Thank You Kelly

In 1998 I had an opportunity to meet a man that made a big impact in my life. His name, Kelly and we lived in the same apartment complex. He was a well built man, who had made a very good life for him and his family from his own construction company. What made Kelly different was that he had Multiple-sclerosis. Now I don’t know a whole lot about the disease but from what I was told, this was the worse case his doctors had ever seen. By the time that I had me Kelly, the MS had already ravaged most of his body.  He was a man that could barely walk. Most of the time he needed help to get into a wheelchair just to get from the car to the front door of his apartment. Many of his movements were jerky at best. His speech was very hard to understand. Kelly was only in my life for about a year before my job moved me to Omaha, NE but the lesson that I learned from Kelly was invaluable. It didn’t matter to him what condition the MS was leaving his body in on any particular day, Kelly always had a smile on his face. Many times, to show his approval, a thumbs up was all he could muster. Every time that I saw Kelly, he knew that he had what a lot of people were missing in life, perspective. You see, when he found out what was going to happen to his body because of the MS, he sold his business, and divorced his wife. Now you might ask, why a divorce? He believed that his wife deserved to move on with her life. From my understanding, his now ex-wife, stayed in his life and saw him on a regular basis. I could tell that Kelly was a proud man and asking for help humbled him greatly. But he also knew that he couldn’t do it alone. I remember a couple of times, I had to pick him up off the ground because the woman that took care of him couldn’t do it on her own. The first time that I came to help they both looked at me funny and wondered how a 5 foot 6 inch person was going to pick up a man of just over 6 foot that had over 50 lbs on him off the ground. I showed them that it was the will to help and not the circumstances that would make it happen. Kelly and I became pretty good friends after that. I learned from Kelly that it’s not our situations in life that controls us. Oh sure, his body wasn’t was it used to be, but his mind was still in tact. You see, he taught me that no matter what is happening around me or to me, it’s all about my attitude towards it that makes all the difference. I have read in books about the importance of our attitude in life, but seeing it in action, is a whole different thing. A few years later, I had heard that Kelly had passed away. I was saddened by the news. I knew that in his parting from this world, he left with a smile on his face and a thumb in the air. Thank you Kelly for teaching me that it’s not about the struggle but about the perspective that we choose to have about it that makes all the difference in the world.