When Special People Die

This appeared February 19, 2006

What happens when special people die?
That question has been weighing more heavily in the past month or so, as every passing day seem to be marked by the passing away of someone of unique experience or ability or devotion or personality.
Nationally, we've just buried Coretta Scott King, the woman who personified the modern civil rights movement and the link to one of the 20th century's greatest men. But locally, funerals have been held recently for Bob Thompson and Terry Muzzy and Colin Fitzpatrick and Sherry Franklin.
Thompson's was arguably Chester County's most popular politician; trying to find someone who had something bad to say about him - even as he was working against their personal political goals - was next to impossible. Muzzy was among the county's most revered counselors - a man who looked into the eyes of teenagers in crisis with drugs or alcohol or other personal demons and made them see the good in themselves.
Perhaps less well known were Fitzgerald and Franklin, but they touched more lives around them than anyone could reasonably expect: Fitzgerald as a captain on the Unionville High School hockey team, where his peers raised him to near-idol status, and Franklin as a counselor at Brian's House and Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Handicrafters, where her friendly hand helped steer the lives of those who found themselves challenged emotionally and mentally.
So what, collectively, do we do now that they are gone? How do we compensate for the loss of people who are, in some way, irreplaceable?
It seems at first blush an impossible task. I read reporter Anne Pickering's account of Muzzy's memorial service in which one student said flatly that Muzzy, "taught me how to live." Another called him, "an angel put on earth by God to help us."
Forgive me, but if someone walks up to me and says: "You're going to have to pick up the slack now that Mr. Muzzy is gone," I'm not going to be able to answer the bell.
Or at least, not in the way that people like he did. Put it this way: They are going to hold a special election in May to find the person to fill the 19th state Senate District's seat. They are not going to find someone to replace Bob Thompson.
But I put the question to people I know, who in turn knew these people. How do we go on without them? I wondered. Do we have an obligation to improve ourselves, to meet their standards? Do we wait for someone else to come along and take their place?
To my shock, the responses I received were not full of fear for the future, but rather with optimism.
"When really great people leave us the only thing we can do is what they would want us to do, and that is to follow their lead. As role models they would want nothing more than for us to take what they've given us and continue the work," said one friend.
About those people who follow in their footsteps, one person wrote: "Hopefully, the new person, taking all they've seen and been taught .... can in turn push the bar a little higher still, so we are all constantly leaving the world in a better place than when we 'found' it."
Good advice.