The Wisdom of Numbering Your Days (2024)

All coming right up.

[00:01:00] I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor: exploring what it means to live a good life.

If you're a regular listener, you're quite aware that we do not shy away from substantive topics, many of which are often fraught with emotional weight. But there are difficult topics, and then there are difficult topics. Today is one of those. It is, in fact, a topic that we seem to avoid in American culture, avoid at all costs: the coming fact of our own death.

Some years ago, a friend of mine shared that he had gotten a cancer diagnosis. Odds were, he said, that he'd have about five years to live. Four years later, Clay agreed to sit down and talk on tape about his experience. I invited him to my house. We sat in the living room, and I tried to set up the conversation.

I'm [00:02:00] hoping Or what I'm anticipating is, um

It was not Clay that seemed uncomfortable with the conversation. It was me.

You've been given the, uh, opportunity to kinda know the date of your passing.

Um In the months prior to that day in my living room, Clay told me that he had exhausted his treatment options, he knew he did not have long to live, and he had decided to simply set a date for the time of his death.

To be clear, this was not to be an assisted suicide, it was simply Clay's own educated guess, based on the numbers from his doctors, and he took to calling it his 'Ascension Day.' Clay was a businessman, a CEO of several companies, and he often prioritized practicalities. He always honored the numbers, [00:03:00] And yet he believed that a miracle could cure him.

But he also knew, given the stats, that it was unlikely. Setting a date, on the other hand, would allow him an intentionality about the last months, weeks, days of his life. It was something to work with.

If I just had a certain amount of time, what are the things that I haven't done that I want to do, number one, and who would I do them with, and would it create a lasting memory with them?

He pulled out a notebook, turns out it was a journal I gave him a year prior.

You, you probably don't remember, but you gave everybody these. This was the most uncomfortable journal I've ever had in my life, because it- I started off, I just started brainstorming people in my life, and for example, I wrote my brother.,

He and I went to Dodger Town as kids, so why don't we go to Dodger Stadium? Like, I'm gone, this will be a wonderful memory.

Clay estimated he had a bit less than a year, that time aligned with him passing somewhere around the end of the year, [00:04:00] so he designated his so called Ascension Day as New Year's Eve.

He started literally numbering his days. I had never had such an opportunity to have such conversations, with such candor and intentionality. When you asked me,

So I go into the hospital with stomach pain. They did a colonoscopy and said, Hey, you have a full blockage. We have to put you right back under, this is late at night. So I come out of this surgery with a colostomy bag. So, pretty drastic waking up from that and then being told this prognosis is not good. Some high percentage of greater than 90 percent don't live five years with liver cancer.

The stage that I'm in and that's, that's when we had to go through the conversation around, well, what, what should you do next?

Yeah, I would say [00:06:00] that has been the hardest part of the journey from beginning to even to now. I still struggle with depression as it relates to how to emotionally battle something that you, you're not going to win. I mean, the math says for me at this point, the only way you win is through some sort of a miracle, which I think is good to hope for. I've always been able to say, you know, I, we live in a world where people die. I mean, we're all going to die unless God comes back before you die, which hadn't happened yet. And we just, we walk through it almost as if it's not real.

People look at you differently when you have cancer, they, I mean, they, they, like you're more fragile. And then you don't die. So it's like, you know, when people first 'hear it, it's like, 'Oh, dad's going to die.' Well, then you wake up a year or two later, you're still alive. And it's like, it's not even news anymore, but yet you're still dealing with it. And I think that's probably been the emotional part of it is I want it to go on.

Yeah, I would like to say that it's not, but with my journey there has been only brief gaps of 'things are good' because we do these scans every three months. So there's always this day, and so far, we've not had one time where they said 'hey, we don't see anything.'

I really struggled with chemotherapy. There was a platinum drug that they add to it that sort of spikes the efficacy. So it's a powerful additive, but it's also really, really affects your quality of life. The first thing we did was drop that because that was causing tremendous issues. One of the challenges is you, you look at some of these options, none of them are great. It's like, well, if you do chemo, it's probably got about [00:08:00] a 25 to 35 percent chance of success. So it's like, from a math perspective, you're like, why am I doing this? Well, we don't really have a better option. And so that's when I made the decision to drop it. I don't think we should continue this path.

