It is 11 pm on Friday and I’m sitting on the deck in San Diego thinking about death and business. My mother died three hours ago half a country away in the Midwest. My thoughts are running between memorial and introspection on life and our business. This seems to cap what has already been a very emotional week. Thoughts of mortality have been forced upon me in spite of my desire to ignore the whole topic. It started at an industry function with a short memorial to some of the people we’ve lost in the business this year. On the plane home, I wrote a memorial for a personal friend who left us a year ago and now, this. As I said, it’s been an emotional week.
I am now finishing this post on what could be my last plane ride to Chicago in this lifetime. It is a trip of reminders and memories. I planned to be depressed but I’m strangely not. I suppose I should be grief stricken but I’m not. This wasn’t an unexpected event since my mother would have been 93 in five days. For the last year, she was in failing health and not a happy camper anymore. She and we were ready for this.
What floats my boat of introspection are the cumulative memories of those who have gone on and the realization that there is more to come. I am at the age where more of my friends and family are getting to “that age”. I am also at the age where I’m looking at “legacy,” both in others and me. Mother, for example, was equal parts extraordinary and simply ordinary. Her legacy includes delivering almost 4,000 babies including one of our industry’s sterling examples of humble salesmanship. She and her sister (her lifelong “BFF”) lived what was in some respects, a chronicle of woman’s rights the last century. Mom became a prominent doctor and Aunt Claire a prominent attorney in a society that made such achievement difficult. Together they set a high bar for their children and nephews to jump.
Reviewing her life allows me to review mine and draw comparisons between her business of delivering babies and my business of delivering magnets. In both, the action makes a difference in the life of many people. While it might be presumptuous of me to compare myself to a Doctor, it is not disrespectful to either of us.
Mom seldom took overt pride in her job as I seldom pay attention to the jobs we produce. Once upon a history, I produced magnets and memo boards for the neonatal program of the hospital at which she practiced. Those products went home with the new babies after delivery and in some small way they helped those little children grow up to become Doctor’s, Lawyers and one real life Indian Chief.
Growing up in a family of “old style” professionals (doctors, lawyers and accountants) made my choice of profession difficult to justify around the Passover and Thanksgiving table. The others, after all, had a clear impact on the world around them while it wasn’t as clear where and how a salesman fit in.
I take some pride on being in a profession that has a half million ways to say “Thank You!” to those people my mother brought into this world. Together, we made a good team. Without her I wouldn’t have anyone to give things away to. One of the great things she did was deliver into this world a few dozen of us who practice selling promotional products. Indeed, the owner of one prominent supplier line I once rep’d was her patient, much to the dismay of the daughter (a “Person of the Year” in our business) who had to endure the story in public whenever I visited their factory. Even growing up, I was often “the son of the doctor who delivered you” to many of my friends and later on, to a few of my colleagues. (among them, several HALO reps who, in Vegas 2008, remarked, “You’re Mom delivered me!”).
So now, on my deck smoking a Cuban Bolivar in mom’s memory, I’m thinking about our business and how we’re experiencing the death of life as we knew it and the birth of life as we’ll know it. There seems to be a tendency to want to hold on to those things we held dear as we are faced with creating a brave new world of promotional sales. For Nowell Charles Wisch The Last, it is time to focus on what is expected of me in the New World Order of post recession business and the future.
As a brand new orphan, I’m struck at how familiar this feeling is to those I’ve felt as we’ve lost friends. As I march past my 60th anniversary of life, I’m more at ease with the concept that time is finite and change is inevitable. In life and business there is a beginning and an end and even our birth certificates come with an expiration date written in invisible ink.
I hope I’ll gain some solace from this transition really soon as I don’t want it to be a tearjerker. I hope my customers and friends understand that what we do has real importance. This isn’t an “Appreciate those you love before it’s too late and send this to fifteen people” missive but it has an element of that. Rather, it is an “Appreciate what we do and do it better and more often because it is important and send it to fifteen people” letter. We in the promotional product industry have an important job. We help lubricate the sticky rails upon which the train we’re riding travels from birth to death. We try to make sure it doesn’t squeak and our efforts make the ride more enjoyable. I’m grateful to Dr. Bernice S. Rosen (1917-2010) for having given me the opportunity. “Thanks, Mom.”
I’m going to take a few days off to lay to rest the woman who brought me into this world and taught me how to appreciate those around me. Then I’m going to go back to work and do what I do best… participate in making the world a better place, one magnet or memo board at a time.
Happy Selling!