A well lived life!

               My husband and I had planned to go on a date on Saturday.  With his travel schedule for work and our son’s baseball schedule, I felt like I hadn’t spent any significant time with him in weeks.  We planned to go out to dinner while our son spent time with friends.

                Providence had other plans.  Rather than going to dinner, we spent several hours driving to Richmond to attend the memorial service and wake of a friend.  My husband Dave worked with Cecil for several years in the 1990’s. Cecil was a mentor for my husband.  I became friend with Cecil and his wife Mary though various family-work functions and they came to our wedding.  When they retired, we visited their Richmond home a few times.  In mid-April it was apparent that he didn’t have much time left and Dave drove on a Sunday afternoon to Richmond to see him one last time.

                Much to the surprise of Mary, Cecil’s wife, he was lucid and in great spirits.  He was delighted to see my husband and they had a great visit.  Hours later he slipped into a coma and he left this world on Wednesday.  He was husband, father, Methodist minister, Navy chaplain, Goodwill executive and spent the last years of “retirement” as the Executive Director of the Chaplain Service Prison Ministry in Virginia.  His alter ego was “Mac the Great”, a magician that would entertain the young and old alike. 

                Cecil’s Methodist memorial service, which he planned, was nearly two hours long! Family, friends and colleagues paid tribute to him.  Many of them ended their comments with one of his favorite jokes.

                He and Mary lived modestly.  Their marriage of 58 years was truly a love story. They travelled some, mainly to see family or former colleagues.  Their retirement of 17 years was in service to others. (She was his unpaid secretary-partner with the prison ministry.)  He was well loved because he loved others so well.  Who knows how many lives he touched for the better?

                As I sat at the memorial service, my thought was, “What a well lived life!”  I am a better person for having known him.  Sharing this experience with my husband was far better than just going out to dinner.  It gave us a chance to reminisce about Cecil and to think out loud about what we envision for our retirement.  God Bless you Cecil!

                I wonder if Cecil greeted St. Peter with one of his favorite jokes, or a magic trick!