Yeah. So I, I think I've always had some level of acceptance that we're all going to die and this is probably going to shorten my life. Let's just accept this. And how can we accept it and find peace in it? And not only just find peace, but is there a path where I can mentally thrive? If I look around the environmental factors that I live in, the economic situation I have, my friends, is there a way for me to take this situation and say, 'this is not a horrible hand. This is the hand I have. Just play it.'

[00:09:00] From a spirit perspective, I feel strongly that This is going to happen in the next year. I hope it doesn't, but I think, I think it's going to. It's probably not going to happen on 12/31, but I needed some way to name it, to be able to put it into a plan that would give me peace.

So I decided to call it my Ascension day, name it, give it a date, just sit with it. I sat with it for a few days before I told my wife. I thought, you know, I'm trying to bring some levity, which, which didn't necessarily go over all that well, but, you know, so that's, that's, uh, that's how I'm trying to navigate it.

Well, it's really cool when it's 360 something days and it's not as cool when it gets closer. And I'm sure that's going to feel really different, you know, as it gets even shorter.

Um, but it has allowed me to have perspective, maybe to take more control of what I'm doing with my time. And we're, we all are, all of our days are numbered. We just don't know them. And so it's given me on the positive end, it's given me focus. On the negative, I beat myself up when I waste time. And there's a little bit, I really hope I say this right, there's a selfishness that is not, not normal for me.

I want to be a little selfish and try to enjoy time with people that really matter to me. And it's a pure selfishness, it's not this hedonistic selfishness. It's like this type of selfishness is, is more about, man, God's given you this little bit of time. [00:11:00] What are you going to do with it?

You know, in the virtue traditions, desire is not problematic.

What's problematic is a, a disordered attachment to a desire. But, one finds joy in the rightful enjoyment of desire, including things like sociability and friendship and enjoying a meal rightly that that's not only not a problem, but it's like. Part and parcel of what it means to live a good life. And so I love your description of that.

This past week I had the opportunity. It was, I am doing more of this last minute opportunities. I just do it. I was in Austin for work and I couldn't get back here to do the meeting I needed to do in Austin. I was going to miss the flight that I wanted to be on. So there was a flight to Tampa from Austin. My son lives in Tampa, and we've done spring training baseball games together.[00:12:00]

And so I said, I'm going to fly to Tampa instead. So he and his wife book a couple of baseball games and I, Thursday night, I fly to Tampa, Friday afternoon, we're at a baseball game. What a wonderful opportunity. Just enjoying the moment of being able to open a bag of peanuts with my son in right field at a spring training baseball game and really, uh, savor that.

Yeah, I have lots of what I would call casual friends. And then my personality is I've always been a person who would have two or three really deep friends.

And so over my life, I look at that group of people and my family. And what I [00:13:00] decided made sense to me in my last lap of my life. It would be fun to do something with you that you'll remember when I'm gone and they bring a smile to your face. And so it doesn't have to even be anything big. You know, if I play golf with this person, go play a round of golf and be really present with them. They don't realize this is the last time we're going to play golf. We might state it. We might not. My son probably doesn't because we talked, he said, 'next year we're going to Scottsdale for spring training.' 'Okay.' In my mind, we're not going spring training again. That was it. I enjoyed those peanuts with you one last time. Now if, if I'm lucky to go past the 12/31 Ascension Day, then we'll go to Scottsdale. But in my mind, I wanted that to be special because it was the last time.[00:14:00]

I would assume at a time like this that it's quite natural to be aware of thinking about one's mistakes, while also wanting to avoid the unhelpful ruminating upon them.

When does reflecting upon one's past in that way, is it helpful, and at what point does it become counterproductive or damaging?

Yeah, I think that has been a lifelong journey, sort of in parallel, but separate from this more existential issue. I stayed, I would say, um, almost stymied by some of those regrets for much of my 40s.

