Mark Woodward
in memorium

Above all else, he was a friend; a wavering voice stumbling for the right words, a voice that spoke more of life, than words themselves could carry. His speech burdened by the effects of a severe stroke, he seemed to have the knack of putting things into perspective, then asking the short, simple, INTELLIGENT questions that explained the whole thing, or turned me to a more interesting, more rewarding path. Many questions I wish I could still ask him. Not so much for the answers, but for the questions he would ask in turn. ...for the questions he would ask in turn...

When I met him a year ago, he tried to teach me something about marketing and I, him about computers. Despite our eagerness to learn, we both failed at those goals. I learned more about marketing, and life, from his tales of his business gambles, his wins and losses at Pepsi, Mead Paper, his own companies, and at life itself. The perspective of those tales showed how corporations like IBM became great by emboldening the morale of their sales forces; while others destroyed the bold confidence of their salesmen, and hence their own futures, over petty commissions squabbles. I saw once again, how many corporations often drive the best salesmen from the line of work.

In the weeks we worked together in earnest on his computer, and later on my marketing problems, we became close friends, my closest friend out here. There was a kind of synergy, a kind of need we both had to communicate and a willingness we had to really listen with both ears to something new and difficult to understand; a willingness born of understanding the loneliness of the mind that comes when one can not find the right ears to truly comprehend what one is trying to say.

I know my other friends, know how they think, whom they are, what they can do; that does not make it less enjoyable to be with them, but when we get together, we have some sense as to what we may end up doing and talking about; and more, what not to talk about.

Mark was still an enigma, so different from myself and my other friends. When we would start talking, we could not predict where we would end up, only that we would enjoy the journey, and that we would not agree on many things along the way. That never mattered, for we would both ask questions, trying to understand and learn from each other; and above all, enjoy the journey, often laughing at ourselves along the way.

We spoke of many things, many ideas, many opportunities we might address, alone or together; what I heard in all the tales of the past, was the promise of the future -- the means and the lessons needed to get there. More and more, we felt things were becoming possible for both of us. What we both ignored, as much as we could, was his failing health.

After his mother died, he and his wife drove East for the funeral. After some travel to old familiar places, they ended up renting a motel by the St. Laurence River, not far from where he once lived. He sat there nearly a month, watching the mists rise off the river and the leaves slowly turn color, waiting for the complex legal and cultural customs of death to resolve themselves.

I spoke to him several times. With the belief his brother had hastened her death through neglect, and no "number one" son left alive to pass the torch to, he seemed to have lost hope. Away from close friends and his own family, in constant pain from the massive stroke he had had years ago, there was nothing left to hold him. He had simply found a place that felt close enough to a home he once knew, "a place out of time," as he called it, and waited, not so much for all the family matters to resolve, as to join his mother and his first son on the other side.

Later, his daughter said he spoke much of death to her in the last few months, as if his doctors had let him know it would come very soon; things he never mentioned to me. She commented that our friendship seemed to rekindle some of his old spark, and brought him much joy. As it did to me... as it did to me...

It is easy to say he is finally free of pain, and at peace; but it is not peace which lets us find ourselves, at least those of us who work with our hands or our minds. Rather, it is the limits of our abilities and our efforts to overcome them that let us find both who we are, and whom we can become. In that, he was an inspiration to me; even though we both knew there were real limits as to what we could accomplish together.

He also taught me that understanding itself is an elusive chimera. That which we think of as understanding is often but a mirage; a mirage we use to try to make sense of things we encounter; when we could be doing something with them, shake them, to help us feel more clearly what really is, and what we may yet create. He did not fake understanding as much as use the skills of perspective and interpolation as a different kind of understanding; used that skill far more effectively in dealing with life than anyone else I know. (But realisticaly, it is not enough when dealing with computers.)

There is a deep silence here now, a silence hard to fill. It is the silence of opportunities not explored, of adventures not experienced, of long conversations not had. It is the gut wrenching silence of a whole future having slid away into a cold sea, as if some vast piece of glacial ice flow, likely with wind carved ice sculptures and ice caves not even imagined, was lost before it could even be pondered by two intriguing friends.

In the end, all that is left, is me.

I know that sound selfish; but perhapse the most important lesson is that eqach of us must create our own memories, not wait for someone else's. We must not wait for the chance meeting; it is by doing interesting things that those chance meetings come about as others see there is someone worth talking with.

Hard as it is for my gut to accept right now, the world begins anew each day. It is for us to fill it with experiences. And fill it we must! Not just sit without the hope of our inner self, till the end comes walking in as it did for Mark in that final month.

When I think of Mark Woodward, I must also remember that he was a man whom I met by chance upon a foggy street in Half Moon Bay one night, a man I spoke with briefly some days before a neighbor introduced him as her father. A fascinating man and very good friend whom I had almost missed. And whom, had I been more outgoing, I might have met a year before, when I had just moved into the area, not the days I was moving away. Oh, What we might have accomplished then, being but a few moments apart, instead of an hour and a half drive away!

When I think of him, I wonder how many good friends we have not made, but for want of a simple "Hello," a friendly exchange of names, and a willingness to listen, and ask the questions and make the comments when one does not understand.

So in memory of Mark Woodward, I ask you to say "Hello" to someone new today. And every day. For it is the best way, almost the only way you will ever meet your most interesting of friends.

-javilk-