The effect we have on those we meet . . .

I was reminded today, yet again, of how powerful an effect we can have on those we meet, no matter how briefly. On Friday night, I ran through the Oklahoma City "International" Airport, desperate to catch the last flight back to Dallas. Arriving at my gate just in time for the scheduled flight, but early for the now-delayed flight, I paused to catch my breath. A full-blown asthma attack ensued and a young woman kindly offered me a cough drop, which did help me feel better, as well as less noisy.

The young woman's kindness reminded me of someone I met at that very gate a few years back, also on a busy Friday night at the airport. My flight was seriously delayed that night, and I found myself seated in the gate area near a guy about my age, with yellow hair, a twinkle in his eye and some of the most noticeable Southwestern jewelry I have ever seen on a man. His name was "F" and he was a motivational speaker from rural New Mexico. Before our plane took off, I learned about his family ranch and the gnomes he used to torment his mother and how excited he was about the house he was buying in the big city of Albuquerque. We exchanged contact information and I made a note to myself to look F up the next time I was in New Mexico, because his enthusiasm for life was so contagious that I wanted to be exposed to it again. (This was the same trip to Oklahoma City in which I had the epiphany in which I realized how unhappy I was with my life and in which I vowed to work toward changes that would bring the peace and satisfaction I sought.)

F and I exchanged a few emails afterward, and from time to time I would think of him and wonder what new project he was tackling, drawing upon what I remembered of his passion for life to try to ignite my own. When a friend convinced me to join Facebook this year, I was pleased to find not only that Frank was on Facebook, but that he had moved to Dallas. We became Facebook "friends" and I meant to ask him to coffee one day, but had not yet taken the time to do that.

Tonight, I logged onto Facebook and was shocked to see a link to a photo captioned, "R.I.P., F", apparently posted by one of his friends. I have now pieced together that F and his dear friend M, a married mother of two young children, had gone back to Albuquerque to finish moving the last of Frank's things to Dallas. They both died on Friday from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a malfunctioning heater in the house where they stayed. The number and nature of the posts left this weekend on F's Facebook page by the many loved ones and friends he leaves behind attest to the accuracy of my assessment that he was an incredibly special person.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may know or have guessed that I am not a very religious person. Writing through these unexpected tears tonight, I have to say it is just this type of completely senseless event that makes me ever more sure that there certainly cannot be any sort of divine intervention in the world, because a world without that fine person in it is not nearly the world it was before. I don't understand this, not one bit. I did not know F well at all, but knowing that he was out there, knowing that his kind of spirit was swirling around not very far away, meant something to me. I'm not doing a good job of explaining it here, but trying to explain it helps just a little.

What I wanted to say when I began writing is that the effect F had on me reminded me of how powerful an effect we can have on the people we meet. I do not fool myself into thinking I will have a lasting effect on any of the great institutions that change people's lives, as it does not appear that a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court or anything like it is in the cards for me. But I want to live my life in such a way as to have a positive, rather than negative, effect on the days of those I meet.

Here is a younger F, with his friend M: