The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

with stage four liver cancer. Jody started searching the
Internet for what she could learn about his prognosis.
Realizing he had little time left to live, she began to prepare
for the inevitable. Mike, however, had other ideas.
His way of coping was to deny the imminence of death.
In Jody’s words, he “hunkered down” and refused to
acknowledge reality. He didn’t read about his condition,
didn’t ask the doctors any questions, and continued with life
as usual—except, of course, for the regular chemotherapy
and radiation treatments.
“In the midst of all of that,” she told me, “he was
concerned about his clients and whether it was time to
execute a buy-sell agreement on his business. Doing that
meant he was accepting his certain death sentence. The day
the agreement was executed, his mind began to fog.”
Listening to Jody relate the story over the phone years
after the fact, I could still hear the pain in her voice. I could
feel the urgency. She pleaded with Mike to write letters to
his children, a gesture she had seen make a dramatic impact
in Larry’s family. In fact, so moved by her friend’s gesture,
she had begun helping others do the same by teaching a
letter-writing workshop that empowered people to share
words of affirmation with their loved ones. She wanted her
family to receive that same comfort she had provided for
strangers. But her husband resisted. He didn’t believe the
cancer was that serious. And after weeks of trying to
persuade him, even resorting to writing the letters for him,
Jody finally gave up, deciding to comfort her husband with