James McLaughlin Way
September 15, 1968-October 7, 2014
Eulogy//October 13, 2014//Cathedral of Christ the King
Last Wednesday, a friend shared with me this passage from an unknown author:
“Accumulated grief and sorrow, no longer to be held at bay, have swarmed up and blown the hinges off the gate. Grief and sorrow have flattened me. After the gate flew open, I learned the most important lessons of my life. I learned that grief is precisely equivalent to love, and the terrible grief felt after the loss of a person one has loved deeply is a necessary consequence of that love and represents its survival in another form.”
My sister Siobhan and I sat on my back porch last week, in the spot where we spent so much time with James this past spring and summer, and talked about what we wanted to say.
Last spring James had come back to Georgia from Chicago to work on a commission painting for Tony Robbins. I wonder if some part of him knew while he was working on it that it might be his swan song. To accommodate the size of the painting he had to do the piece in a barn on McMennamy Farms in Rydal, Georgia. Despite the generous and very loving hospitality of his friends and hosts, Scott McMennamy and his parents John and Judy, James was driving himself into the ground working on the painting, which would become one of his masterpieces. There were times when the isolation of being there and doing this grueling work and being away from his partner Annie and son Lion was nearly unbearable for him. Because of his declining health he hadn’t painted in nearly three years, and he felt immense relief and ultimately great pride, that he was able to create again.
That beautiful painting now hangs in the home of Tony Robbins and those months of struggle became a wonderful gift for James and our family. His exhaustion, and longing for Annie and Lion, would bring him to my house often, where he and Siobhan and I would spend countless hours laughing and talking. With Annie and Lion preparing to move back from Chicago, and my daughter Sophie away at Camp and traveling with her dad, James and Siobhan and I had, for the first time in our adult lives, the profound gift of sharing those precious, magical days together and rediscovering each other as adults. I would come home from work to find James cooking extravagant gorgeous meals, that he himself could not eat because his appetite was almost nonexistent. We would sit on my back porch and make each other laugh to the point of tears. His health had started to deteriorate rapidly by this point, and the nights were especially hard. His breathing was so labored, and because of terrible vascular disease on top of his heart problems, his physical pain was nearly unbearable.
And so the three of us came to understand what was happening, as it was happening. We were being given a gift of time together. No one had anywhere else they needed to be. And that time was pure magic. We were whole together, the three of us. And we very consciously, and very intentionally, savored every minute we could.
There was something larger than life about my brother. He was more handsome than any movie star. And he was probably the most charming person you’ve ever met. A friend wrote to us that James’s extraordinary talent gave him the ability to change the internal thermostat of humans, and the deep truth of that statement led me to include it in his obituary. Annie lovingly pointed out that you could dial a thermostat up or down, and that is exactly what James Way did. James was a living paradox. If James had a beef with you, he was absolutely brutal. And yet he was the softest, most loving, most compassionate man I’ve ever met. A couple of weeks ago Annie needed to be out, and he called me to come get him and take him to the hospital. By the time I got to him he’d rallied and wanted to stay home. Despite his team of care-givers, he hated the hospital so much. So we sat quietly together all day, while he rested and I worked. We would move together from the living room to the back deck and back in again. As we sat together outside, a snowfall of small pollen puffs fell all around us, like a million dandelions descending from heaven. We wondered together what they were. He said “Cacky, look at all the blow blowies.” This man, whose pain had run so deep, who was once a tower of physical strength, could still marvel softly at the blow blowies floating all around us.
James’s art was breathtaking. And he was almost entirely self-taught, almost no formal training. His talent was truly God-given. My uncle once asked him how he knew to paint like that. And James’s response was simply, “I don’t know.”
James was a wretched addict. And in perhaps his greatest of paradoxes, was profoundly spiritual even in the middle of his worst addictions. And so even at his lowest, his friends still called him Dr. Phil. Even at his absolute worst, in dark places most of us can’t imagine, he could always, always see the good in people and was still trying to save everyone around him and lead them to God, spirituality and recovery.
Recently James had to be in town for a doctor’s appointment and he was too tired to drive back to Canton, so he called to let me know he’d needed to stay with me. I had to work late into the evening and so when I arrived home, Sophie was at the kitchen counter doing homework while Uncle Jamesy was grilling steaks and asparagus. We sat down together at the dining room table, and James asked Sophie if she had a stock of nail polish, which she promptly retrieved. We sat together with James while he painted every nail a different color. On Wednesday at the funeral home, the funeral director said “We noted that Mr. Way’s fingernails were all painted a different color. Would you like for us to touch that up or remove it?” We asked them to leave it, just as it was. As I was writing this, Sophie noted this was the epitome of Uncle James.
Many people don’t know this, but James and I share almost precisely the same cardiac diagnoses. I got my first diagnosis about 16 years ago. James got his, identical to mine, about 3 years ago. My progression has been almost imperceptible, with a few notable exceptions. James’s progression was swift and brutal. I’m planning to be here for a long while. James was ready to leave us.
Over the summer I had genetic testing done, and just a few weeks ago I received the results. They found two cardiac genetic variants, one of them linked directly to our shared diagnoses. When I talked with James about it, he told me that he wanted to get the testing as well, because when he died he wanted people to know about our bad genes. He said he wanted to have some dignity in his own passing, because he knew people would think he’d done it to himself.
The truth is, I believe James never recovered from what happened to him, to us, as kids. With James’s death I’m reminded of those days and years after our father, then mother, died. Underneath his rough and tumble exterior was the most fragile, tenderest of hearts that had been broken a thousand times by the worst kinds of losses and suffering. James, Siobhan, and I knew, very consciously, from a very young age that we were intended to be companions in this lifetime. We shared a bond that time, distance, geography, and regular life could not alter. All any of the three of us ever wanted to do was go home. But we’ve lived our entire lives knowing that wasn’t possible, not in this lifetime. James’s genetic predisposition to heart failure and addiction just aided a process that was started many years ago.
Siobhan and I have had more than any person’s fair share of loss, pain, grief in this lifetime. And we have been deeply blessed to have so many people who have loved and cared about us along the way. And at the end of the day, all James, Siobhan and I ever really had was each other. The three of us made up an entire family. And so now there are two. Siobhan and I simply cannot fathom how this life will look for us now, without our brother.
Annie, James loved you so much and he spent a lot of time sharing that with me and Siobhan over the summer. He very soberly, and very deeply, wanted you to know of his deep love for you, and his appreciation for you as his life partner. In you he had his companion, his caretaker, his sparring partner, his playmate, his lover, his best friend. The closest we will ever be to whole again is with you and Lion.
Lion, your daddy loved you with all of his heart. And so do we. You were the sparkle in his eye and the anchor for his soul. Your daddy wanted, more than anything, your happiness and for you to have a rich full life from your own heart’s choosing.
James McLaughlin Way had a beautiful, brilliant, passionate, restless soul. Our memories of him are too many to account for. And it’s in the weeks, months, and years to come that we will most strongly feel this loss, as we learn how to live our lives, Annie without her partner, Lion without his daddy, Siobhan and I without our closest companion on this journey.
James once said this about his art, and the way he saw life:
“You already know what art means because you see art with your heart, not your head. Trust your heart, and try to look without words, as I wish for you the fulfillment of all of a free heart’s desires.”
James is now exactly where he’s wanted to be most of his life. He is safe and loved, with his parents.
James Way, your heart is free now. You’re home.
How To Be An Orphan 