Paraphrased by Linda Kersh at Sam's memorial service, 07/27/2008:
There are three things that stood out to me as I witnessed the last months of Sam’s life. They are:
Love, Respect, and Courage.
Courage doesn’t always look like what we expect…
A mother or father summoning the courage to tell their son he was dying – that’s courage. Penny and Floyd did that and then courageously did for Sam what Sam asked them to do. They brought him home to die. They allowed him to have dignity and privacy and the freedom to die his own way. These days that almost never happens because it is impossibly hard to do. Hard physically, hard emotionally, hard spiritually – I cannot imagine anything harder in this world. But Penny and Floyd did it. That’s courage.
Courage doesn’t always look like what we imagine...
An older brother standing by his younger brother, being for him exactly what is needed at exactly the moment it is needed. Lee did that for his brother. Lee had always, his whole life, gone ahead, shown the way for Sam to follow. And Sam did follow Lee’s footsteps - so much so that one of the concerns in the family was that Sammy wasn’t being his own person. In the end though, Sam was definitely his own person. In the end, Sammy was the one who went ahead. In those first days, weeks after the prognosis, Sam would panic if Lee took a few steps away from his bedside. “Lee!!” Sam would yell. And Lee, steadfast and patient, would always be right there. Later, Sam began to push Lee away. Now I’m not a psychologist, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see that maybe the only way that Sammy could do what he had to do was to push Lee away first. Lee, as usual, provided for Sammy exactly what he needed at exactly the moment he needed it. Lee was a catalyst for Sam – hard as it was, Lee courageously played out his big brother role for Sam and gave him the courage to do what he had to do, to endure what he had to endure and the courage to leave when he needed to leave. It took real courage for Lee, courage beyond his years, to be there like he was for Sam.
Courage doesn’t always look like what we think…
What 23 year old man, could face his own death with the grace and courage that Sam showed. To say that Sam was not verbose is possibly the understatement of the year, but Sam spoke volumes in his actions the last days of his life. Those last days, Sam spent showing those he loved how much he loved them. He watched his mother’s favorite movie – a clear message to her that he loved her deeply and was going to go out courageously if not upside down in an airplane in a barn like in the movie “Secondhand Lions”. He asked to go to his father’s favorite place – Tyler State Park – because he knew how much it meant to his father to go there with him one last time and wanted to do that for him. He spoke volumes of love for his family in what he didn’t share because he wanted to protect them. In the last months of his life, he was still Sammy as his mother would say but grew in courage and grace and love until he could be the one who went ahead, showing the way for the others.
The love and respect each of the family members have for each other is abundantly apparent. Sammy loved his family, he loved them dearly and they loved him just as dearly. There's a saying - it's the space within a vase that allows flowers to be placed there.A teacher once held a silver dollar in his hand and asked his student to take it from his tightened fist. Of course the student could not. He then he opened his fist and asked the student to try again. This is one way to look at the life and at death of Samuel Starnes – Allowing, Trusting, Accepting. We can only let go and become more. I know Sammy would want us to. Spiritual healer Joseph Goldsmith called our lifetime a "parenthesis in eternity" and once the heart is broken, the parenthesis opens to eternity during this very moment. Would any one of us trade the love we felt that left us seemingly "broken" for this moment erased? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It's that very heartbreak that creates the space that allows us to continue in love and with a faith that reaches into Eternity itself.
With much love,
Linda Kersh
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