The obituary read: “August 31, 1998. Author/lecturer Dr. Leo Buscaglia – known internationally as “The Love Doctor” and “Doctor Hug” – died of a heart attack Thursday, June 11, at his home in Glenbrook, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. He was 74.”
I listened to several of Dr. Buscaglia’s lectures back in the early nineties, while he still lived and served as a professor of philosophy at UCLA. In one of those lectures he asked his students to write a love letter to someone they dearly loved, cautioning them to keep it clean. With the author’s permission he chose to read one of those letters aloud in class. Here was that letter:
“Dear Mike: Our professor in Philosophy 101 asked that we write someone we loved a letter – a love letter. This is mine and, of course, it’s written to you. I am sitting here in the corner bedroom that overlooks your house. I can see your Mom in the backyard, hanging out some laundry. It’ a beautiful day. Her lilacs are in full bloom.
“Do you remember when we were about eight years old you caught me helping myself to some of your Mom’s lovely flowers. My grandmother was in the hospital and I wanted to do something to cheer her up. When you stepped around the corner and saw me with a bunch of tulips in my hand, I just knew you would tell. But you didn’t. You picked a dozen more and told me how to keep them fresh till we got to the hospital that evening. Memories – how they come flooding back so easily!
“Do you remember our school prom? You had promised to take me, but then a month before the prom that girl from Boston transferred to our school. And, yes, even the girls had to admit she was beautiful. And, boy, did she ever make eyes at you. Linda Anderson overheard her telling a friend you were going to be her date for the prom. I just knew you were going to drop me and take her, but you didn’t. Anyway, Miss Teen America transferred again and left our school two weeks later.
“And then came graduation and your eighteenth birthday, and your parents bought you that new Mustang convertible. You let me drive it two weeks later and I backed into a lamppost and shattered one of the taillights. I just knew you would be mad. But you weren’t. You laughed and pointed to the big crack you had placed in the other taillight only a few days before.
“But then came Vietnam, and knowing you, I knew you would enlist – and you did. I wrote you every day – every single day, waiting for you to come back – but you didn’t………………..”
“You know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life. It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.” (James 4:14). Life can have its’ surprises and sometimes they are not too pleasant. We all need to remember that.
Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley