Crossing the finish line with an Angel on my shoulder...

Todd and I are officially four short weeks from crossing the finish line at our first triathlon in Sunriver, OR.

I never imagined how meaningful this training would become. And how one person's amazing fight with cancer could motivate and push me to limits I needed to surpass.

Scott passed away last Friday, May 22nd, after a year long fight with cancer. I have known Scott since birth. He was a friend and a big brother. He coined the term big bad wolf for his cancer. He rode his bicycle after rounds of chemo. And he laughed, smiled and brought joy and energy to all the people around him. To give you an idea of what kind of person Scott was, his own oncologist could not tell him his fight with the big bad wolf was over…

Scott embraced and embodied "What you do today is important because you exchange a day of your life for it."

The following story came from one of Scott's fraternity brothers. I shed many tears reading this and I now have it printed and saved to read over and over again. What a wonderful reminder to embrace life.

Scott, I will be carrying you across the finish line on my shoulder. Here’s to making memories, my friend.

Making Memories
By Paul H. Dunn

Life is a hurried affair for all of us. We rush from task to task, frantic in our chase. Our days sometimes become mere laundry lists of things to do – item 1, item 2, item 3.

And these can seem so all-important, so big to us.

Making a business appointment seems more crucial than telling our sweethearts that we love them; cleaning the house takes first place over reading the little child a story.

On and on we rush until life becomes “full of sound and fury,” signifying very little to us.

Have you ever awakened in the morning and realized that not once this week, or this month, or this year, has life really touched you – that not one moment lately has really mattered? Have you ever thought that days and days lie behind you forgotten because they were full, sometimes bursting, with insignificant busyness?

Do you remember the story of a mother who was expecting company for dinner? She had the meat browning in the oven, the cherry pies cooling in the window. So she grabbed a jacket and ran outside where her children were playing. “C’mon, you great kids,” she said. “Let’s go make a memory.”

Together they climbed into the old jeep that was perfect for the canyon, a very short drive away.

They spent an hour collecting rocks in a bag. “Look at this one,” said the mother. “Its underside is yellow like a fire.”

“Come see this one, “ she said. “Its been worn by the wind and is smooth.”

On the way home from their excursion, bouncing in the jeep, the mother exclaimed in consternation, “Oh no! I forgot to make the rolls for dinner.”

“Who cares? Who cares?” said the children. “We’re making memories.”

And the dinner guest that night didn’t even miss the rolls.

What makes a few rare moments in our lives stand out like diamonds in the sand? Why do we cling to certain mental pictures for years when we can hardly remember yesterday morning?

Well, things of the heart last forever! When all of our resounding accomplishments sound empty, when all our glorious material possessions are out-of-date or faded, we remember those magic moments when time stood still and the clouds seemed not to move and we really loved what we loved; when we took the time to show those dearest to us how we felt in the small ways that echo so powerfully in our lives.

Do you remember the apostle Paul’s words on love in Corinthians?
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not [love], I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not [love], I am nothing.

“and though I bestow all my goods to fee the poor, and though I give m body to be burned, and not [love], it profiteth me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3.)
and our lives can seem like so much nothing if we don’t take time, conscious time, to make loving memories.

Take the father who often slipped a candy bar under his daughter’s books as she studied late for college exams. Take the husband who put a note by his wife’s plate at dinnertime, thanking her for a fine meal. Take the grandmother who called a little boy to tell him there was a magnificent sunset outside that he really must see.

Little things, really – not expensive, not time-consuming – but oh, hat an impact; what memories they make; what love they show.

Here’s a story that a young woman, Frances Powler, told about one of those times. It was a day in some ways like any other in her childhood, but she never forgot it.

It was a hectic Saturday in spring, back in the days when the adage “six days shalt though labour, and do all thy work” was taken seriously.
Outside, Frances’ father and the next-door neighbor, Mr. Patrick, were doing chores.

Inside the houses her mother and Mrs. Patrick were engaged in spring housecleaning. Such a windy March day was ideal for turning out clothes closets. Already woolens flapped on the backyard clotheslines.

Frances was hard at work, but somehow her brothers and the Patrick boys had slipped away with their kites to the back lot. Apparently, there was no limit to the heights to which kites would soar that day. Her mother looked out the window. The sky was piercing blue, the breeze fresh and exciting. Up in the all the blueness sailed great, puffy pillows of clouds. It had been a long, hard winter, but today, today was spring.