I would liken it to you kind of walking down the middle of the road, you need to be on one side or the other of this road, and I stayed in the middle of the road for a long time. And at some point you got to decide, you've apologized as much as you can apologize, you've done all you can do [00:16:00] to fix the things that you've done wrong, and it's not productive to stay stuck. Let's move forward. How can I be the very best ex-husband that I can be, and how can I be the best dad I can be, in spite of the fact that my kids suffered through divorce and the consequences that come with that. How can I be a great dad today?

Last question for today. I remember not long after you had gotten your initial diagnosis, You said that you weren't really interested in having a big funeral.

You kind of thought that someone who has lived a good life should be quite content with not leaving too much of a fuss in their wake. And that struck me as just beautifully wise. What brought you to that?

I look at [00:17:00] life and I think you can spend a lot of time trying to create a legacy and again, if you look at the data, whether you like it or not, you're not going to be remembered almost one generation past your life.

So you're only going to impact, in a deep way, a handful of people. So just do that well. I look at this, this opportunity to talk to you. I mean, the primary thing is it'll be a gift for my kids. I have a very clear view that my impact is a very small ripple in the overall scheme of life, but I've had a big impact on a handful of people.

Um, and I'd like to do that well. And then as they navigate life, maybe there's one or two nuggets that they associate with me, or they don't that impact how they walk their lives. And if, if that's what, you know, impact you have [00:18:00] is a small, positive impact in a few people, that's good.

You're listening to No Small Endeavor and my conversation with Clay Hobbs.

I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com. You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen.

These notes include links to resources mentioned in the episode as well as a pdf of my complete interview notes and a full transcript. We'd be delighted if you'd tell your friends about No Small Endeavor. And invite them to join us on the podcast because it helps extend the reach of the beauty, truth, and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world.

After the break, some of Clay's adventures [00:19:00] and his intentionality about his goodbyes.

Right before the break, we heard Clay share that he anticipated dying before the year was out, and that he had decided to take every opportunity to live the year as well as possible, to be intentional about what he did and the people with whom he spent time. About a month after we taped that initial conversation, Clay and I checked in with one another via Zoom.

He had taken pilot lessons years previously but had never completed the training. Back then he put it on a long list of things he might do one day when he had more time. So shortly before we talked again, he was invited on a cross country trip with a friend who owned a plane.

Because he could get jet fuel for $3.59 a gallon. You had to pump it yourself. It was the middle of nowhere. It felt like an [00:20:00] apocalypse kind of thing. There's nobody there. The back door's open. There's a plastic bag over the urinal. The co*ke machine is out of service. There's this flagpole with no flag and the metal is jingling on the flagpole.

So we pumped the fuel and got back in the air. He let me essentially do the pedal part and then also lift. Taking the plane off the ground up to 10, 000 feet. It's just so exhilarating. It was so amazing. I was just like, 'Oh my gosh.'

That same month, Clay and his wife Angela took a trip to California. They were retracing the steps of their honeymoon years before.

He was in good spirits. His body felt decent. He sent me some audio recordings he made on the coast: sounds of ocean, wind, and the seals on the shoreline. But then complications arose and Clay found himself hospitalized there in California.

Two trips away from home, a hospitalization on the road, the cancer not slowing down.[00:22:00]

Clay became more and more intentional about last opportunities. No encounter and no goodbye could be trite. Any goodbye, he seemed to know, might be the last.

I think that they should deduce that [00:23:00] from when people have asked me, how are you doing?

I said, 'well, you know, obviously this is colon cancer that metastasized initially to my liver. It's now on my lungs.' Without saying, 'I'm saying goodbye to you today,' I did let her know that, you know, we are no longer really trying to fight the cancer. I'm just trying to feel good and live life.

I think that it's always just right below the surface. I have the external, you know, writing a happy ending, um, having a farewell tour, trying to make levity around it.

But then, when it's just me, sometimes I can [00:24:00] listen to a specific song. One time my wife said to me, 'you know, I just don't want you to leave.' And there's this one song, it's uh, 'neither one of us wants to be the first to say goodbye.' I, for some reason, I've listened to that song a lot. And I just, oh, I just am a puddle of tears listening.

