Whoever you love and care for, tell them now.

Being in Cape Town again last February,  brought back memories of the man who was my role model for over forty-three years. My stepfather, then in his mid-eighties, often exclaimed 'Tell me now!' when he returned from yet another funeral. Friends and ex-colleagues, not always one and the same, were dropping around him like old pines. These events concerned him and, as he was a big influence in my life, I always valued what he had to say. On this occasion, he was talking about a man named Jack, who had died.

He told me that 'Jack was a lovely guy; married to the same woman for forty years. They raised three fine boys. He started his own business when he was twenty-three and he drove Buicks all his life – only the color changed. He ran the local food pantry for a quarter century and he was a scratch golfer. And when people visited, they’d usually find one to two strangers eating a meal in the kitchen’. My stepfather paused, shaking his head. ‘I didn't know Jack very well but I never knew he was such a good person. Hearing how much folks appreciated him, made me wonder if he knew that. Because I've a feeling nobody had the good sense to tell him when he was alive. They said some wonderful things about him but Jack couldn't hear the eulogies. Jack was dead’.

A few weeks ago, my eldest daughter's husband died (that's Myke in the picture and his six year-old daughter Natasha, running among England's bluebells); my son-in-law was ten days short of his fifty-seventh birthday. If there is any good fortune in such a tragedy, it is that we were able to be with him for some time as he battled to stay alive. Family and friends told him how much he meant to them. After Myke died, another 'benefit' of doing so in middle age was that over one hundred of his contemporaries could be present at his funeral.

I, for one, believed that Myke's greatest gift was the laughter he gave the world during his short time on this troubled planet. He was buried (or 'moved on' as I like to term it) on June 1st in a dedicated woodland glade not far from the Thames.

 Life is frighteningly short and in our quotidian lives, we rarely take the time to tell someone how much their lives mean to us. And then, like Myke, they are gone.

Expressing your appreciation of someone - either for their friendship or for some selfless act - is an obligation I believe we all have if we are to be truly human. It’s the African principle of ‘ubuntu’, as articulated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He writes ‘I am human because I belong. I participate. I share. It’s an ecology of spirit.'

As a family, we shall continue to talk about Myke; his daughter will hear anecdotes about him; his mother, his brother, my daughter, his brothers-in-law, his nephews will all continue to celebrate the good cheer he brought to us.

The ecology of his spirit will animate us for years to come. Thanks for all that you were, Myke, and for all you gave us.