Roy Exum
I’m just back in town from almost five weeks on my back in a hospital bed, so trust me when I admit a man’s thinking changes when he wears pajama bottoms every day for the first time in over 50 years.
Lordy, I haven’t even been away from home for that long in the last 40 years, so please understand I was doubly-disgusted when I returned to life's campfire to hear a man in my village, one who has just learned he has a bad disease, is spending these precious days going around telling each of his friends goodbye.
Now it is none of my business how a person chooses to die. Sooner or later it will happen to even the best of us, but it is very obvious this guy has never memorized every word to a country song called “Live Like You Are Dying.”
I’d heard the song a bunch but never paid much attention to the words until a friend sent me a tape of the National Quarter Horse Association Finals. The event is really huge, but just before this one girl made her final ride, the announcer explained in a breaking voice she was dedicating the ride to the memory of her Dad, a man who had died just two weeks before after training horse and daughter for this very moment.
When the gates opened at the packed arena, out she came, and, to the astonishment of the well-versed crowd, she was riding bareback in the finals! No saddle, no bridle, steering her beloved horse with only her knees and one hand on its mane.
I’ll defy Satan his ugly self not to cry as the rider and the horse became one in the greatest ride I’ve ever seen in my life. And while the performance totally mesmerized the electrified standing-room-only crowd, over the sound system is Tim McGraw’s classic song about a man who found out some X-rays reveal he’s running out of time.
So, what did the sick man do? Here’s the song’s chorus: “I went sky-diving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing, I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. And I loved deeper, and spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying … and he said someday I hope you get the chance … to live like you’re dying.”
Well, as the song ends, the girl looks like she’s going to dismount her horse, but, no, instead she literally stands up on her horse’s back, and, as those in the arena go absolutely crazy, she stretches her arms up toward heaven to hug her dad one last time. Trust me, the tape is so sensational I’ll keep a copy until I croak.
But my real deal is that in the last six weeks, I’ve listened to Tim McGraw sing that very song at least 100 times, and I’ve memorized every note, much less each word to one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in my life.
You see, about a year ago I got one of these iPods, the little machine that will enable you to download just about any song that ever came out. I also bought a book called “The Idiot’s Guide to iPod,” but, lacking a degree from MIT, I was hopelessly overcome by the daunting complexities of the thing.
But in the same hospital last month – right down the hall - was a teenager who’d been terribly burned, so I put on a surgical mask and a special suit where he couldn’t catch my cooties, and in about 20 minutes time, we were knee-deep in rock ‘n roll.
Later, back in my room, I downloaded some different songs like “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, “I Believe” by the great Frankie Lane, “Climb Every Mountain” by the Van Trapp Singers and “Born Free” by Jimmy Darren.
Listen, I’ve got Mama Cass singing both “It’s Getting Better” and “The Good Times Are Coming.” I have Walt Disney’s Jiminy Cricket himself singing “When You Wish Upon A Star” and the Carolina beach music classic by the Band of Oz, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
So when I’d wake up in the middle of the night, or when the days would get long, I’d get a heavy dose of inspiration and top it off with Willie Nelson singing “If You Got The Money, Honey, I Got The Time,” and life would be just swell.
I’m like Randy Pausch in his phenomenal "Last Lecture;" if you want to feel sorry for me, I hate to disappoint you. Find somewhere else for your pity party; I’m looking for at least four seconds on ol’ Fu Manchu. I’m serious. If I spot Mr. Gloom-and-Doom coming my way, I’ll outrun him to a nearby beer parlor and swap funny jokes until real late at night.
Trust me on this; nobody wants to talk to anyone who is terminal about anything sad. But show me a determined guy with a hard jaw who spends his last days doing things like teaching a kid at the children’s home how to ride a bicycle or potting petunias for widows or helping a neighbor stake some tomatoes, and I’ll happily pray the Lord gives him an extra inning or two. Don't give away your things - give away yourself.
It ain’t about dying. It’s about living. It’s not about using the last bottle of medicine, it’s about enjoying the very last drop. Brother, I am not good at all when it comes to wringing hands, but if, at the very end, somebody comes along with a tape of Tim Conway out-takes or some of those wonderful Candid Cameras where you get laughing so hard you’re a threat to wet your pants, that’s what I’m talking about.
Those who wallow around in self pity get exactly what they are seeking – self pity - and it is so vile, the last people you should splatter with it are those you hold closest to your heart. Think about it ... nobody enjoys whimpers or whines. And for Pete's sake don't complain about anything. All that does is make everybody around you miserable, and it, like self-pity, ain't nothing but a terribly selfish act.
Many years ago Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
I believe that. I also believe that if suddenly you have weeks or months to live instead of years, you ought to ride motorcycles even faster, swing on a rope over a creek until way past dark and, more than anything else, leave mischief instead of misery for your family to giggle about at the funeral home.
Go for the gusto. Make every cone a triple scoop. I’m begging you. And it’s so very simple. Live like you are dying.
royexum@aol.com