It's like it has some therapy to me, but it also just, just totally crumble because of the, not wanting to say goodbye, you know, to my wife. Not, not, not wanting to leave.

But then there are times when I can sort of like this past Sunday we went to church and sometimes when I go to church, I'm very moved by music. And Randy was the worship leader this past week and he sang songs that are moving and I could have almost bet you I'm going to cry through this entire service. But on the way to [00:25:00] church, I just lifted my head and said, 'today is going to be about praise. I'm just not going to be open to being sad today. I'm just going to be, I'm going to praise God.' And so I, I just, somehow I did that. I don't, I don't know where that comes from, but, as far as the life's questions, what I really struggle with is, I think, I understand sort of the view of a fallen world. Part of what comes with free will is good and bad.

But when I back up from that, I still sort of say, but God, you designed this. And I have this fear of, I don't ever want to be dis-, like I think about Job questioning God, and all of a sudden, 'where were you? Where were you?' Like, I don't want that. I don't want you being angry with me. But I really question how, if you're so amazing and powerful, and you created something that's flawed, that doesn't seem all that powerful to me. It doesn't seem all that intelligent to me. And that's something I've just struggled with from a faith perspective. It's like, um, you created [00:26:00] humans and this is, this isn't good. I can look at Ukraine and what's happening and say, it's free will, what a, what a cop out. This is what you built? Come on. Maybe you should, you should try totally again.

So that's been my, my most current struggle is like, that doesn't make sense to me. And I don't know how to answer that. I mentioned to Randy, 'Hey, you know, I would. I would like you to lead the worship part of my funeral, which I think will be a fairly simple funeral.' I could tell by his face, he's like, 'Oh my gosh', I'm like 'you don't have to do it.'

He goes, 'no, no, no, it's just you and I are close and it would be hard.' I haven't talked to you, so I'm going to hit you with this. And I said, 'and I haven't talked to Lee yet, but I'm actually going to ask Lee to be involved in my funeral.' So the two of you, I want you to help me with this funeral needs to be simple, but it needs to follow this storyline.

So I think you're both really cool storytellers. Um, so you may say I'm not doing it, but I want you to know that I, in my perfect ending, [00:27:00] we work on that together.

You, you may not know, I grew up in the funeral business.

My dad was a funeral director. So. Yeah, so I have been to so many funerals and I've wept at people's funerals I didn't even know. But I do think there's an opportunity when you have one to just to be able to make a nice story that could be unique.

In Childersburg, Alabama, where my grandfather used to preach, where my parents were married, where my mom's funeral was, where my dad's second wedding was, and now his funeral. So all of these things have happened at this little church. It's basically a mobile home with like an office. It's just a little country cemetery. And there's a man laying on the front of that mobile home porch.

And he has helped dig the grave. He's had a massive heart attack on that [00:29:00] front porch and died right there.

I stepped up and I said, you guys do what you need to do here. I got it. I was raised in the funeral business. I wasn't a funeral director, but my family, with sort of me leading it, we carried on at the cemetery and the minister did what he was going to do. And we, his son and four grandsons, buried my father.

In some weird way it was kind of this really cool 360 gift as my dad would, I know he would have been smiling. It's like, 'okay, you finally learned something through all of this.' And I think for my, my, uh, nephews and my, my own sons probably don't realize the sort of the significance of you actually get to participate in the burial of your grandfather.

What a story.[00:30:00]

You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our episode entitled The Wisdom of Numbering Your Days and my conversation with Clay Hobbs. I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.

Coming up, my last conversations with Clay.

We talked on April 6th and then we checked in over Zoom on May 6th.

And so here we're taping on 21 December.

[00:31:00] We were back together in my living room. It's 10 days prior to what Clay had set as what he was calling his Ascension Day, the anticipated day of his own death. All year he had been numbering his days based on the presumption that he would die before the year was out. This would not be our last time to talk and visit, but it would be our last time to talk on tape before the disease progressed, making it more onerous.

