CHASING DAYLIGHT
How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life
By Eugene O'KellyThe McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Copyright © 2008 Eugene O'Kelly
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-149993-4
Contents
A GiftThe Bottom LineThe Business of Dying is HardThe Best Death PossibleThe Good Good-ByeTransitionChasing Daylight By Corinne O'KellyAfterword By Corinne O'KellyA Reader's GuideQuestions for DiscussionA Conversation with Corinne O'kelly
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Gift
I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live. You think that to putthose two sentences back to back, I must be joking. Or crazy. Perhaps that Ilived a miserable, unfulfilled life, and the sooner it was done, the better.
Hardly. I loved my life. Adored my family. Enjoyed my friends, the career I had,the big-hearted organizations I was part of, the golf I played. And I'm quitesane. And also quite serious: The verdict I received the last week of May2005—that it was unlikely I'd make it to my daughter Gina's first day ofeighth grade, the opening week of September—turned out to be a gift.Honestly.
Because I was forced to think seriously about my own death. Which meant I wasforced to think more deeply about my life than I'd ever done. Unpleasant as itwas, I forced myself to acknowledge that I was in the final stage of life,forced myself to decide how to spend my last 100 days (give or take a fewweeks), forced myself to act on those decisions.
In short, I asked myself to answer two questions: Must the end of life bethe worst part? And, Can it be made a constructive experience—eventhe best part of life?
No. Yes. That's how I would answer those questions, respectively. I was able toapproach the end while still mentally lucid (usually) and physically fit (sortof), with my loved ones near.
As I said: a blessing.
Of course, almost no one thinks in detail about one's actual death. Until I hadto I didn't—not really. We feel general and profound anxiety about it, butfiguring out the nuts and bolts of how to make the best of one's last days, andthen how to ensure that one follows the planned course of action for the benefitof oneself and one's loved ones, are not typical habits of the dying, and mostcertainly not of the healthy and hearty. Some people don't think about deathbecause it comes suddenly and prematurely. Quite a few who die this way—ina car accident, say—had not yet even begun to think of themselves asmortal. My death, on the other hand, while somewhat premature (I was 53 at thetime of the verdict) could not be called sudden (anyway, you couldn't call itthat two weeks after the death sentence had sunk in), since I was informed quiteexplicitly that my final day on this Earth would happen during the 2005 calendaryear.
Some people don't think about how to make the most of their last stage because,by the time their end has clearly come upon them, they are no longer in aposition, mental or physical, to make of their final days what they might have.Relief of pain is their primary concern.
Not me. I would not suffer like that. Starting weeks before the diagnosis, whenatypical (if largely unnoticed) things began happening to me, I had no pain, notan ounce. Later, I was told that the very end would be similarly free of pain.The shadows that had begun very slowly to darken my mind would lengthen, just asthey do on the golf course in late afternoon, that magical time, my favoritetime to be out there. The light would flatten. The hole—the object of myfocus—would become gradually harder and harder to pick out. Eventually itwould be difficult even to name. Brightness would fade. I would lapse into acoma. Night would fall. I would die.
Because of the factors surrounding my dying—my relative youth, mycontinued possession of mental facility and otherwise good physical health, myfreedom from daily pain, and the proximity of loved ones, most of whom werethemselves still in their prime—I took a different approach to my last 100days, one that required that I keep my eyes as wide open as possible. Even withblurry vision.
Oh, yes ... there was one more factor, probably the primary one, that influencedthe way I approached my demise: my brain. The way I thought. First as anaccountant, then as an ambitious businessman, and finally as the CEO of a majorAmerican firm. My sensibilities about work and accomplishment, about consistencyand continuity and commitment, were so ingrained in me from my professionallife, and had served me so well in that life, that I couldn't imaginenot applying them to my final task. Just as a successful executive isdriven to be as strategic and prepared as possible to "win" at everything, so Iwas now driven to be as methodical as possible during my last hundred days. Theskill set of a CEO (ability to see the big picture, to deal with a wide range ofproblems, to plan for contingencies, etc.) aided me in preparing for my death.(And—not to be over-looked—my final experience taught me some thingsthat, had I known them earlier, would have made me a better CEO and person.) Inapproaching my last project so systematically, I hoped to make it a positiveexperience for those around me, as well as the best three months of my life.
I was a lucky guy.
* * *
Suppose I hadn't been given just 100 days. What might I have been doing?
Thinking about my next business trip, probably to Asia. Planning how to attractnew business while managing the accounts we already had. Formulating initiativesfor six months down the road, a year, five years. My executive calendar wasalways plotted out 12 to 18 months hence; it came with the job. My positiondemanded that I think constantly about the future. How to build on the firm'ssuccess. How to ensure the continued quality of what we provided. Yes,technically I lived in the present, but my eyes were forever focused on a moreelusive, seemingly more important spot in time. (Before the diagnosis, my lastthought every night before falling asleep usually concerned something that wasto happen one month to six months later. After the diagnosis, my last thoughtbefore falling asleep was ... the next day.) In 2002, when I was electedchairman and chief executive officer of KPMG (U.S.), it was for a term of sixyears. But in 2006, if all went according to plan, I expected I might becomechairman of the global organization, probably for a term of four years. In 2010?Retirement, probably.
