Straight Paths But I Didn’t Take Their Advice

But I Didn’t Take Their Advice

Loren Hardin

The Ashland Beacon

      Gene was seventy-nine years old when he enrolled in outpatient hospice services with end-stage prostate cancer. Gene owned and operated a local floor covering business for fifty-three years.  His radio advertising jingle was, “Go scootin’ to Euton’s”. Gene was a free-thinker and nonconformist.  He declared, “I’m a Baptist Catholic.  I won’t totally follow any man or preacher.  I’ll only worship God.”

      Gene was a perennial optimist.  Genes brother, Paul, shared, “I don’t like to hunt with anyone, I’m a loner when it comes to hunting.  Most people will say, ‘We aren’t going to get any rabbits today’, but Gene would always say, ‘A rabbit is going to jump out at any minute’.  Paul declared, “I’d go hunting with Gene anytime!”

      A few months before Gene departed this world, his hospice nurse, Monica, organized a hog roast to celebrate Gene’s eightieth birthday and his fifty-three years in the floor covering business. I watched as Gene cordially greeted the crowd of over seventy family, friends and acquaintances, from his motorized scooter.

    Gene didn’t get out much after the celebration.  During one of my last visits Gene reached for my hand and held it as I sat beside his hospital bed. Gene reminisced: “I started out laying carpet for the J.W. Stirr Furniture Company. I sold and installed carpet and tile for sixty dollars a week.  I carpeted the whole city of Portsmouth. When I told people that I was thinking about starting my own business they told me, ‘You can’t start another floor covering business around here. There are smarter people than you are around here. You won’t make it a year.’ But I didn’t take their advice.  I’m not too smart, but I’m not too dumb either.  I didn’t get rich, but I raised four kids and I had a house on the hilltop.  And I had three nice cars.” Gene looked over at me with a big smile on his face and a defiant twinkle in his eyes and concluded, “I think I made it, don’t you.”

    “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” (T.S. Elliott)

     “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” (Helen Keller)

     “Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.” (Oliver Wendall Holmes)

      “Oh, what I would do to have the kind of faith it takes to climb out of this boat I’m in…to step out from my comfort zone into the realm of the unknown where Jesus is…But the waves are calling out my name and they laugh at me, reminding me of all the times I’ve tried before and failed. The waves they keep on telling me, time and time again, ‘Boy, you’ll never win!’…But the voice of truth tells me a different story. The voice of truth says, ‘Do not be afraid.’”

(Casting Crowns, “The Voice of Truth”).”

     Loren Hardin was a social worker with Southern Ohio Medical Center Hospice for twenty-nine years. You can order a copy of his book, “Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course”, at Amazon.