NOT-SO-GRIM REAPER IN LIFE

Toilet plunger pump - “This I do know beyond any reasonable doubt. Regardless of what you are doing, if you pump long enough, hard enough and enthusiastically enough, sooner or later the effort will bring forth the reward.”

Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper and founded the company that became International Harvester, was a generous contributor to Chicago's Presbyterian Theological School. Because of that fact, the school later changed its name to McCormick Theological Seminary. Faculty and students have quipped that death is never referred to as "The Grim Reaper" at McCormick, but always as "The International Harvester."

"Grim" is not a word which describes the experience of many people who find themselves nearing life's end. Like Dr. Abraham Maslow commented after a heart attack which made him realize that his own death was not far away: "Death, and its ever-present possibility makes love, passionate love, more possible. I wonder if we could love passionately, if ecstasy would be possible at all, if we knew we'd never die."

Likewise, psychiatrist Irvin Yalom, who worked with terminally ill cancer patients, reported that "grimness" was far from their attitudes about passing on. In Dr. Chris Thurman's book, THE TRUTHS WE MUST BELIEVE (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1991), Yalom tells us that once his patients accepted the fact that their lives were rapidly drawing to an end, positive and exciting changes occurred:

* They felt a sense of freedom to do what they wanted to do.

* They lived in, and enjoyed, the present.

* They learned to vividly appreciate the world around them.

* They joyously anticipated holidays.

* They communicated deeper with loved ones.

* They feared less and risked more.

Because these people knew they were dying, they figured out how to live! Nothing grim here. They came alive in ways never before possible.

Oh, maybe you don't want to volunteer to leave this life today, but we'll each set off on that journey soon enough. And it promises to be an exciting adventure. But in the meantime, what if you set out to live every moment as if your short days here were truly numbered? When "The International Harvester" someday reaps your life, may it have been joyful, fearless and well-lived.

From Lifesupport.

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