I was not a man given to hypotheticals—too straight-ahead in my thinkingfor that—but just for a moment, suppose there had been no death sentence.Wouldn't it be nice still to be planning and building and leading and cage-rattling like I had been, for years to come? Yes and no. Yes, because of courseI'd like to have been around for certain things. To see my daughter Ginagraduate from high school and college and marry and have children and reinventthe future (in whatever order she ends up doing all that). To spend nextChristmas Eve day, the day before my older daughter Marianne's birthday, inlast-minute gift shopping with her, eating and talking and laughing the way wedid every year on that day. To travel and play golf with my wife of 27 years,Corinne, the girl of my dreams, and to share with her the easeful retirement inArizona we'd fantasized about and planned for so long. To see my firm, the oneI'd been with since before I graduated from business school and had worked atfor more than three decades, establish new standards for quality and success. Towitness the Yankees win another World Series, or three. To attend the 2008Olympics in Beijing. To see my grandchildren grow up.
But I also say no. No, because, thanks to my situation, I'd attained a new levelof awareness, one I didn't possess the first 53 years of my life. It's justabout impossible for me to imagine going back to that other way of thinking,when this new way has enriched me so. I lost something precious, but I alsogained something precious.
One day not long ago, I sat atop the world. From this perch I had an overviewthat was relatively rare in American business, a perspective that allowed meaccess to the inner workings of many of the world's finest, most successfulcompanies, across all industries, and the extraordinary minds that ran them. Icould see what was going on around me. I could make a good guess at how thingsmight unfold economically over the near future. At times, I felt like a greateagle on a mountaintop—not because of any invincibility I felt, but forthe overall picture it afforded me.
Overnight, I found myself sitting in a very different perch: a hard metal chair,looking across a desk at a doctor whose expression was way too full of empathyfor my, or anyone's, liking.
His eyes told me I would die soon. It was late spring. I had seen my last autumnin New York.
All the plans I'd made as CEO were shattered—at least, as far as my seeingthem come to pass. While I believed we'd made great progress on my vision forthe firm, someone else would now have to lead the effort. All the plans thatCorinne and I had made for our future had to be junked. It was hard not tolament that one of the big reasons we'd sacrificed so much time together, acrossso many years, as I traveled the world and worked ungodly hours—namely, sothat on the other side of it we could enjoy a prosperous retirementtogether—had been a tease, only we hadn't known it. In my wallet I evencarried a photo of the dream spot to which we planned to retire—StoneCanyon, Arizona—but that dream was gone now. Same with all my otherpersonal goals for 2006, 2007, and every year after that.
I'd always been a goal-driven person. So was Corinne. Throughout our livestogether, we'd figured out our long-term goals, then worked backward from there.That is, we structured short-term goals to give us the best chance of meetingthe big ones down the road. Any time the situation changed—which was allthe time—we re-evaluated our goals, both short and long, and madeadjustments so we had the greatest possibility of a good overall result. Thegoals I'd had the week before the doctor stared at me in that unfortunate waywere no longer achievable by me. The quicker I scrapped plans for a life that nolonger existed, the better.
I needed to come up with new goals. Fast.
A capacity to confront reality had served me well throughout life. I rememberdoing so 40 years before, on a much smaller scale, but one that still feltprofound. Growing up in Bayside, Queens, a middle-class bedroom community withinthe confines of New York City but seemingly not of it, I adored baseball. Iplayed all the time. I pitched for my high school team. I thought I was prettygood. I even got written up in the local paper once for getting our team out ofa bases-loaded, no-out jam in the last inning to preserve the victory. I thoughtI might be able to go further.
One day when I was 14, my mother, who for years had witnessed my passion for thesport, told me it was important to distinguish that from talent.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You may have the passion to be a great baseball player," she said, "but not thetalent."
It took me the better part of that summer to adjust to what my mother had,lovingly, told me. She wanted me to hold onto my passion while also following apath where my talent could flower. I didn't stop playing ball, or being a fan,and I eventually came to see she was right. Freshman year at Penn State, I triedto win a spot on the team as a walk-on but I didn't make it. I didn't have asmuch talent as my brother, and even he wasn't good enough to get past a certainlevel.
Like it or not, that was my reality. I adjusted. As I got older, I learned toadjust faster. I cultivated an ability to make big shifts quickly, almostinstantly. When something in my life no longer worked, I could abandon it withlittle sentiment. I did not look back, nor did I digress from my new path. Itseemed to me that no good came from pretending that what used to be true wasstill true when clearly it wasn't, or that what really was true, no matter howunpleasant, really wasn't. The quicker one got on with it, the better. It was aparticularly useful skill in business, a world at least as fast-moving andunforgiving as the larger world.
Within a very few days of that dark moment at the doctor's, I acknowledged mytimeline was no longer like most people's. This is the way it is now, Iadmitted to myself. Now I needed to come up with goals that were achievablewithin that timeline.
