I went to visit my Dad in the Hinds Hospice Home today.  He’s been in a morphine-induced state of unconsciousness for a few days now.  We all knew he was at death’s door.

I went into his room and (believing that he could still recognize my voice) I said, “Hey Dad.  It’s Gary.  How ya’ doing?”  He took a large deep breath, and exhaled.  I waited for him to breathe in again.  I waited for 30 seconds.  Then another 30 seconds.

His next breath never came.

The nurse came into the room, took his pulse, then looked at me and said what we both already knew.

“He’s left us.”

Just like that.  No gasping.  No furled eyebrows.  No opening his eyes.  He just stopped breathing.  And it all happened in a period of 60 seconds.  It was the most peaceful thing I’ve ever seen.

I looked at the nurse and said, “I guess I got here just in time.”

Her answer was swift and immediate:  “He was waiting for you.”  She went on to tell me that this story repeats itself in Hospice homes over and over again.  Somehow, terminal patients just know.  Amazing.

I told him goodbye one final time, and instantly became jealous of the jig he and my mother had already begun dancing.

Lucky him.

And as I look back on my 46 years of being his son…

Lucky me.

“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

It was my father who taught me that it was an act of love to pat your wife on the butt – in public.

It was my father who taught me that there was nothing a 10 year-old boy on a Honda 50 motorcycle couldn’t do.  And it was my father who taught me that helmets should be thought of as “optional”, as long as Mom wasn’t around.

It was my father who taught me that if you call yourself a leader, but no one’s following, you need to call yourself something else.

It was my father who taught me that McDonald’s pancakes were good, but IHOP pancakes were internationally good.

It was my father who taught me that I should continue to develop my slider, even though the rules of the 5th Grade Boys Baseball League strictly prohibited it.

It was my father who taught me that the best stories are told around a campfire at Shaver Lake, and that they should always speak tales of friends who served together in World War II.

It was my father who taught me that writing is an art, and that words printed on a page can be as beautiful as anything Picasso ever painted.

It was my father who taught me that a wife can save a husband, and that husbands should be open to that gift.

It was my father who taught me that it’s better to go to jail, then to give up your sources.

It was my father who taught me that the church is business-like, but it’s not a business.

It was my father who taught me that real men say, “I love you”.

It was my father who taught me that, at 85 years old, you could publish your first book.

It was my father who taught me that the greatest words I could ever say to my own children were not only “I love you”, but also “I’m proud of you.”

It was my father who taught me that life is better lived when we stop asking “why?”, and start asking “Why not?”.

Honestly, this litany of lessons learned makes me wonder what my children will say about me.  Makes me want to live differently right now.

You?

But so much of the time, the online profile they’ve created for you to “experience” isn’t complete.

Sometimes, it isn’t even real.

We all do this.  We create a profile of the person we WANT others to see.  Then, we support that false self with our status updates throughout the day.

I know this is true for me.  It’s like Twitter and Facebook have given me the chance to reinvent myself for people who have never met me.

We could argue whether or not this reinvention of an online false self is healthy, or just normal, or just something we need to learn to accept.  But there’s one thing I can do that’s entirely unhealthy, and completely demeaning to the online community I’m a part of…

I can start to believe that I’m really that guy.

I can start to believe that I’m really the guy who always has a great leadership quote, or a consistent deep thought about our journey with Christ.  I can start to believe that I’m the guy who always makes my daughters laugh after a long day at work.  I can begin to imagine that I’m the guy who makes my wife swoon, simply from serving her breakfast in bed on our wedding anniversary.

But I’m not that guy.

Not even close.

It’s one thing to create an online profile of only the good stuff for you to see.  It’s another thing altogether to take that false profile, and imagine it into a false identity.

So to help combat this natural tendency, maybe today we could post something honest and risky about ourselves – about a struggle we’re having, or disappointment we’re experiencing, or about a therapist we’re seeing (or need to be seeing).  Maybe it’s more simple than that.  Maybe it’s just something like, “I’m scared of the future”, or “I don’t want to turn 40″, or “my kids are driving me crazy”.

I’ll start.  Here’s my Update…

Without the online protection of Covenant Eyes, I’d be dead in the water.

As I typed those words, I felt risk, and then joy.  And then fear.  And finally, boldness.

Your turn.

Those words came out of my mouth at my Mom’s funeral.  They were unplanned, but they fit the need of the moment, and they just came out.

I’ve been revisiting that statement more and more.  I think it’s very true.

We were invited this weekend to the Central Coast, by the Montes’.  We first met Andy and Sherene in 1990, and we instantly hit it off.  We were young married couples with no children.  Our relationship has since persevered through the birth of six children, marital struggles, job changes, and more struggles too painful to chronicle here.

