My dear friend Ian is no longer with us. He has left this mortal world.
There is a lesson in A Course in Miracles that says:
‘I am not a body, I am free.’
It reminds us that the body is a communication device. That it is in the service of life; in the service of that which animates it; that death is nothing to fear; indeed it is the call home, your spiritual home and that it is a release for spirit to go home.
So I believe even as he laid his body down, his spirit is strong and his soul lives on.
And so does the memories.
We first met as colleagues at First National Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa, working together on Joint Analysis and Design (JAD) workshops for a new computer system. I was the scribe and Ian the facilitator. We had several representatives from the business and a number of representatives from Information Technology all together in a room to brainstorm and capture what the proposed system should look like, what it should do, what data would be required, what outputs and so on. And as we worked and fleshed out the vision for this system, Ian would model it on the whiteboard. It was my task to copy it all down, capture the purpose, objectives, functions, data required, descriptions, issues, risks, practically everything that was voiced and produce a document.
We were having a lot of fun. It was great team work. It so happened that I came across a cartoon that depicted the sort of work we were doing and captured exactly where we were in the process: Everything was going well, the inputs were there, the outputs were known, but quite how to get from A to B was rather non-existent. And THIS, the picture told us, modeled just like the other parts of the diagram, was where a miracle occurred.
I thought this was hilarious and very apt under the circumstances. So when my document was ready for review, I took a fresh copy of the then-a-miracle-occurs cartoon and slipped it inside the document.
When Ian opened this document and the copy fell out, he immediately took it as a criticism of his work and his abilities as a facilitator. I was mortified! This was not the reaction I had expected at all! I thought he’d get the joke, have a good old laugh and we’ll share it with the others. Instead, I found myself explaining why I did it, why I thought it was funny and the more I explained, the deeper I got myself into the hole I had unwittingly dug for myself. He was deeply hurt. No amount of profuse apologies was going to fix this misunderstanding any time soon. I had seriously messed up an excellent working relationship – something that I have always treasured and aimed for. It took me weeks and weeks of reassurance, apologies and commitment to the work we did together to convince him that the joke was not on him. Ian, I hope you have finally forgiven me!
To this day I still have a paper copy of the original. What an oxymoron, itself a word I learned from him. Hope I’m using it correctly here.
We did put the system in, working a miracle. I wonder if it’s still running. It is probably called a legacy system now although at the time it was state-of-the-art. And I wonder if I could have a conversation with him now, telling this story, what he would say? I think his face would light up as he remembered; a mischievous glint in his eyes. He would laugh and say ‘It was good times, Raves, when we worked together at First National Bank: You, me, Mike, Thelma, Sandy, Nick and the others.’
Yes it was good times. Thank you. Thank you for the friendship and the joy you brought to so many. Thank you for the example you and Sandra showed the world of how beautiful a relationship and marriage can be. Thank you for being a role model – not just for your own children, but for mine and I am sure others as well. Thank you for enriching our lives with your sense of humour and love of life. Thank you for being love.
Rest in peace.
**Hamba Kahle means goodbye in both Xhosa and Zulu. It literally means ‘go well.’
