Remembering the One Who. . .

He was over 6 feet tall, prematurely gray, and had the truest Irish blue eyes I’d ever seen.

More than that though — more than the way he looked, the way he talked with that back east accent, the way he would sing at the drop of a hat, and that he was the first person who took me and my family to the bottom of the Grand Canyon — he was there for me when the door opened.

 

That door. The door to my mind. In fact, he was probably the one who opened it.

 

“I have to go away for 10 days and I won’t be able to teach my course next week,” he told me. “I want you to teach it for me.”

 

Casually. That was how he said it. As if, of course I could do it. I’d been there taking registrations, serving coffee, and listening to his lectures over the past year, waiting until the end and then staying to clean up.

 

“You can do it. I know you can.”

 

I was really his “Girl Friday” — back in the day when there was such a thing. But he didn’t treat me that way. He didn’t treat me like just a Friday type of person — he treated me like

I was the whole week.

 

He hooked me up for month-long workshops in Northern California. For hypnosis with the renowned Milton Erickson. It was through him that I met Grinder and Bandler and Virginia Satir. There was nobody and nothing that he taught that he didn’t want me to be a part of as fully as possible.

 

“You’re one of the most intuitively intelligent people I’ve ever known,” he would tell me — in many different ways — while I would every time give him pushback.

 

He died a year ago this week. I still wonder, how could he be gone? He changed my life.

 

I worked for him for a scant four years. He was a PhD. Me? I didn’t even go to college. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. I got a degree from him.

 

I will never forget him and will forever be grateful to him. He resides in my heart, in that secret place where we treasure the memories — and the people — we want to keep alive.

Carmelene Melanie Siani

50plus Magazine

 

Carmelene Melanie Siani is beloved for her widely published stories on family, caregiving, grief, late-life love and more. Find her at www.facebook.com/StoryBelly