Since we taped last, if I remember correctly, we had some unexpectedly good reports and then also decided maybe to do some radiation later that maybe you hadn't planned to do earlier.

The radiation in the summer on those tumors, it worked. Unfortunately, when I went back, while those three tumors had shrunk they found, I think it's five, new tumors [00:32:00] on my lungs. Um, that amount of cancer, it doesn't make sense to radiate because it would do more damage to my lungs.

I'm not in a curative mode, I'm in a palliative mode at this point. That reality that we knew was probably going to happen has now happened.

I think it's probably harder to watch my wife. The roller coaster is really hard for her. Um, for me to process dying has a, probably a different internal response than someone you love that you can't take it for them. You can't, you know, there's nothing you can do about it. You have to just watch.

My pain level has been higher. So I've, I've really focused more on pain management in the last few months. So I, I would say for me, the unknown of what, when you walk through the oncology area at Vanderbilt and you see all of [00:33:00] the really, really sick people and emaciated people to think that might be the path that you're headed, I think it's scary. At least it is for me. Not to say I'm not totally at peace around death. It's the process of getting from here to there is actually causing more, I think, anxiety is maybe the right word. That there's definitely some fear of the unknown from a pain perspective.

So at a very macro level, I think, dealing with pain offers growth. I think it's, there's something sort of spiritual of realizing life is hard, there's pain in life, and you can see it more tangibly when you have what I'm going through. And now, practically, what am I going to do about it? So there's the one level of, 'okay, this is hard. I can do hard things. And hopefully people that know me and love me will benefit from watching me walk through this.' That all sounds good and there's the actual fear of it. [00:34:00] And like, 'okay, I didn't sleep at all last night and I don't know how to function today because I was in pain all night.'

There's like the emotional mental part of wrapping my head around it. Then there's the practical of, you know, I've got to come up with some other strategy here. I'm still figuring that out.

So it's like, I've, I've spent a fair amount of time in the anger and I'm not, as a personality, I'm not a person who is angry that often.

So it's not comfortable for me, because I'm in denial and then I'm trying to figure out how to [00:35:00] live knowing that there is an end and I don't know when it is. You know, I think I told you last time I'd, I'd picked an Ascension Day, which is 12/31. So that's now 10 days away. From all appearances, I'm going to probably go past that, it looks like.

And that's really been more of the issue for me is trying to navigate. I'm not going to recover from this. It's not like it's a loss that you grieve and you, you get over it and life goes on. I think life goes on, but I don't understand the form of that, so it's an unknown. And not being able to plan for life, like normal people who aren't thinking about death.

Like when you're 55 and you're thinking about raising grandkids and all the things that happen in life, what's in front of you. I'm trying to navigate, well, I don't really know. And I know that's true for all of us, but there's something more real about it when you have a terminal illness. It's one thing to say, yes, live in the moment, it's something else to realize this might [00:36:00] be your last Christmas. And people think about it that way. Like, I think my wife thinks this is probably our last Christmas. Well, that's makes it more somber and also makes it, like, now there's pressure for me. I'm supposed to do something, I don't know, something more, more memorable for my family on this holiday. And, in many ways, I just feel like not saying anything, you know. That's probably been what I've struggled with is there's some fatigue with cancer, or any long term illness. There's a fatigue of, 'I don't really want this to be over because being over means I'm not around anymore.' But I'm fatigued from the conversation of it, the daily life with it, navigating life with it has been harder than I imagined.

See, there were some things that didn't happen, but there were a lot of things that did happen. So I got to be very mindful of spending time with people that were special to me.

I have some that I'm still wanting to do that are still out there on what's sort of my list. If I'm not careful, then it becomes like a, checklist that creates stress for me. In many ways was one of my very best years doing things that I think mattered not just for me but for the folks that I was able to to do those [00:38:00] things with.

My own learning is that I operate out of fear a lot. And so that dictates things I don't do, things I do. Maybe jobs that I took, things I stayed in longer than I should have. And so I have tried to operate not in a place of fear. A lot of things are not in my control. In fact, most things are not in my control. So that's the one thing that I've learned in this process, is that life is a lot more enjoyable if I can get out of that fear of failure, fear of whatever.

