April 21^st was a beautiful spring day; Mike was down to Vancouver from Seattle for us to do some joint work and to help with dad as much as possible. I woke up a at my place, a couple of miles away from mom and dad’s and got ready to go to the gym as I usually did on a Friday morning. But that morning, for some reason, I decided not to go and, instead, went over to see how the family did through the night. When I got there I could tell immediately that it was rough – Mike and mom looked tired as I greeted them and I tried to give dad good morning hug, but there was too much pain. I laid down beside him on the bed and he turned to me and said “Why don’t I just go, and meet you at the pearly gates?”  I said no because it was not time yet and he put his hand in fist, mustered up all the strength he could and whispered, “Okay, not yet.”

As we tried to make him comfortable, we prayed. About an hour later I guess our prayers were answered as Mom and Mike and I witnessed a miracle. He told us with his motions that he wanted to stand up. We thought that was odd and encouraged to stay lying down. He was quite persuasive though, and convinced us to get him up off the bed. We put each of his arms around one of us, much like you’d carry an injured football player off the field, and got him to the end of the bed. Then, this man that did not have the strength to talk, let alone move his body, lifted himself up. As he was standing up he raised his head and opened his eyes with a certain joy and curiosity, and he died.

Mike called 911, I administered CPR, mom continued to encourage him, but it was too late – he was born to the miracle of eternal life.

Now as I drove through the gorge that day this series of events, to me, was awesome. Not awesome like “cool” awesome; awesome like “big” awesome – like the Grand Canyon is awesome…How symbolic this was of his life, and that a man - just like you or me - could go through what he had gone through and still want to stand up. Here is a guy that had been through two rounds of lethal chemotherapy; “Zapped” as we called by several rounds of radiation; any strength he ever had taken out of him, his body so frail. For two years if they weren’t taking blood out of him they were putting it in him so his veins were like pin cushions. His arm pits hurt; hemorrhoids so bad he could hardly sit down – and a spleen that felt like he was being stabbed with the pain of a knife that was left in – every time he moved it irritated him and felt like someone just turned the knife…and many, many more discomforts that I just don’t care to remember.  Compound all this with mental fatigue he must have had since for three years he had to work with his mind and his spirit each day to overcome the negative thoughts the doctors felt compelled to continually express.

 …And he was standing up?   

Just think what we can do.

To me it is awesome, the capacity we all have to grow, to learn to endure and to succeed. I would not have thought any human being could have the kind of courage and strength it must have taken him to stand up at that point. He often repeated what others have said about life…How the measure of a person is not in never falling, but in how that person stands up.

And so this final lesson from my dad has served me well. After sulking for a month I realized at that point that when my brother and I lose our best friend, our manager, our leader, our mentor, our golf coach and golfing buddy – we could stand up. When my mother looses her husband, when my grandmother looses her son – they could stand up.  When we, as individuals, are faced with challenges, we can stand up.  When our spirituality is not right were we want it, we can stand up. When our physical fitness is not like we wish, we can stand up. In business – if things don’t just as good as we want them to, we can stand up. When we don’t make a sale or feel misled, we can stand up. And by all means when leads slow down, when our phones go out, computers malfunction, email servers don’t cooperate and the parameds mess it all up, we CAN stand up. When we face the daily challenges that are inevitable, we CAN stand up. “No matter how bad it gets,” he told this son with those final actions, “stand up.”

It’s all about standing up friends. We will get knocked down and are called to “Dust off and get back on the horse.” Nick will tell you that in hockey they actually take note of how quickly a player can get up off the ice. Benjamin Franklin discovered the light bulb after hundreds of “failures”.  Howard Shultz, of Starbucks fame, was told his idea would not work -- I guess he got up. Abraham Lincoln lost several elections before he won a big one. The examples are literally endless. The obstacles show themselves in varying shapes and sizes with little ones each day and bigger ones each year. We’ll do our best if we can form the habit of Standing Up.

It IS in us all – this capacity to grow, to adapt, to endure, and to succeed. YOU have this large capacity to develop all you ever want and more and YOU are awesome. As we build our lives and indeed this business, remember to dream big because we all have incredible capabilities. If you ever need proof of that, or just a little bit more inspiration, maybe you can think about man who died…while he was Standing Up.

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Thanks dad, we’ve built a business I think you’d be proud of. Great people, like you always said, and we work the dickens out of it. Your stamp is all over this thing and we’ll continue to need your influence. Keep me humble, keep me passionate, keep me between the ditches… I hear you telling me that this is just the beginning and The Lord has a grand plan for us – we’ll just keep doing the right thing and doing a bunch of it. You just watch us daddy-o, we’re gonna touch a lot of lives, overcome obstacles, and kick some royal ass.