(continued)....

He was married and had young children. He loved life and none of his friends could see why someone like him should have been stricken by such a double dose of cancer. He and his wife had heard of my HOPE work, and they came to me to see if anything could be done in the face of this terrible condition. We three talked about the "why" of life, that which calls us to life itself, and I helped him focus on the answer to this existential question by asking him, “If there were one thing that you would like to do with the rest of your life, would you know what it would be?” He replied that he didn't know.

I had learned from a remarkable New Zealander how to share a meditation that focused on revealing intention. When I described this to him, he asked me to do it with him, and I agreed. It took three meetings of this shared meditation, each about one and one-half hours long, for him to silently explore the question and get the answer. He announced its arrival with a delighted shout: "I've got it!" I asked him if he'd mind sharing with me what he had gotten. He looked at me with a delighted grin on his face and said, "I'm going to see to it that my kids get through college.” I asked him if he knew how he was going to do it, to which the immediate answer was, "Yes!" I asked him when he would begin. He grinned and said, "As soon as you get the hell out of here Hamilton!" I grinned back, we shared a hug, and I left.

Eight days later, my phone rang; it was his wife. She said, "Rich died this morning. After you left last week, he got us all together and said 'I'm going to show you what I know about life. Let's go have fun!' Every day we learned new things about him and from him. It was the most remarkable gift that anyone can imagine. He woke me this morning, saying, 'Get the kids, Honey; I'm going.' I ran into their room, woke them, and we held him while he went.

"I have just come back from the lawyer's, she went on, "and I had no idea of the size of his estate. He always kept that information from us." I asked her if he had left enough money to be able to pay for the children's college education, to which she replied, "Oh, most certainly so."

I reflected the following back at her: "If he had spent the next two months in the hospital, what would have happened to his estate?" To which she replied: "There wouldn't have been any." I told her then of his final words to me. We were silent for quite a while before saying goodbye, and I suspect that her tears joined mine and filled the silence.