- When: 05/21/17
- QIC: Bono
I ask a lot of questions, and over the last couple of months one of those questions is about how to live my life knowing that death is approaching. Papa Smurf helped to show me, not how to die with dignity, but how to live with an infectious strength of spirit and perseverance. That’s what #CoopStrong means in the lexicon.
The other question I’ve been pondering is about legacy. Men crave the answer to that question. After death, what is left. Papa Smurf also left me with an answer to that question. His legacy symbolically started during GrowRuck 02, where 59 men carried a #CoopStrong brick and ended Saturday night when Mary Ann took a deep breath, shed a little tear and thought it was a great idea that Papa carry one of those bricks with him from now on.
Maybe legacy is having a spirit and core that others want to carry with them each and every day. It’s a spirit that starts with the knowledge that our lives matter to so many. It continues with our daily duty to do good work, God’s work as we exit the gloom every morning. It continues with an infectious spirit to laugh and learn and most importantly LOVE everyday and even to get Chickin Fried at just the right time. Finally, it is in the ability to press on. Press on when it seems like the storm cloud is overtaking us. We all will press on.
Papa Smurfs legacy may live in those blue CoopStong “7th” bricks. They may live in his quote from above that guides us when we need it. But maybe, just maybe, his legacy lives in each and every one of us. Maybe ever lasting life not only takes place in heaven, maybe it also takes place in each and every life that Papa touched.
He will live in me…everyday.
Great BB, Bono. Papa had an amazing way of including everyone. I often think of a Tuesday lunch at Crossbones. It was after the diagnosis and he had started using the walking sticks by then. There was maybe 12 of us at the lunch and he was at the opposite end of the table from me. What sticks out is that he wrote a backblast and in the BB he mentioned something that I was talking about with Past Due. Papa listened to those around him. That is a trait that is sorely lacking in this world today, and if I take anything from my all too brief interactions with Papa Smurf it is that I will be intentional in taking the time to listen to those around me.