Then her mother turned to look at the sitting room, its furniture disordered for a vacuum sweeping. The mother hesitated for a minute as her eyes wavered between her work and the window. Finally, she said, “come on, girls! Let’s take string to the boys and watch them fly the kites a minute.”

On the way they met Mrs. Patrick and her daughter heading for the back lot and laughing guiltily.

“There never was such a day for flying kites, “ Frances said. God doesn’t make two such days in a century. They played all their fresh twine into the boy’ kites, and still they soared. Now and then they slowly reeled one in, finally bringing it dipping and tugging to the earth for the sheer joy of sending it up again. What a thrill for Frances, just a little girl, to run with those kites to the right, to the left, and see their poor, earthbound movements reflected minutes later in the majestic sky dance of the kites. She and the other children wrote wishes on slips of paper and slipped them over the string. Slowly, irresistibly, those wishes climbed up until they reached the kites. Surely, all such wishes would be granted!

Frances remembers that even their fathers dropped hoe and hammer and joined them. Their mothers took their turns, too, laughing like schoolgirls. Her mother’s hair, she said, blew out of its pompadour and curled loose about her cheeks; Mother’s gingham apron whipped about her lap.

Mingled with the children’s fun was something akin to awe. The grown-ups were really playing with them. Frances looked at her mother and thought she actually looked pretty. And she was over forty.

They never knew where the hours went on that hilltop. There were no hours, just a golden, windy day. Parents forgot duty and their dignity; children forgot their competitiveness and small spites. “Perhaps this is the Kingdom of Heaven,” Frances thought.

It was growing dark before they all stumbled sleepily back to their houses. There must have been a surface tidying up, for Frances said the house on Sunday looked decorous enough.

The strange thing was, none of them mentioned that day afterwards. Perhaps they were embarrassed that any day could mean so much. Frances locked the memory up in that deepest part of her that we all have – that part where we keep the things that cannot be, yet are.

The years went on; Frances grew up and moved far away from her kite-flying hill.

Then one day she was scurrying about her own city apartment, trying to get some work out while her three-year old daughter insistently cried the desire to “go to the park and see the ducks.”

“I can’t go,” she said. “I have this to do and when I’m through I’ll be too tired to walk that far.”

Frances’ mother, who was visiting, looked up from the peas she was boiling. “It’s a wonderful day,” she offered. “Really warm, yet there’s a fresh breeze. It reminds me of that day we flew kites.”

Frances stopped in her dash between stove and sink. The locked door flew open and with it a rush of memories. She pulled off her apron. “Come on,” she told her little girl. “It’s too good a day to miss.”

Another decade passed in Frances’ life. The world was in the aftermath of a great war. All evening her family had been with one of the Patrick boys, hearing about his experience as a prisoner of war. He had talked freely, but then for a long time had been silent. What was he thinking of – what dark and dreadful things?

“Say,” a smile twitched his lips. “Do you remember…? No, of course you wouldn’t. it probably didn’t make the impression on you that it did on me.”

Frances hardly dared speak. “Remember what?” she said.

He answered, “I used to think of that day a lot in prisoner-of-war camps, when things weren’t too good. Do you remember the day we flew the kites?”

Winter came, and the Frances had the sad duty of paying a condolence call to Mrs. Patrick, recently widowed. She dreaded the call. She couldn’t imagine how Mrs. Patrick could face life alone.

At the visit they talked a little of their families and changes in the town. Then Mrs. Patrick was silent, looking down at her lap.

Frances cleared her throat. Now she must say something about the loss, and Mrs. Patrick would surely cry.

But when Mrs. Patrick looked up, she was smiling. “I was just sitting here thinking.” She said. “Henry had such fun that day. Frances, do you remember the day we flew the kites?”

A kite-flying day. What was so special about that one day when work was left behind and memories were made? Why did one day sustain so many people through many decades of time?

Make a memory today. Do something to touch the deepest part of you. Consciously decide that you won’t let today become one of the those yesterdays that was just too full to take the time to love. A single moment may sustain you for years.

Thank God for memories!

Taken from the book “Look at Your World” by Paul H. Dunn – currently out of print