Our 40th high school class reunion of the Salina Central Mustangs and Salina South Cougars is coming up, Class of 1972, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again. During our time together, we shared a number of interesting experiences—the splitting of Salina High School into two separate schools and successes in a number of sports endeavors— all at a time where our nation as a whole was trying to deal with the winding down of the Vietnam War. We get together with the gang from South, because we hung out with them, too. At Central, we were a class of about 250 kids and since that time, we’ve lost about 10% of our classmates to time, and we will have a memorial service for them when we gather. We certainly had our moments during our school days—plus and minus, as all high school classes do.
One of my very good friends from high school and college is Sid Bacon. Sid was an outstanding tennis player, a solid basketball player, and was a year younger than me. We played basketball together at Salina Central for the Mighty Mustangs. Sid came to KU the year after I arrived, and joined my fraternity— Phi Gamma Delta. He was a part of my wedding to Marlis, my wife of nearly 38 years now. Sid went on to have an outstanding career as a professor of speech and hearing, psychoacoustics, and was Dean of the Natural Sciences at Arizona State University, and is now married with grown kids—one of whom just got married.
A couple of months ago, Sid let me know that he was getting ready to run in a race, and got word from his doctor that the results of some recent tests were in. Sid had felt some pains in his back, and upon follow-up, the tests showed that Sid now has Stage IV pancreatic cancer. It came on suddenly, and now Sid is fully engaged in battling with this challenge.
Sid is communicating with friends and family through a website called CaringBridge. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with this process, if you’ve had someone you know who is ill, or in recovery. It allows folks who are engaged in these challenges to keep everyone posted as to what’s going on in their life, and for us to send notes of encouragement. I have to tell you—Sid’s writings are very uplifting to all who subscribe to this network, and I look forward to reading them daily.
As he goes through tests, transfusions, and continued chemotherapy, we’ve started a group called “Team Bacon”. There are Team Bacon T-shirts, and posters, and the like– to let Sid know that we are on his “recovery team”. As Sid goes for treatment or tests at the hospital, he and the nurses there in Arizona have come up with positive adjectives to described the days . . . ”Marvelous Monday”, “Terrific Tuesday” and the like. But he needed some ideas to describe Thursday, and so earlier this week, we all sent in our suggestions.
Here was his response on Thursday:
I am grateful today, so today is Thankful Thursday. I have so much to be thankful for; I just hope I can stay focused on those things and on the moment of each day. The better I feel, the more focused I need to be, as I tend to slip back into old habits of ignoring the moment and planning the future. A balance of the two is okay and appropriate, but it isn’t okay to miss today completely when planning for tomorrow. I am thankful that I feel well today, am able to work, and that I have such a wonderful group of family and friends, whose unending support gives me the courage and strength to fight.
The message embedded here is that as we work so very hard scurrying around, caught up in “activities” and “planning” for the tomorrows— and while we’re doing so—we sometimes miss this joys of today. Every day is an incredible gift. Today is filled with moments and opportunities to live, and love, and laugh, and share. And these moments strung together, create a lifetime. I’m a big believer in planning for the future, with written goals and objectives, and action plans to get there, but we shouldn’t forget the most important aspect of all…. to live this moment.
That is all. Live this moment. Be Thankful. Engage in life.
I hope that your day is filled with the moments that you can enjoy and build upon. Hug someone special today.
Blessings,
tw
