I learned a few days ago of the death of my cousin Jim, who suffered a heart attack fishing off a pier in Galveston, Texas. Jim, who was in his mid-70s, had had a weak heart for many years. It ran in his family - as will become clear in a moment.
I loved Jim and his family - his children were actually about the same age as me and my siblings. When I was growing up they lived just a few blocks from our house, and we used to visit them often. Jim was a dedicated outdoorsman whose home was filled with hunting trophies - very different from our house. I think now that my father’s experiences as a Marine in the Pacific during WWII had burned up any desire he had to shoot things. So listening to Jim’s stories - often told along with my other cousins and uncles who enjoyed the outdoors - brought me into contact with a world I never experienced firsthand. Jim was always laughing, telling jokes, enjoying his life to the fullest. A great guy to be around.
His younger brother Carl was cut from the same cloth - both as an outdoorsman and as a man with a weak heart. Seven weeks before Jim passed away, Carl suffered a fatal heart attack while dove hunting in Mexico. His doctors had warned Carl that his heart condition was increasingly serious, and that he should avoid strenuous physical activity. But Carl was not a man to sit at home and do nothing. He made the conscious decision to continue living his life the way he wanted. He traveled to Mexico for the hunting trip, as he had done many times before. He died doing the the thing he loved to do.
So it was with Jim. Same warning, same conscious decision. Along with his son Mike, he went to Galveston for the fishing trip he’d been looking forward to. On that day, his line was in the water. A fish took the bait, and Jim snapped his rod back sharply, setting the hook the way he’d done since he was a boy. As he reeled the fish in, he looked at Mike, said “Oh no,” and collapsed. One last fish. Like his brother, Jim’s life ended exactly the way he wanted it to - not in a convalescent’s bed, but with a fish on the line.
Jim and Carl inherited their troublesome hearts from their father Ernest, a master plumber who built a contracting business that survives to this day. In the early 1960s Ernest’s doctor told him that his heart was failing, and recommended that he stay in his office and leave the plumbing to his sons. He decided instead that he loved his work too much to give it up, and not long after that passed away while climbing a ladder on a jobsite.
Not many of us get to choose how we go, and I suppose even those who do seldom have it work out the way it did for these guys. Like their father, Jim and Carl were loving, honorable, hard-working men who touched many lives (including mine). I can’t help feeling a deep sense of admiration for the way they stuck to their guns (and fishing rods) to the very end. May we all have that much courage.
Post a Comment