By John Peccavi December 21, 2019
Even if you know someone only briefly, you can make a big difference in that person's life.
Even if you don't live in this world 100 years, or even 70, or even less, you can make it better.
And people will remember.
Consider my friend Diane Moody, who died in 2011 at age 55. Although I only saw her 3 times, and we lived 500 miles apart, her gift changed me forever.
But let me start with a flashback. In 1973, my friend Gary and I graduated from Wayne State University Law School and went separate ways. He opened a law practice in the Detroit area. Eventually, I wound up outside Nashville, Tennessee.
After many years, my work brought me, briefly, to Detroit. One evening in March 2010, I drove to Farmington Hills to visit my friend Gary, whom I hadn't seen in decades. It was then I met his friend Diane. At a nearby restaurant, we ate chili dogs ("coney islands" to Detroiters) and talked.
Diane had been fighting advanced breast cancer and feared its spread to her lungs. Nonetheless, she was one of the most cheerful people I ever met. When we began discussing poetry, which Diane loved, her frailness seemed to disappear. Inspired, I began writing sonnets for my wife.
In October, my work again took me to Detroit. By then, Diane did not feel well enough to go to a restaurant, but when we began discussing the poetry of John Donne, she radiated enthusiasm.
When my work returned me to Detroit in January 2011, I saw Diane for the last time face–to–face. The disease had progressed to the point that she needed a portable oxygen tank. Still, when we talked about poetry, a vital glow returned. How could she possibly be so cheerful?
Diane described a turning point in her struggle with cancer. It had occurred the previous year. The disease had not yet mounted its final, lethal assault, but already it had inflicted considerable damage both to body and spirit. At that point, she saw herself as "a damaged person with limited possibilities." Then, while sitting in a hospital waiting room, Diane met a volunteer artist, Svetlana, who offered to teach her how to paint.
Diane knew little about painting but decided to learn. As she painted (the banner above includes a self portrait she did as an exercise) she discovered a joy within her, a kind of artesian spring of creativity. Diane began writing poetry to accompany the visual.
In February 2011, she entered hospice care, but the cancer destroying her body could not touch her spirit. She teamed with Svetlana to begin a blog called "Art For Everyone." On it, Diane described how she had "reconnected with the wholeness that resides within, a wholeness untouched by cancer, chemo or radiation. That's the secret, the magic key that changed my life."
Diane's sense of wholeness, unaffected by deteriorating physical condition and need for additional oxygen, had been clearly visible when I visited in January. After returning to Tennessee, I continued discussing poetry with Diane by email. I sent her one of my sonnets, which she praised. Encouraged, I decided to try to become a published poet. My emails to Diane now began "Dear Muse."
Searching for a publisher, I quickly learned that my poetic style was way out of date. My poems were straightforward narration – something like "roses are red" – and the lines rhymed. That wouldn't sell today.
I decided to try to imitate the style of a modern poet. After much sweat, I finished a poem, set it aside for a day and then read it over. It neither rhymed nor made sense. I thought to myself: Mission accomplished! Here indeed was a "modern" poem.
Then, I emailed it to my muse. Diane replied tactfully that I didn't need, and shouldn't try, to mimic someone else.
She was right. Writing poetry would allow me to grow only if the poetry grew out of me.
Everyone has creative power to make art, either with paint on canvas, or with words, or with music. By tapping into that power and potential, a person becomes more complete. And someone else's opinion of your art doesn't matter.
Diane's experience reminded me of my father's. He had never been a professional artist, but painting gave him – how shall I say this? – a needed refuge as he, like Diane, was dying with cancer.
No, that word "refuge" isn't quite apt, doesn't quite capture what was happening. It suggests a hiding place. But Diane, and my father, were not hiding any more than flowers are hiding when they bloom and proclaim "we are here."
In the face of death, they dared get in death's face. John Donne, in his famous sonnet, looked death in the eye and said "death, thou shalt die." Likewise, Diane and my father flouted death by engaging in a defining activity of life: Creating.
Creativity isn't just an add–on, a "gift" received by only a lucky few. Certainly, some people indeed have a special talent to express the creative drive in particular ways, but the drive itself, and the need, are universal. No wonder Diane and Svetlana had put "art for everyone" in their blog's name.
By late March 2011, Diane's pain was getting so bad that she needed strong medication. On March 28, I sent her an email but thought that the cancer and the powerful drugs would prevent a reply. However, the next day, she surprised me.
Unlike her earlier meticulous emails, this one contained typos and she mentioned being groggy. Only later, from Gary, did I learn how much she had struggled not just to write but even to breath. Yet, in the email, Diane's tone was joyous. My muse urged me to read Walt Whitman and to keep writing.
But that was 8 years ago, which is difficult to believe because her influence on me has not faded. Her love and goodwill, like that I received from my father, continue to be sunlight. By coincidence, their birthdays both happen to be in December, Diane's on the 17th and my Dad's 4 days earlier.
As Diane recommended, I began reading the poetry of Walt Whitman, discovering that he had embraced life the same way as she did, enthusiastically and wholeheartly. He wrote:
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward – nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
