Saturday, September 23, 2017

A Friend killed in Vietnam

Too Busy for a Friend.....
 One day a teacher asked her students to list the names
of the other students in the room on two sheets
of paper, leaving a space between each
name.
 Then she told them to think of the nicest thing
they could say about each of their classmates and write
it down. 
 It took  the remainder of the class period to
finish their assignment, and as the students left
the room, each one  handed in the
papers.
 That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of
each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed
what everyone  had said about that
individual.
 On Monday she gave each student his or her list.
Before long, the entire class was smiling.
'Really?' she heard whispered. 'I never knew that I meant
anything to anyone!' and, 'I didn't know others liked me so
much,' were most of the comments. 
 No one ever  mentioned those papers in class
again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or
with their parents, but it didn't matter. The
exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy
with themselves and one another. That group of students
moved on. 
 Years later, one of the students was
killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of
that special  student. She had never seen a
serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so
mature.
 The church was packed with his friends. One by one
those who loved him  took a last walk by the coffin. The
teacher was the last one to bless the
coffin.
 As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted
as pallbearer came up to her. 'Were you Mark's
math teacher?' he asked. She nodded: 'yes.' Then he said:
'Mark talked about you a lot.'
 After the funeral, most of Mark's former
classmates went together  to eat luncheon. Mark's mother and
father were there,  obviously waiting to speak with his  teacher.
 'We want to  show you something,' his father
said, taking a wallet out of his pocket 'They found
this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might
recognize it.'
 Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two
worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously
been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher
knew without looking that the papers were the ones on
which she had listed all the good things each of
Mark's classmates had said  about him.
 'Thank you so much for doing that,' Mark's
mother said. 'As you can see, Mark kept this with him
 All of Mark's former classmates started to gather
around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said,
'I still have my  list. It's in the top drawer of
my desk at home.' 
 Chuck's wife said, 'Chuck asked me to put his
in our wedding album.' 
 'I have mine too,' Marilyn said 'It's in my diary' 
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her
pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and
frazzled list to the  group. 'I carry this with me at
all times,' Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she
continued: 'I think we all saved our
lists' 
 That's when the teacher finally sat down and
cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who
would never see him again. 
 The density of people in society is so thick that
we forget that life will end one day. And we don't
know when that one day will be. 
So please, tell the people you love and care
for, that they are special and important. Tell them,
before it is too late. 
 And One Way To Accomplish This Is: Forward this
message on. If you do not send it, you will have, once
again passed up the wonderful  opportunity to do something nice and 
 If you've  received this, it is because someone
cares for you and it means there is probably at least
someone for whom you care.
 If you're 'too busy' to take those few minutes
right now to forward this message on, would this be the
VERY first time you  didn't do that little thing that
would make a difference in your relationships? 
 The more people that you send this to, the
better you'll be at reaching out to those you care
about.
 Remember, you reap what you sow. What you put into the
lives of others comes back into your
own.

 

1 comment:

Francis Xavier O'Hara said...

Thank you for this post it helped and moved me, thank you Ron.