My aunt was dying. She was my aunt in the biological sense but her role had been more of a parent to me.  She’d taken a great interest in me since I could remember and was a strong guiding force in my life.

“I want you to return to the church,” requested my aunt on her deathbed. “I want you to start to live the kind of life that you should be living so that on judgment day you can be assured of heaven.  Please take the money that I’m leaving you and do good with it.”

Her request hit me hard as she rarely made requests of me. In her last five years of life she had returned to the Baptist church and was involved quite a bit.

I was more than open to change. I just been laid off by Coca-Cola Enterprises and was tired of getting laid off or losing my job and some sort of reorganization. I have been an information technology all my life and if you know any IT people it is fast-changing career.  I had been involved in three large lay-offs in less than two years where I saw a lot of dedicated people tossed aside like trash. It finally got to me and I wanted out of IT.

I also wanted a funeral where I could be remembered for doing good in the world. It must sound like a statement that a beauty pageant winner would make but it was true. Dealing with the pending death of someone you have known all your life will make you ponder your own mortality at the least and make possibly make some changes.

I decided to return to the church.