On Saturday, I received word that my stepfather had died suddenly from a heart attack.
We knew he had heart problems, including previous heart attacks. We knew his heart was failing. What we didn’t know was that on Saturday, as he and my mother sat at the kitchen table eating lunch, he would suddenly stop in the middle of a sentence and be gone.
Just like that.
Paramedics took him to the hospital, where doctors and nurses did everything they could to save him.
But he was already gone.
The news came in a phone call from a beloved uncle (my mom’s brother). At first, it didn’t hit me emotionally. I said the things that had to be said and asked the right questions before hanging up. I didn’t cry until I went to tell my husband, who had just arrived home.
Then, I cried.
And then, I remembered.
I remembered a man who was always kind and gentle. Literally always. He and my mom got married when I was in sixth grade, and from that point until now, I never saw or heard him being unkind to me or to anyone else. Never.
Not one time.
Someday, unless the Lord returns first, my loved ones will get news of my passing. And I wonder what the first thing is that they will remember about me.
In order for some beautiful quality like kindness or love to be the first thing they think of, that quality has to characterize me now. My loved ones can’t remember about me what they never saw in me in the first place.
Oh, God, help me to be the kind of person now that I want to be remembered as then. Work in me, and through me, and make me the kind of person who will glorify You and bless others abundantly. Thank You for the example of my stepfather Ron, who was always, unfailingly, kind and gentle.
Ronald Rae Sheets
b. November 11, 1943
d. January 16, 2016
Kind. Gentle. Loved.
Matthew 25:23—“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”