Fortunately, because I'd pursued a career for which I seemed to have had talent(and ultimately passion, as well), I could now use my skills and knowledge totake full advantage of this sobering new reality. Instead of figuring out how weas a firm needed to reposition swiftly to adjust to the new circumstances of themarketplace, I would have to figure out how I as an individual needed toreposition swiftly to adjust to the new circumstances of my life. My experienceand outlook gave me the potential to manage my endgame better than most, and Iconsidered that opportunity a gift.
The key word in the previous sentence is not gift oropportunity. It's potential. To turn this opportunity into areal gift, one that could never be taken away from me or my family and friends,would be the greatest challenge of my life.
* * *
This may all seem a little hard to believe. I understand.
After all, who deals with death this way? How can the end not getmessy—even for an accountant? How can you not fall into despair?How can you not immerse yourself in denial and an endless, if quixotic, chasefor miracles?
Can death really be approached constructively—like every other phase oflife? With brightness (if not hope)? Isn't there an implicit contradiction here?And, perhaps most unbelievable of all, how on Earth can you possibly turn thisawful time into the single best period of your life, ever?
For most people, the specter of death is brutally hard to accept. They don'twant to spend even a minute thinking about it. They'd rather put it out of theirmind, to be thought about—if it's thought about—at a laterdate. Much, much later.
When people met me, however, they could no longer ignore the notion ofdeath—premature, unplanned-for death. I could see it in their eyes. Ilooked so much older than my 53 years—70 at least, maybe 75. The rightside of my face drooped. I looked as if I'd had a stroke, a bad one. Soon myhead would be bald from radiation, and the skin on my skull was the texture oftissue paper. (My daughter Gina said I looked like a kindly Dr. Evil, fromAustin Powers.) My speech was sometimes garbled, as if I were chewing onmarbles. One colleague said it sounded like I had suddenly acquired aMassachusetts accent. Now and then it took a few tries for even family membersand lifelong friends to understand what I was saying. Often I was beseeched topursue—please—some radical course of treatment, in the hopethat a miracle might occur. Some friends and colleagues seemed almost offendedby my attitude and chosen course, as if I had laid bare the fact that miracles,or their possibility, were ultimately worth rejecting. (Of course a partof me hoped that the front page of tomorrow's New York Times wouldannounce the miraculous medical breakthrough that would buy me a couple moredecades. But I couldn't afford to spend an ounce of energy on that possibility.)Most of the people I met wanted me to live forever—or at least for severalmore years. That way, the immediacy of what I represented could be made lessimmediate—to them.
People have written their own eulogies. Certainly they've picked out theircemetery plots and made very clear whether they want to be buried or cremated orto donate their bodies to medical science. But before I came up with the finaland most important to-do list of my life, I hadn't known anyone who tried tomanage his own death in such a conscious fashion. I did not start out doing itto influence others. I did it simply because that was who I was: methodical,organized, unequivocating, thorough. What can I say? I was an accountant notonly by trade, but by manner, as well. The same traits that made me someone whomight flourish in the world of finance and accounting also made me someone whodid not know how to do anything unplanned—dying included.
I had long believed that a successful businessperson could, if so inclined, livea spiritual life, and that to do so it wasn't necessary to quit the boardroom,chuck it all, and live on an ashram, as if only a physical departure thatdramatic would confirm a depth of feeling about larger issues, including one'ssoul. After my diagnosis, I still believed that. But I also discovered depths towhich a businessperson rarely goes, and learned how worthwhile it was to visitthere, and sooner rather than later, because it may bring one greater success asa businessperson and as a human being. You can call what I went through aspiritual journey, a journey of the soul. A journey that allowed me toexperience what was there all along but had been hidden, thanks to thedistractions of the world.
Because I learned so much in my final weeks that seemed remarkable to me (as Isuspected I would), I felt the tug to help people see this stage as somethingworth experiencing if you prepare for it. A couple of weeks after mydiagnosis, as I strolled through Central Park on a gorgeous day with one of myclosest friends, the mentor who had groomed me for my final job, I told him,"Most people don't get this chance. They're either too sick or they have no cluedeath is about to happen. I have the unique opportunity to plan this about aswell as it can be planned." The look he gave me was, I think, more admirationthan curiosity, but I can't say for sure.
Back when I was CEO, I expanded our firm's mentoring program so that everyonewould have a mentor. Later, as I was dying, I couldn't help but think thatlearning all I did about death's approach had forced on me the responsibility toshare my experience. I wanted to mentor someone, even one person, with thisknowledge I had gained. Knowledge about winding down relationships. Aboutenjoying each moment so much that time seems actually to slow down. About theone thing that's more important than time (and I don't mean love). About clarityand simplicity. About the death of spontaneity, and the need to rekindle it inour lives. Weren't these things that healthy people could learn, or must youhave a terminal illness before the ideas penetrate? Morbid as it sounds, myexperience taught me that we should all spend time thinking about our death, andwhat we want to do with our final days, insofar as it's within our control.
(Continues...)
(Continues...)Excerpted from CHASING DAYLIGHT by Eugene O'Kelly. Copyright © 2008 by Eugene O'Kelly. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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