Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die, Part 2

Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death
by Reverend John Fanestil

(Page 2 of 3)

Through Barbara, Jim was experiencing what Charles Wesley, almost three centuries earlier, had called "free grace." For Jim, estranged from his first wife and their two grown children, meeting and marrying Barbara had marked the beginning of a whole new life.

At first Jim had believed he was going to church for Barbara's sake, but week by week he found that what he was hearing and experiencing on Sunday mornings was resonating with his own spirit. He asked to become a member of the church and began to call himself a Christian, something he confessed he would have considered, at an earlier stage of life, to be a laughable impossibility.

About a year after joining the church, Jim was diagnosed with cancer — a CAT scan had revealed a malignant tumor growing beneath his skull, behind his left ear. A few weeks later he called me up and asked if I could tell him why he wasn't depressed. I couldn't, of course, but when he told me he was preparing to undergo intensive chemotherapy, I assumed he was mustering a kind of optimism that I had seen before in cancer patients. In my experience, this kind of optimism serves people well, so I offered Jim nothing but encouragement. "I don't know why you're feeling so upbeat," I said, "but I say just run with it."

Something about Jim, though, was different from most cancer patients I had known. Through the course of his treatment, his spiritual awakening accelerated. In the midst of a taxing regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, he was absolutely blooming. He was in love with his wife — "the best wife anyone could ever want." He was in love with his new church — "a great church, a fantastic group of people." He was in love with life.

Knowing that Jim was something of a computer expert, I called him up one day, explained to him that I was in the market for a new laptop, and asked his advice.

"Let's go shopping," he proposed. I was quick to accept the invitation.

The next Wednesday I drove up to the front of Jim's house and, per our agreement, honked the horn. As he walked to the car, I noticed he had lost a lot of weight, something that, ironically, made his entirely average -middle — aged paunch stand out more than it ever had before. He smiled at me and tipped his plaid racing cap — his preferred sartorial strategy for hiding the patchy baldness that chemotherapy had caused.

Jim and I drove to Westwood, to a little computer store that dealt in high volume with faculty and students at nearby UCLA. Jim was on a mission to get me the best laptop money could buy.

After I insisted again and again that I really did need to work within a budget, Jim finally relented. He asked a salesman to start up a couple of different models and took them for a test drive while I looked over his shoulder.

After talking me through a comparison, Jim pointed at the second laptop on the counter and said, "This is a great computer. This is the best value. This will last you a long, long time." Six years later, when I first sat down to type out Jim's story on my Toshiba Satellite 315CDS, I remarked that he was entirely right.

After shopping we drove down the coast and stopped for lunch at a fish house in Marina del Rey. Sitting on the restaurant's sunlit veranda, eating a swordfish sandwich, Jim could hardly contain himself. This was an absolutely incredible day. I had just bought what was arguably the best laptop computer in the world (under $1,500, anyway). We were eating the best swordfish ever caught. Our view of the Pacific was unsurpassed. Surely I had to agree with him: life just doesn't get any better than this.

Jim Wislocki, dying of cancer, was treating me to one of the best days of his life. It was one of the best days of my life too.

That week I determined to pay closer attention to Jim. For several months my own spirit at church had been growing worse and worse. I was bickering with some of the church's leaders — over what I can now barely recall — and I had let these disagreements sour my mood. I decided to try to look at the church through Jim's eyes, to see if I could account for his unabashed enthusiasm.

At the coffee hour the following Sunday, Jim worked the room as if he were the pastor, not I. He welcomed newcomers, singing the praises of his new church family and bragging about my preaching. He consoled the people, sick or grieving, whose names had been lifted during the time of public prayer.

Even the people I experienced as most difficult Jim found delightful. He called me over to hear a story that Dave Lovell was telling him, not knowing that Dave and I had been engaged in a bitter argument just the week before. With Jim egging him on, Dave started the story over and when he finished, the three of us laughed and laughed.

Over the course of the next few weeks I stayed in close touch with Jim Wislocki. It dawned on me that I was sick in spirit, and Jim's infectious grace was the perfect remedy. Following his lead, I began once again to practice the simple discipline of looking for the best in people, instead of expecting the worst. My heart softened.

Eventually, Jim gave up on chemotherapy. The tumor had not responded to treatment and was continuing to spread. His oncologist said surgery was not an option because the tumor was deeply enmeshed with his brain. He would continue with radiation, to delay the cancer's spread, but he stopped all curative measures in hopes of improving the quality of his remaining weeks or months.

At this point in his life Jim astonished me. Quite simply, he displayed no fear or apprehension in the face of death. In fact, apart from the thought of leaving Barbara, he did not give any real signs of lament. Every day was better than before, filled with remarkable surprises and unexpected gifts. As his body died from cancer, Jim's spirit was being filled to the brim with life and love.

In his last weeks, Jim was overcome by a sense of oneness with God. I asked him what he thought about dying, and, a scientist through and through, he said he conceived of it like this: "It is all energy and mass. And if I live or if I die, I will still be a part of the cosmos, I will still be a part of God. I will have changed in form but I will not cease to be." Jim's formulation struck me as an authentic attempt to put into modern language the inexpressible, inescapable mystery of God's immeasurable grace. As Christians the world over sing almost weekly in worship, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen."

A few weeks after his death, I remembered Jim in a Mother's Day sermon at church. I shared with people how Barbara, by "refusing to let the past get in the way," had demonstrated for Jim the very essence of God's grace. And I shared how blessed I had been by Jim's readiness to share that same grace with me.

Copyright © 2006 by John Fanestil. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

John Fanestil, a native of San Diego, is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Oxford University — where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar — and the Claremont School of Theology. Since 1992 he has worked as a pastor at United Methodist churches in Southern California.