Almost a year ago my mother-in-law, Pam Donovan, passed away at 65 from breast cancer. In the weeks before her death, my wife, Alice, and I were in the process of moving from Atlanta to Tampa. As we were traveling down I-75 with an SUV full of clothes and pets, we got the call from Alice’s dad that we should get settled as quickly as possible and come see Pam. The unspoken words were that we should come say good-bye. As soon as the movers delivered our furniture and boxes, we secured the house and headed to Fernandina Beach, Florida, where my in-laws live.
As we sat in their living room, Pam was extremely weak. She was sitting in a recliner. I could say a lot about Pam’s personality but everyone knew her as the conversation starter and the liveliest gal in the room. On this day however that was not case. She drifted in and out of the conversation. She told us she was enjoying just listening to us. When she was able to participate, she talked about the things in her life she had enjoyed and was proud of. Pam was not someone who spent a lot of time on regrets. The regrets that she did have were about the things she had yet to do and the wishes she had for the future. “I wish I was going to be here to see you flourish” she to Alice and me. Shortly afterwards, she was too weak to stay up. We help her to bed, hugged her, told her we loved her and said good-bye. It was the last time we would see her alive.
Alice and I have carried those words around with us ever since. It was as if Pam’s final instruction to us was to “flourish”. We now feel that we owe that to her. But what does that mean. What does it mean to “flourish”? We’ve talked a lot about that in the months since. We’ve made some changes in our lives and continue to do so. I’ve created this blog so that I can document those and what we find along the way. I’ll write about how and what we defined as flourishing for us and what we do with those things. I’ll write about what things work, what things don’t and what goes wrong. Different days may be about different things. We may talk about money one day and God the next. But will put it all out there and together it’ll all be about living up to Pam’s wish for us.
What does it mean for you? What would (or does) your flourishing life look like?