And this weekend, they stole us away to the Central Coast for an overnight respite.  They paid for everything.  Hotel, food, fun, waffles.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking that, at our age, we’ve got enough money to do this.  But it’s just not the case.  The Montes’ couldn’t afford to do this.

But they figured out a way, and they just gave.

To us.

My friend Kathy tells me that there are two types of people in the world – Takers and Givers.  And the problem is this – Everyone thinks they’re a Giver.  I can become easily self-deceived at this level.

I can think I’m the most generous person on the face of the earth, not because I really am generous, but because I really WANT to be generous.

But you and I know there’s an acid test to apply, right?  Simply ask:  When’s the last time you gave like the Montes’ gave to us?

For God so loved the world, He gained tons of Bible knowledge…

For God so loved the world, He made regular contributions to His 401K…

For God so loved the world, He donated only when He was already in excess…

For God so loved the world, He…

gave.

“I have this core belief, that you know Jesus best when you’re the most generous.”

Every week for months and months, there were certain hours devoted to talking, listening, and praying with people who were sick, dying, or both.

A few weeks ago, a 52 year-old man was electrocuted while trimming a tree.  For 14 days, he struggled for his life.  His family stayed with him.  If you’ve ever had a family member in the hospital for that long, you know how emotionally draining it is on the family members.  At some point, the family just gives up because they can’t handle it anymore.

Last weekend, the man’s family couldn’t take it anymore.  Their father and husband was dying.  So they left the hospital.

There was now a man, lying in a bed in the ICU, waiting to pass.  Alone.

My friend stepped in, and chose to wait with the man until he passed.  He posted this update on Twitter after it was over…

I just sort of felt tonight like no one should die alone. That’s why I sat with a patient and was fully present in that moment.

I would argue that the most honorable moments we have in this life come when we do things that fight hard against our personal comfort levels, and are incredibly draining.  I think honorable actions always cause us to ache.

It’s a basic human right that no one should have to die alone.  My friend helped defend that right in a quite room last weekend.

Last Friday, as I sat in a Memorial Service – an hour dedicated to honoring my Mom – it was abundantly clear that her legacy was one of loving and serving.  Every drop of every story pointed to a time when she loved, and a time when she served.

It’s a legacy because her children, her grandchildren, and her close friends have become influenced to the point of passing it along to those around them.

That’s what a legacy is.

A legacy happens when we’ve been indullibly influenced by another person – when the residue of their life falls on our shoulders.  Legacy is when we see the world through glasses colored by them.

Leaving a legacy is automatic.  We all leave one, no matter what.  At no point in our lives must we choose to leave a legacy or not.  The only choice we have in the matter comes in the legacy’s composition, hue, and brightness.

Dads are leaving a legacy of anger.  Or power.  Or apathy.

Moms are leaving a legacy of perfectionism.  Or works-based love.  Or detachment.

But we can choose differently.  My Mom proves that.

My Mom told me stories of coming home every day after school, as a little girl.  The first place she’d run to was her father’s wardrobe closet.  She’s check to see if his clothes were there.  If they weren’t, she knew he’d hopped the border into Mexico, and would be gone for weeks, maybe months.  In Mexico, he’d drink himself into oblivion.  He’d awake, then do it all over again.

When he was home, he ruled with an iron fist.  Sober, or not.  And when his job as a ship builder took him to a new city, their family of three would uproot the next day.  New city, new state. My Mom never stayed in any city longer than three years.

Only child.  Alcoholic father. Strong, but fearful mother.  No close friends.  Abandoned.

But when her deep thirst was met with Jesus’ life-giving water, everything changed.  She gave that water away to people by serving them, and by loving them.

No one ever speaks of her upbringing in our circles.  It’s not that they’re keeping a deep family secret or anything; it’s that they don’t even know that part of her life.

It’s because she chose an alternate legacy.

Loving. Serving.  And I am the recipient of that.  So are my daughters.  So is a village in El Salvador.

Everyone one of us is writing a legacy today.  We don’t have the ability to do anything other than that.

Our choice comes when we realize that we get to decide which one to write, and which one to silence.

I find myself living backwards these days – asking what memories my children will have of me at my Memorial Service, then trying my best to live into that.

My Mom modeled this for me.  As you’ll see, no one in my family had a hard time coming up with specific memories that she created, and then gave away to the rest of us…

For those of you who are choosing to walk this road with me, I cannot tell you how sustained I feel because I’m not alone.  Thank you.  Thank you so much.

The morphine drip was initiated, the oxygen mask came off, and the waiting game began.

