Last Tuesday’s blog had been written and scheduled for release before a life-altering event took place in our family in the form of losing our son, Scott Goeglein, to a sudden medical catastrophe. I had remembered the blog that was scheduled and decided to allow it to release. I then mentally used the Because of You exercise to review my life with Scott Goeglein.
As I write this, I am aware that my most recent blogs had to do with the subject of Progressive-Pandemic Growth. Clearly, I am being called to ‘teach what I need to learn’. I offer the following to show how, when my heart is broken, I use the same work and exercises I suggest you use in your lives.
In Loving Memory of Scott Goeglein
August 21, 1964 – November 22, 2020
My Bonus-Son since 1979
Because of You, I learned the length that your father, Richard Goeglein, would go to avoid conflict. I can still see your face as you walked off that plane in December of 1979 and your Dad had ‘forgotten’ to mention he had gotten remarried…
Because of You, and your Dad’s lapse in memory that day in December, I realized how resilient children are. You may not have liked what you saw, but you loved your Dad and you were determined to love me.
Because of You, I have a photo of you with a horse that you never rode, but that we paid feed bills on for many, many years.
Because of You, I have memories of your first job washing cars at the Harrah’s Auto Collection.
Because of You, I had a partner in crime for making jokes about your Dad and how he ignored us when he was involved in his business.
Because of You, I can be comforted with the memory of you waiting outside the delivery room with my Mom and Dad when Dana Goeglein was born. You carried your sister to the nursery and forever forged a bond and love not only for her but for your yet to be conceived children, Gabby and Gage.
Because of You, I had one of the biggest laughs of my ‘step-mother’ life when you secretly took your Dad’s Porsche 944 to a concert at UNR, promptly meet a group of “friends”, brought them back to the Harrah’s entertainment house for a wild night of partying, only to pick up the phone the next day and call Harrah’s housekeeping pretending to be your Dad, telling them the house needed to be clean (before 3:00 pm when we were due back in town). Of course, the head housekeeper called us instead.
Because of You, I had to break your Dad’s heart for the first time, informing him in a phone call, that he had to get to you right away. At 19 you had cancer and we all were in the fight with you.
Because of You, I have two everlasting memories of your victorious fight with cancer. First, hearing your brother Eric say, “How is it Scott goes through chemo and keeps his hair and I lose my hair watching him go through it.” The second memory was your incredible empathy for others as you traversed your 18-month protocol. When asked what the hardest part was of what you were going through you responded: “Seeing the little kids at Stanford Medical going through what I am going through.”
Because of You, I became a grandmother at 37. Gabby and Gage will always be my first two grandchildren. Seeing them respond to your passing with grace and support for the love of your life, LuLu, has been the brightest spot in a very dark week.
Because of You, I had to break your Dad’s heart again in November 2020, when I had to tell him the fight we thought we had a chance of winning just 24 hours before, had ended in the outcome we never expected.
And Because of You, and the love you developed throughout your life, the time and attention you invested in your family and extended family, and your steadfastness to your values of being true to yourself above all else, you left us all with each other in the most supportive way possible.
Your love was complete and so when your life on this earth was complete, the hole we were all left with was filled with your unending legacy of love. Now that is true life success.
