Meaningful life is about compassion
Nov. 21, 2007 12:00 AM

It's that time of year, the eve of the day when we count our blessings by feasting on turkey and pumpkin pie and willing our local gridders to grind the demon University of Southern California into Sun Devil dust.

This, we call giving thanks.

And it is generally a good thing that we set aside one day a year to do so. For 364 days, many of us focus so intently on what we lack that it seems only fitting to spend a few hours considering the flip side (with time out, of course, for football).


Which brings me to Stuart Bridges. Whenever I get to feeling like my balance sheet - blessings to bad stuff - is out of whack, I go see Stuart.

I met him two years ago while he was dying.

Once, he was a tax auditor, a man blessed with a passion for tennis. Nine years ago, he noticed that his game was a little off. Life, from then on, became a series of losses that made no sense until 2001, when the awful explanation was found.

Stuart has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. About 30,000 Americans have it. Most live three years. All will die.

Stuart was 42 when his death sentence was delivered. On Sunday, he celebrated his 49th birthday, and tomorrow he will celebrate Thanksgiving. "As long as I can still talk a little, I'm all right," he told me. "My friends surround me and they smile and that sustains me. That's enough to keep me going."

It's an astonishing statement from a man who lives as a prisoner in his own body. Inch by inch, this disease has stolen away pieces of Stuart's life until he can no longer stand, no longer sit, no longer move. These days, he can control only a few fingers, and the cruelest is yet to come. The disease is starting affect his ability to speak. Still, he finds something to appreciate every day.

"My eyes still open," he said. "The sun still comes through my window. I try to find something in each day that makes me happy."

There are friends who visit and his sister and memories. And there are the letters.

In January 2006, when Stuart was raising funds for what he thought would be his last Walk to D'Feet ALS, I wrote about him. Some of you sent in donations and more importantly, letters. He still talks about those letters, so filled with inspiration and encouragement. How he read them over and over. How the kind words of strangers carried him all year.

He can't talk for long now and what he says is becoming difficult to understand, so I'll use his words from a year ago to explain.

"If you have a special moment in your life and you relive it in your mind enough times, it makes all the crap in life go away. You think more about what you have instead of what you don't have. With ALS, your body kind of melts away. You lose function, can't walk, can't talk, can't eat. I think about last January (2006). It makes a lot of it go away. Sometimes when I have a tough time breathing, I just remember what people wrote in and I really want to emphasize, Laurie, that when people think they don't have an impact, they do. I think care and compassion are felt."

It's a funny thing about care and compassion and the general opening of the heart. They affect the giver as well as the receiver. And so, my gift to you this Thanksgiving.

If you get a chance between all the shopping and the football and the festivities, think for a minute of the man who has been given the worst that life can offer yet finds something to celebrate every day. Or better yet,drop him a note. (P.O. Box 3772, Scottsdale, AZ, 85271)

Stuart once told me that a meaningful life is all about compassion. Show some every day, he said, then watch how it changes things.

How it changes you.



Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...berts1121.html