Five grandchildren, two daughter-in-laws, two sons, and one soon-to-be widower entered the room and said their unique and beautiful goodbyes to my Mom.  The family would go into the waiting room and wait.  Myself, my brother, and my Dad would sit in the room with my Mom.

At 6:00pm, my Dad couldn’t stay awake any longer.  He’s confined to a wheelchair, suffers from Parkinson’s, and had been awake since 4:00am that morning.  He needed a change of scenery.  So I offered to take him to where the rest of the family was waiting.  He agreed, and we began to leave the room.

I think in his heart, he knew.

He knew that he’d never again see her in this lifetime.

So he looked at her, and with deep compassion and sadness in his soft voice, he whispered words to her.  Words I’ll never forget.

“You’re my girl.”

And with those words, I wheeled him out of the room.  We took him home, and made sure he was gonna be okay.

He went to sleep in his own bed.

His wife of 48 years passed at midnight.

1.  This is very raw, and largely unedited.  It’s more “stream of consciousness” writing, not planned or formulaic.

2.  I’m writing from a perspective of grief.  Much of this is my grief talking, and I’m fine with that.

My 81 year-old mother has gone from picking my daughter up from high school in February, to a bed in the Intensive Care Unit, fighting for her life.  If she doesn’t pass within the next week or so, she’ll spend the rest of her life recovering.  She doesn’t want to be kept alive with life support, and has requested a DNR.

As I’ve walked this journey with my Mom, there are so many God-lessons I’m learning. And while there are different lessons to be learned, one theme is consistent throughout…

God uses death to teach us about life.

And my Mom’s journey over the past three months has taught me a simple, and profound lesson about life…

At any point, we can choose to make time for what’s important.

I’m a full-time Dad, trying my best to guide a full-time business, while trying to love my beautiful wife better than the day before.  I play in the band at my church, and I’m involved in mentoring.  I also write a regular column in a Church Media Magazine.

But it’s amazing how all that stuff becomes secondary when the doctor calls us to set up a meeting with himself, two nurses, a social worker, and a chaplain.

Life stops.  You just drop everything.  No one blames you for it, or criticizes you.  You make the choice to let everything else just come to a screeching halt.  And that’s when truth emerges.

At any point, we can choose to make time for what’s important.

It is a choice.  And it’s our choice.

So for me, it’s becoming more and more obvious that I need to choose important over urgent, relationship over task, and eternal over temporal.

And that I need to stop using busyness as an excuse for any Kingdom thing.

Tim McGraw tickets (with Lady Antebellum opening).

So that’s what we gave her.  My preference was to spend the evening with beer NOT poured on my head, so she choose to join several other friends and go the May 25 concert, at the Save Mart Center in Fresno.

On May 15, we learned that our 16 year-old daughter had a choir performance on the same night.  Her choir would be singing three songs – the “Glee” versions of Journey, Queen, and the Beatles.  Quite a big deal.

So last night, my wife chose to sell her concert ticket to someone else, then sit through 90 minutes of choirs that did not have our daughter in them (you know the way they do these concerts, right?).  At 8:30pm, our daughter’s choir sang three songs, plus a big closer.  It was amazing.  I’m still humming “Somebody to Love” in my head this morning.

As parents, we’re always creating Moments.  These are our everyday activities:  Providing a good breakfast, helping them with homework, and picking them up after the Friday night football game is over.

Our children will go back someday and visit those Moments.  They may not remember the specifics involved, but they will feel loved.  They will recognize the love and the sacrifice that was involved in creating those Moments.

But what my wife did last night was more than a Moment.  It was a Spiritual Marker.  It was an Old Testament pile of stones, fashioned together for the next generation to revisit, and to remember.  It was something specific that my daughter will come back to throughout her entire lifetime as a specific, tangible evidence that she was loved – a proof that hearing her sing brought more pleasure to our lives than hearing Tim McGraw do the same thing.

And here’s the most difficult part about parenting…

My daughter doesn’t know this yet.

Parents work, and sacrifice, and labor, and strive, and stress, and worry, and protect, and lose sleep, and serve, and spend money, and…

And what if there really isn’t any heart-felt appreciation, or  meaningful “thank you”.  While this can be very difficult for parents (please read “really piss me off”), it also teaches us to more closely understand and embrace the love God has for us.

A love that reached out to us, whether or not we were appreciative of that love.  Many of us never even acknowledge the choice God made for us, borne of His unfailing love.  But the sacrifice, the care, the outpouring of love is still enacted.

And so, as parents, we must also enact.

And know that our specific Spiritual Markers will be revisited.

One day.