We keep losing people…good people we have known for a few days, a few years, or a lifetime. This year there have been close friends and distant colleagues we enjoyed staying in touch with; family members and grammar school classmates, as well as people we “knew of” along the trails.
This past weekend as we learned of two more along the path in our industry, Ann Bready King and Dennis D’Agostino, the outpouring of thoughts and prayers for their friends and families was more than worthy of the lives they lived and the people they impacted far and wide.
A few colleagues remarked that this year seemed to be one of loss more than most. Honestly, I think it’s a product of just being older, knowing more people over time and the circle of life coming around as we ourselves revolve around the sun. It doesn’t make any of these passings less sad or impactful, it hopefully makes us appreciate things just a little bit more.
Ironically, I was reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s great substack this morning when he led with this, and it spoke to me and my thoughts pretty clearly…
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
When I was a younger man, I was very passionately in agreement with this opening stanza of Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.” It is a rousing call to rally against the encroachment of death, to fight rather than succumb to death’s gentle entreaty. Thomas was 33 when he wrote those lines, and they exude youth’s natural rebellion against the inevitability of death.
Today, at 76, I see death as less of a ruthless foe and more as an amiable traveling companion. Death looms daily and, therefore, defines our lives. It forces us to choose what’s valuable. It inspires us to be better, to do better. There’s a wonderful exchange in the movie Bang the Drum Slowly in which one character, a young professional baseball player who is dying of a rare disease, says, “Everybody’d be nice to you if they knew you were dying.” To which his friend says, “Everybody knows everybody is dying, that’s why people are as good as they are.”
So, while I continue to rage against the dying of the light, I’m also not afraid to gentle into that good night. That is the relationship with death I am comfortable with.
Meanwhile, like the song says, “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”
I have talked about this trip we are on more and more in recent years, not to be morbid or apologetic but to be more appreciative of the people and places we have around us, and the fact that we are on a clock to enjoy what we have around us as it is here. You blink, it’s gone.
Some of the recent passings are also a tribute to a quality we sometimes forget about or diminish in a time challenged world…the ability to honor or thank those around us who are doing the things we need to get to the next step. In the case of Ann, and her husband Tracy, she lovingly worked in the sports information business for quite a long time, not at the biggest of schools but at places they have enjoyed. Their imprint on thousands of athletes, coaches and administrators, as well as colleagues may never be of the “Coach Prime” level to the casual consumer, but it was championship-like in subtle impact for years.
My friend Dennis was a sports lifer, a man of grace and gentility, who was always about getting the stuff done behind the scenes. He never wanted to be the upfront attention getter, he was the one in the background and on the sidelines making sure things sounded well for the loudest voices in our industry. Ironically that’s where I last saw Dennis, in the background during a shot of the Mets broadcast booth at Dodgers Stadium for a game televised on SNY earlier this summer.
Ann and Dennis are just the latest examples of doers missing from our lineup card in recent months. They loved the work as much as the people they met and impacted along the way. It also reminded me of the words (sung, written by Mac Macinally) of someone else we lost recently, the great Jimmy Buffet.
His wistful song “It’s My Job,” explained so well how people with what we may think are the most menial and toughest of jobs find ways to bring value to all. Those people in our industry are sometimes the stats people, the assistants, the social media coordinators, or all who put in the time to make sure all goes well.
It’s my job to be different than the rest
and that’s enough reason to go for me
It’s my job to be better than the best
and that’s a tough break for me
It’s my job to be cleaning up this mess
and that’s enough reason to go for me
It’s my job to be better than the best
and that makes the day for me
Now no job is perfect and the ones we start out doing sometimes don’t get us where we want to go at first, sometimes the path chooses you.
But making the best out of what your job is, bringing value and as we have said before Getting Stuff Done while learning and listening along the way can get us through the valleys and over the peaks. Ann and Dennis in their own ways personified that (along with another sports lifer, the late Mike Scala, who was the sports comms guy at Montclair State for years before he passed away last year…Monday would have been his birthday) and everyone they touched along the way, at an arm’s length or a distance, was better for it. It wasn’t always fun or glorious, but it needed to be done, and with it they were lives well lived.
Personally, although I accept the seemingly long string of losses in our world it would be nice to end this streak for a while, and maybe appreciate those still here just a little bit more. Celebrate the living, the ones doing the jobs with joy and passion, saw a little please and thank you, and for heaven’s sake, lift a glass or two to all of us…those we have lost, bit just as important those still here.
I think it’s what all of the ones who have moved on would want, and in the words of another with a grasp of what’s valuable, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) remember this:
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
And on we go…
