time of year.  Still I kept the steady pace on the trail that had plenty of rocks under foot and that never had more than a few twenty-foot stretches of level ground.  The problem was that when the fog burned away, it was because the sun was out in a cloudless sky, and the temperature rose.

                I occasionally caught glimpses of the towers at the top which served to animate and motivate me to keep the pace.  However, the warmth and the relentless uphill nature of the trail began to take their toll.  The last mile or so is constantly uphill and I realized that I was beginning to tire.  Some 300 yards from the summit I ran into hikers descending from the top, and when they asked me how I was doing, my response was, “I’m tired,” to which they replied, “you’re just about there.”  I only saw five other crazy hikers the entire time I was on the trail.

                Some two hours and twenty-five minutes after I began this endeavor I reached the top.  I learned that Mt. Lukens is not a specific point or geological outcropping.  Rather, it’s just a flattened top of a mountain (I wonder if originally it was flat before the towers were erected and the helicopter pad placed).  I felt satisfaction that I had accomplished this goal that I had set for myself.  I found a shady place to sit, interestingly on the wheel well of a trailer upon which a rather large compressor had been placed.  I took a picture of the towers.   I explored the summit, sat for a total of twenty minutes, and then decided to begin my descent.

Towers Atop Mt. Lukens

                As I stated down from the top, I realized just how tired I was but noticed that I still had energy.  I found a rock from the top to commemorate the hike to place in my collection of other rocks from other hikes, and found another quite spectacular one another couple of hundred feet down the trail.  I carried them in my hands all the way to the bottom.  About that time, I took a picture of what lies north of where I was.  It is a rugged, foreboding, chaparral-covered series of mediocre peaks and canyons, and actually quite beautiful in its starkness.  I took a picture of this vista to help me remember it.  At the base of these minor peaks was Big Tujunga Canyon Road upon which I have walked and which eventually merges with the Angeles Crest Highway, which can barely be seen in the picture.

Looking Down Upon the Big Tujunga Canyon Road

                By this time, it was starting to get warm—it was about 9:30.  I hoped that my ball cap would help keep my face and neck in shade.  As I would walk away and towards the sun I would turn the hat’s beak to face the sun.  I must have changed it a couple of dozen times, but I still got sunburned a bit.  

                As I descended, I noticed just how unrelenting the downhill of the trail was.  As difficult as it was to hike up, it was likewise difficult to hike down, especially as I realized just how many smaller rocks littered the trail and would occasionally cause me to stumble. 

                Because I am kind of analytic and because I hear about old people purposefully trying to walk 10,000 steps a day to maintain good health , I decided to approximate how many steps this hike was going to take for this middle-aged guy.  I counted the steps in a five minute period—440—and calculated that I was going to take over 20,000 steps.  I guess that if I measured the approximate length of my stride, I could calculate just how far I was hiking (I couldn't calculate that in my head.)  An online map of the hike I took shows that the round trip was about 11 miles.  I guess I'm trying to avoid the transition to old age!

                I purposefully did not stop but just plowed on, turning the beak of my ball cap back and forth and eating the last of the cherries I had brought.  I noticed that my feet and calves and hips were starting to ache, and realized that I was really feeling tired.  In a shady place some 1-1¼ miles from the car, I stopped for a couple of minutes, but then trudged on.  That last little bit was not so downhill but had numerous rocks on the trail, and one time I stumbled and almost fell.  I realized just how tired I was.  I imagine that my foot path kind of meandered a bit there at the end, but because I knew this part of the trail fairly well having taken it a few times with Ann, I knew that I was getting close to my car.

                I finally reached the pavement and walked resolutely the last 100 or so yards to my car.  I took off my fanny pack and water bottle belt, threw them on the floor in the back along with the two rocks I had brought as souvenirs, and sat my tired butt in my car seat.  Ahhhhhhh.  A short five minute drive and I was home. 

                I look with pride at Mt. Lukens as I drive by it on the freeway and look up to the towers.  I set out to do something hard, and in five hours total, and I did both.  Yay for me!