Farewell to Payne Stewart |
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By Russell Friedman Executive Director - The Grief Recovery Institute® Co-Author, with John W. James - The Grief Recovery Handbook Of the three principals of The Grief Recovery Institute®, only one is a golfer. This is normally a good thing, and ensures that two of the three are always telling the truth. There is always the implication that the golfer might fudge on the reporting of his score. But not today. Today was a sad day on the links. That is an honest report about the emotional score today. Today was Tuesday, October 26, 1999. We had teed off at 7:06 am, at the Hansen Dam golf course, in northern Los Angeles County. It had been a reflective kind of morning, since it followed by hours the tragic news of the plane crash that claimed the lives of Payne Stewart and five others. My awareness of yesterday=s calamitous event was heightened by the fact that Hansen Dam is in the flight paths of both Burbank and Van Nuys airports, which serve both commercial and private aviation. So as we played this morning, the skies were filled with routine air traffic, to-ing and fro-ing above us. My playing partner was my golf buddy, Lorrie Murphy, who is a pilot and has a real working knowledge of what can go wrong in the world of flight. I am a reasonably good golfer, with a 5.5 handicap index. Perhaps because of yesterday=s tragedy, I was concentrating a little better than usual. It was as if I had unconsciously dedicated today=s round to Payne Stewart. I had never met Payne, but like so many others, I had been touched years ago when he had donated his entire winning purse from a tournament to a charity. It was not a small amount either, memory says at least $150,000. His gesture did not seem self-serving, it seemed totally genuine, and I believe it was. This morning, as I stood on the tee of the 18th. hole, I shifted from unconscious to conscious and said to myself Athis one=s for you, Payne.@ I proceeded to hit a prodigious drive, right down the center of the fairway of the 2nd. most difficult hole on the course. Lorrie and our two playing partners complimented my drive, and stood up to take their turns. As I stepped away from the tee, I snuck a little glance, heaven-ward, and kinda= nodded to Payne, not so the others could see. We drove down the fairway. The others hit first, as I had driven the furthest. When I came to my ball, I again whispered to myself, Athis one=s for you, Payne.@ With a tear in the corner of my eye, I hit a pure shot, which wound up just a few feet from the pin. I did not make the birdie putt. But I did make my par, and finished with a nice 77. Although I had finished my round of golf, I did not feel finished with Payne Stewart. As I=ve said, I had never met him, though I=m sure I would have loved to have played a round of golf with him. More importantly, I wish that I had had the opportunity of thanking him for that gesture he made years ago, when he donated his winnings. Because of what we do and what we teach at The Grief Recovery Institute®, I knew what I had to do. So, I looked up again, and I told Payne how much I appreciated what he had done years ago, and that I was sorry that I had never gotten to meet him and tell him in person. And how terribly sad I was that he and the other people had died. And then I said, Goodbye, Payne.
© 2002 Russell P. Friedman, John W. James and The Grief Recovery Institute.
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