What follows is my tribute to Steve Wilson, spoken at his service on Friday, Nov. 26th...
Steve has been my partner at work for almost 25 years.
He's been a great partner. More than I can possibly express.
Coming to work without him present, without his wry humor, his understated brilliance and his enormous heart, is hard to imagine. There is a loss there that will go on for a long, long time.
Steve was an incredible person. In that regard, I can tell you that I am grateful to have known him, to have spent so much time with him and to have had him so smack in the middle of my life for so long.
Grateful is a big concept to me.
Over the years, the words “cultivate gratitude” have come to signify a way to look at life. A way to strip away any sense of entitlement. A way to access reasons to be thankful for our lives.
For gratitude to become a habit, one must practice it. And that doesn't mean practice it only when it's easy. It means under any circumstance. Even this one.
So, today, the day after Thanksgiving, I want to tell you why I am so grateful to have had Steve as a partner for so many years.
It's actually hard to know where to begin.
I think I want to start by calling out his humility. Steve was a person of huge creative talent and at the same time, one of the least self-promotional individuals I have ever known. I'm not sure I can remember a single thing he ever said or did whose motive was to make himself look better. This is a quiet and beautiful and under the radar quality that few people have. I remember many years ago at a particular juncture in our workload mentioning to Steve that I was aware of the fact that he had given all the really juicy, high profile creative assignments to other people in the agency rather than holding on to them himself and he said, “Thank you for noticing.” Over the years I'm sure there were countless gestures like this, most of which probably did go unnoticed. Steve knew who he was and didn't need the recognition of others to shore up his sense of self.
Steve was a great listener, one of the best I have ever known. He would take in everything and you knew he was really taking it in. And where creative work was concerned, that capacity of his to listen well and then tap into his own deeply original creative mind was a constant source of real pleasure. Day after day, year after year, Steve's creative work connected with, delighted and excited client after client.
In that same light, Steve could always be trusted to come through. You knew you could count on him. You knew he had your back. You knew that he was so deeply engaged and committed to delivering excellence that he was never going to let you down. Under fire, under stress, under duress, Steve would always come through. And always with an extraordinary attention to the most minute detail.
As everyone at our company knows, Steve shouldered huge amounts of responsibility. Always. Without complaint. In ways that were designed to lighten the load of others.
Steve was a person of exceptional integrity. In all the highs and lows of our business life together, there was never the slightest concern or question about the fact that he could be trusted completely with anything no matter what it might be. I thank him for that gift and I know I will miss it.
Steve was a person of kindness. His core of kindness was always present. I cannot think of a single mean-spirited thing he ever did.
He did, however, have a wicked sense of humor. A witty, understated, wry and often deadpan way of totally cracking us up. I came across an email he sent out a few years ago. He was forwarding to a few of us an email he had received with the subject line: Hi from Kristina. Above the complete text of Kristina's email, Steve's email began: “I'm sorry to tell you that Monday will be my last day at the agency. I've fallen in love and am moving to Russia. When you read Kristina's email to me, I'm sure you'll understand why I am so totally smitten. She has such a refreshing way with words--my favorite being: “I shall wait much.” Well, I can't make her wait much, so I must go. I'm now writing to her my story life but am sure things will work out regardless.”
******
Now I want to tell you a little about the events of this past week.
As you all must know, many of us at LHWH have been coming to work with Steve as a central person in our lives for ten, 15, 20 years and more.
So, after this past weekend's sudden and shocking turn of events, Vern and I talked and agreed that we wanted everyone at LHWH to know what had happened with Steve after he was admitted to the hospital on Friday, including that he was not going to make it. I spent Monday sharing that news with everyone in our company, not knowing by the end of the day he would already no longer be with us.
You can only imagine the shock and heartbreak of this news.
The lack of warning, the lack of closure, the suddenness, the helplessness and impending finality of losing Steve just like that was devastating and almost surrealistic for all of us. In having to share this news, I was witness to the depth of feeling for Steve in so many people: the tears, the disbelief, the sense of loss, the visceral impact this news had on everyone.
I also reached out on Monday to close friends who used to work at LHWH that I knew would want to hear what was happening with Steve in a more personal and immediate way.
I hope no one here ever has to be the bearer of news like this to those close to you but I want to tell you that across the spectrum of all the past and present LHWH relationships that Steve had there was one common thread that was expressed over and over again: “I really, really loved him.”
The cumulative effect of hearing this over and over again was very powerful. It gave me pause to want to dwell a bit on that depth of feeling Steve inspired around him.
Given that Steve's workplace persona was often overwhelmed, stressed out, unknowingly frowning, intense, serious and rushed, it was amazing and revealing to be exposed to how deeply that inner beauty of his had connected with so many people at such a heart level.
It made me think of my favorite definition of work, something Kahlil Gibran wrote, something that I first read long ago when I was still in college.
Gibran said:
“Work is love made visible.”
Based on this definition, Steve deserves to be honored for the quality of work that he did.
*******
A few years ago the American writer Joan Didion wrote a book called The Year of Magical Thinking. It's the story of the year that followed her sitting down to dinner with her husband one night only to have him drop dead in front of her in the middle of a sentence. “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” she wrote at the time. The book is a memoir of the year that followed that sudden death. The reason that the book is titled The Year of Magical Thinking is that at some point well into that first year after her husband's death, Joan realizes that somewhere in her, she still expects to come home one night and find her husband alive, sitting at the table, life as she knew it returning to normal. She recognizes that deep down, she is still attached to the expectation of a magical reversal of the unreality of his death. This comes to mind because this week I have heard over and over that this all seems unreal, like a bad dream, like it can't really have happened. And I expect that we will all have our own experience with not really believing that Steve is gone, that we will come to work one day and he will be in his office as usual. I know, myself, this week, when I walked by his office, I still felt that he was there or would be there shortly and could not really fathom that the hole of Steve's absence wouldn't somehow be filled by him magically reappearing and all of us waking from this as if it was just a bad dream. I expect we will have our own year of Magical Thinking at LHWH while we all try to process a loss that leaves such a big hole in the heart.
But, on a deeper level, suffering is an inevitable part of life. We are all mortal, none of us know the moment we are destined to go and all of us have to experience the death of people we love. This is often a test of faith. But, it can also serve as a catalyst for deepening one's understanding of what really does matter in life, for reshaping one's priorities, for remembering what has intrinsic, ongoing value and what does not.
It is said that:
"God brings men into deep waters
not to drown them,
but to cleanse them."
And for myself, I believe, in the end, everything comes back to love.
And while it hurts to lose Steve so abruptly, there is some solace in seeing how deeply loved he was by so many.
This is the legacy of his life that I will hold on to. It ties back to the final thought I want to share today, another quote about love:
“Love is the reflection of God’s unity in the world of duality. It constitutes the entire significance of creation.”
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