A few observations:
Resurrecting these memories reminded me of just how often people really do deliver for each other with no expectation that their effort be rewarded. It gave me hope and the incentive to try to do the same.
I’m not a bucket list person. Most people don’t have that luxury. It is a privilege to enjoy the rewarding cycle of being curious, trying something new, failing a bit and succeeding. I still want to try hard things and to finish what I’ve started. Between about six-teen and fifty-five years old the “hard things” and the “had to” was a way of life. Now it is a choice. It never want to stop taking risks and trying.
I love the breaking of a glass at the celebratory end of a Jewish wedding… representative of life’s fragility and the reminder to us all to commit to pick up life’s pieces and try to create good. So, I conclude on a sobering story because life is messy and our world is a mess. Creating the chance to say thank you is my way of picking up a few pieces of broken glass.
Finally, when did we stop putting a space between sentences? There are some things I’m just incapable of evolving.
1982: Dear Don Cheadle and Stacey Cheadle, Hoping to thank my first and best boss
Dear Don and Stacey Cheadle,
This is a bit embarrassing, but a heartfelt attempt to share a message of gratitude with your family. I had my first “professional” summer job in the Customer Service Department of the Colorado National Bank of Denver in the early 1980’s. I had a terrific boss who I remember as Beverly Cheadle. My parents, Don and Mary Hoagland, who were Denver residents for decades, made the connection later in my life that she was possibly a relative of your family.