Mother told me this story about her father, Charles Everett Howard.
The man was old, shrunken in body, expansive in mind. Finances were skimpy, always had been, partly because he was always sharing with the less fortunate. But some way there was always food on the table and a roof over his head. His health was poor. A tower of strength until a heart attack at the age of 70, he lived on the doctor’s “do’s and don’ts” and a great faith in God.
“Outline here,” he said. “I aim to keep learning.” And so he did. With eyes too dim to read he listened to the radio. And his friends. A constant stream of them came to his door or kept in contact by phone. Now he had read very few psychology books and didn’t know the lingo, but he knew people, and he knew his Bible. Instinctively he knew how to listen with his “third ear.” The advice he gave or the gentle understanding kept many a life on an even keel.
Never traveled but knew the world and its way better than many who did. On his eighty-seventh birthday, with no one planning a special card shower, he received eighty-seven cards plus a host of gifts.
About two years later, he closed his eyes for the last time.
But he wasn’t afraid. He knew where he was going.