So I think that would be the thing, if I could recommend, and I'm trying to do this with my children, is, [00:39:00] you know, thrive. If you want to do something, go try to do it. That doesn't mean do it flippantly, but don't be stymied by fear. Go live your life.

Years ago, in a book by Cal Newport, I came across a passage from the science writer Winifred Gallagher.

She described her own experience with cancer. And I found her perspective both surprising and profound, and I wanted to know if any of it resonated with Clay.

She said that her curiosity was piqued by not being, quote, 'mired in fear and self pity,' but it was instead she noted often quite pleasant her experience in focusing on the things that mattered to her. And she came up with what she called 'a grand unified theory of the mind.' And she said, quote, 'the skillful management of attention is the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.' After this year, how would you say for you it's helpful or not to think about management of your attention as a [00:40:00] sort of absolutely necessary task to your daily life?

Yeah, I, and I think sometimes that is maybe more challenging for men than it should be, that we don't express how much we love people and how, you know, last night, for example, we, we had, uh, my sister and three of my four sons over and my grandkids were over and I'm just sitting around the table and I'm just so thankful.

And so just being able to actually say that, 'we're [00:42:00] enjoying each other's time here and I want us to soak that in because I'm soaking it in,' is powerful to tell people how much you appreciate them. It's a little bit awkward for me because then people turn it into a cancer conversation. The thing that I'm trying to avoid is taking air out of a room because of the topic.

But being grateful and thankful, so many people are uncomfortable with that. 'Oh, let's don't talk about that. Let's, you're going to be fine. I know it's all going to work out.' That, to me, is the conundrum. As I try to be real with people, a reasonable percentage of people don't want to even engage in that.

It's like, 'oh, you're going to be fine.' I'm like, 'well, people die.' And so, I mean, it's just part of the natural-, and we should be present for the time we have together. And I think there's also, uh, when I talk about death, I sometimes feel like people think I don't have faith. 'You don't have enough faith to think this is gonna, you know, get fixed.' [00:43:00] Like, well, I don't, I don't actually approach it that way, I mean, I people die and bad things happen to good people all the time.

It's not a lack of faith, it's actually, I think it's the opposite. I'm trying to do what I think Jesus modeled in the garden, which is he was very clear about what he wanted to happen, and he was very submissive to 'I'm going to walk the path that I'm going to walk and I'm going to lean on you, God, when I do it.'

So I'm very clear in my conversations with God that I really want you to take this away from me. Um, and I also want to be present for every day that I'm still here.

And with that, Clay and I went to have our last meal together at The Smiling Elephant, a favorite local Thai restaurant here in Nashville.

Several months later, my wife Laura and I visited Clay and his wife [00:44:00] Angela. He was not doing well and was under hospice care.

[Recording of 'He Leadeth Me' sung at Clay's bedside.]

A few days later, a beautiful June morning in Nashville, several of us, friends from church, visited Clay at his bedside. Clay was now almost six months beyond what he had called his Ascension Day. We gathered around, sang hymns, shed tears. I was amazed that Clay was still lucid when I leaned in to kiss him on the forehead.

He told me that he loved me. Clay died at home three days later with his wife and family at his side.

[ Recording [00:45:00] continued]

And, as I'd promised, I was grateful to share a eulogy at his memorial:

The Psalmist says that wisdom begins with numbering our days. And so in Clay's numbering of the last days of his life, and in his death, Clay has taught us wisdom. Wisdom about how to live life with a simplicity grounded in gratitude for this very moment, for the friend in front of us. To accept realities which we cannot change. To love yet more, as God may empower us to do so.[00:46:00]

You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and my conversations with Clay Hobbs.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation, supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion. And the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.[00:47:00]

Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible: Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Jason Sheesley, Audrey Griffith, and Tim Lauer. And a special thank you and credit to Cariad Harmon for producing this episode with such care. Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together.

No Small Endeavor is a production of PRX, Tokens Media LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.