Essay
	Sean Conway
	__________________________________________________________________________________________
	by Chris Reese, May 14, 2007
	[This is a repeat of an essay I wrote last year. Today is the day of the golf outing. My daughter woke up sick this morning, so I'm missing my once-a-year round of golf, but I'll still be keeping Sean and his family in my thoughts as I try to incorporate his example into my life.] _______________________________ Lee Trevino said that when a thunderstorm catches him on the golf course, he just holds a one iron over his head, because even God can’t hit a one iron. I can’t hit a one iron or a pitching wedge or a driver or just about anything else in a borrowed bag of clubs, but I can hit a four iron. I’m hell at whacking a little ball with a four iron. It’s embarrassing using it from tee to green, but that’s what I’ll be doing today. I’ll be hacking up the course in memory of a good friend. Sean Conway was my older brother’s best friend growing up and quickly became a friend of all of ours. He was the kind of family friend who was a regular addition on our beach vacations, who used his sharp elbows during hundreds of games of neighborhood basketball, and who teased my younger sister about getting married someday. During certain parts of our lives, we probably spent more time with Sean than we did with any of our individual friends. Sean died in 2003 after a seven year battle with skin cancer (melanoma). Prior to Sean’s experience, I had never known of such a thing. I had family and friends die of cancer, but never skin cancer and never after such a long struggle. Even from a distance, the ebb and flow of his treatment was exhausting. Each treatment seemed to rid him of cancer, but only for a short period of time. Hope would blossom and then get dashed again as the cancer kept returning. Seven years was a long time. In the life of his wife and three children, it was an epoch. His children were 4, 5, and 7 when he was diagnosed with cancer and 11, 12, and 14 when he passed away. I don’t know what it was like for his family, but it seemed to me that the years of pain and uncertainty cut right to the bone. He jettisoned everything that didn’t matter and focused on his family and the simplest joys in life. He ended everything he wrote with the exhortation: “Enjoy each day.” Sure, that’s the stuff of the chain e-mails that make the rounds, but Sean’s struggle lifted the statement out of cliché and filled it with meaning. How else would he have been able to look at his children and not let his fears and worries paralyze him? Sometimes I think there are only five things to learn in life and that we just learn them over and over again and, if we’re lucky, they start to stick with us for longer than eight seconds at a time. Today, I’m thinking that as Sean made it further down the path toward wisdom, he saw that it was only one thing that mattered when you really, really got down to it. So, that’s what I’ll be doing today. I’ll be enjoying it when it rains (as it’s supposed to), when I hit divots further than my ball (which I’m not supposed to), and when we all drink a toast and laugh at the memories of that good and decent friend, father, and husband. We love you, Sean. _______________________________ We are in a period of transition. We'll be posting once a week for now. We'll be providing more information soon. Thank you for your continued support. The next post will be Monday, May 21. During 2007, we will be donating 100 percent of our referral fees from Amazon to the Uncle Grumps Education Initiative. So, please click through us first when shopping at Amazon. The best way to keep in touch with us is to sign up on our e-mail list. You'll get a free copy of the Grump Gazette mailed to you every two weeks or so. You can sign up through the link at the top of this page or from the "Grump Gazette" icon on the homepage
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