Happy Sunday Everyone:
I was doing a zoom call for our sales team on Friday, the topic was time management, when I received the following email from my team member, Brigitte.
Subject line: John Conklin-past Core Student
It then read:
“Jonathan, from the Core, just told me today is John Conklin’s last day to live and he wanted me to pass along to you. He has cancer, initially he thought it was covid or the flu, John has kept it really quiet. The core just heard and wanted to pass along since you were his coach.
So incredibly heartbreaking ☹”
This distribution list is such that some of you will read this and think “sad”, Others who knew John, are crushed. I had the honor and privilege of coaching John last semester, July-December, but I’ve known him for years. He was 43. He was a quiet giant. All of us who knew him are trying to process what happened. I spoke to his current coach, Robyn, yesterday, she told me he found out 6 weeks ago but didn’t want anyone to know. His wife texted Robyn from John’s phone on Thursday and said he wasn’t going to be on the coaching call, that he was transitioning to Heaven. Think about that.
We had a dinner party at a friend’s house Friday Night. I came home, got in bed with Kim and wept for 30 minutes, she held a giant inconsolable baby for 30 minutes. Neither of us understand what happened. We both acknowledged yesterday, in our life time together (28 years), this outpour of incontrollable sobbing has never happened to me before, ever.
I’m trying to figure out how to try to not make this about me and at the same time process what is going on and what I can learn from it. I liked John a lot, I respected him, He and I suffered from the same condition, Eeyoreism (I just made up that word), I think we were probably both known throughout the CORE as Eeyore #1 and #2. He wanted to be a coach, I remember John telling me Rick had told him he had to be less grumpy to be a coach, something he and I often laughed about. I’d call him out every call to smile, when he did he’d light up the call. When he smiled, we all smiled with him, he was a serious person but also infectious, sweet, and kind, I recall him as always rooting for everyone.
I asked Kim what she thought happened to me on Friday night. I felt like a pressure cooker getting released, perhaps that’s exactly what happened. To have someone so close in age/life, to be around that person consistently, and then to have them leave us suddenly leaves a lot of us in a place of wonder. It, of course, causes contemplation. Are we tracking the right metrics? Are we on the right path? Are we acting in accordance with what we claim to be important to us?…so strange that I was teaching time management when this happened. My first slide was a bullseye Rick coached us on, helping to create clarity on understanding what your priorities are. The bullseye being most important and then working your way out, then questioning if your calendar is in alignment with your priorities.
I think the other thing that made me so sad is a twinge of guilt as to whether John knew how much I cared about him. I was hard on him, I gave him more sticks than carrots. By no stretch am I beating myself up on it but my take away to myself, and hopefully to you, is to ask this question “Do you think people know how much you love them and care about them, or do they know how much you love and care about them?”. Think vs. know. My #1 lesson to myself in John’s passing is to leave no question with anyone important to me as to how I feel about them.
I hope Jimmy Reed doesn’t mind me throwing this out there but as I’m sitting here finishing these thoughts, a text just came through from Jimmy-“Hunter, I’m grateful for you. To have a friend like you that understands me and I can vent to and can coach me or just listen to me, who has boys like I do and can relate to everything”. I believe all of this is connected and Jimmy is paying it forward without even knowing it. I will do the same with purpose moving forward, and will intentionally smile up to John Conklin every time I tell someone how much they mean to me with debt of gratitude and appreciation for his life.