Perhaps everyone except me has heard this man's last lecture, which he gave after he learned he was going to die of pancreatic cancer. He will leave three young children and a widow. And that, in combination with some recent events in my life, caused me to put off learning more about him as long as I could.

I am still wrestling with the estate of my father, who died in 2006 without a valid will. (There aren't any contests, thank God; just a mess of financial entanglements that my mother isn't fit to resolve.) This experience forced me and Squeeky to confront our own lack of a will, and to make time for that awful conversation where you decide who gets charge of your children if you both die simultaneously.

For me, that's what echoed Prof. Pausch's situation, and led me to read the linked article. In it I learned that, once he'd accepted that he wasn't going to be around much longer, the truly sad part was to imagine his children growing up without their father.

His realization weighed on me as I padded around the kitchen tonight singing James Taylor tunes while Little Roo fell asleep in my arms. I recalled my earliest memories of my father: laughing and wrestling on the kitchen floor in our pajamas. If he had died young, and if that's all I'd ever known of him, I would be grateful.

And if I were to depart tomorrow, how would Little Roo remember me, if at all? As the big man at the desk who turned to smile at him once in a while in the evenings?

both kids are in bed now. Squinx just called for me because she'd bitten her thumb "and now it hurts." We said a prayer for healing and I kissed her, then let my hand linger just a moment on her fine-textured hair. It's my color and gauge, straight and soft. She also has my green eyes. Fortunately, she got her mother's features.

We spend much of our lives trying to avoid pain in its many forms, painful thoughts included. Writing our will is one of the most emotionally grueling tasks either of us has ever undertaken. Yet if we don't do it, or put it off too long, the consequences would be immeasurably worse for the children.

For me, this is only a taste of what God himself must have confronted when he chose to send his only begotten son to save us from a life without him. To let all his children go on without knowing him … was simply too awful a thought for even the creator of the universe to bear.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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