“It is all about the destination and not the journey.”

This is how I ended my kickoff company speech in January 1985.

In this speech, I recounted all we achieved. I told stories of the hardships and the challenges. I thanked the people who hit their goals and contributed to our grand achievement. We hit our numbers. Numbers that seemed so big, so out of reach, that there was only a remote chance we would get there.

But, as a team, we got there. We worked hard every day. Our eyes never left the goal. We never questioned it. We believed that if we worked together, we would hit it. The market was working in our favor when we started. Then, with four months left in the year, it became far less welcoming. But we never gave up. We knew someone would succeed in our market; why not us? We had to change plans. We needed to innovate quickly. We needed to change our day-to-day execution. What we didn’t change was our commitment to making the number. And we made it.

I then switched gears to what now lies ahead for each of our companies and us. I summarized it with the quote at the beginning of this article. Here’s where it came from.

I asked my boss at the time, Jim Porter, for help on my kickoff speech after such a great year. He gave me this thought to share with the company. “It is all about the journey and not the destination.”

When I heard it, I thought it was inspiring. I was thirty-one years old at the time. I was the General Manager of our great business. This quote was definitely the way to end my kickoff speech.

And then I screwed up the quote. I ended the speech, after recounting the richness of the journey, by saying what really mattered was the destination, hitting the goal.

I would call this a “Freudian slip.”

For me, at that time in my life, it was all about hitting the goal. I was so focused on leading our management team to achieve this goal that I walked right past the experiences we had together in getting there. I was young, hungry, and relentless. What mattered was hitting the numbers to achieve the earnout. Yes, the earnout. I had one chance at getting it. It was too much money for Richard and me, the former owners, to leave behind.

By screwing up the quote to end this kickoff speech, it was clear to me then, and crystal clear to me now, that the destination and not so much the journey was still important to me.

Today, forty years later, that is not the case. The memories from the team experiences of building companies throughout my career hold a richness of life. Yes. It is incredibly important to hit the goals, to arrive together at the destination. But whether we did or didn’t, the day-to-day experiences were still enjoyable because of the great people I worked with. We learned and lived life together.

I didn’t win in everything I did, with every team I worked with, or in every investment. But my stories are all based on the journey, not the celebration dinner. In fact, the celebration dinners were anticlimactic, fleeting.

I remember thanking my VP of sales as he was leaving the office on December 31, 1984.

I said, “You did it. Congratulations! Thank you.”

He answered, “When I come in on Monday, I’ll be behind quota.”

He’s right. But Monday marks the start of a new journey to a new destination.

What I learned is this: Keep setting destinations, but be sure to enjoy the journey. The destinations will be realized.

Keep going!

My dear reader. Here is a little background on this topic.

In 2002, I was on an Alaskan Cruise. We visited museums that described the Alaskan Gold Rush. One of the museums featured this poem by a former gold miner. He got me thinking about the importance of the journey in reaching the destination, whether it’s gold or startups.

The Spell of the Yukon

By Robert W. Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— 

Came out with a fortune last fall,—

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it.

Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe, but there’s some as would trade it

For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kind of sinning;

It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it’s been since the beginning.

It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow.

That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;

And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,

With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer—no sweeter was ever;

The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness—

O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;

I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish

I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;

It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;

And it’s better than this by a damsite—

So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;

It’s luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,

It’s the forests where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

The highlight of May — perhaps of this entire season of grief — was placing my sister, Janet’s ashes into the ocean. This was her desire: to have her ashes spread on the ocean in Florida. Florida was her home. The ocean was her love.

She is finally free. Free to be in the sea and move with the sea. No longer confined by walls, schedules, or the endless demands of living. She is free to float. Free to observe the beauty of God’s undersea creation that was always hidden from us. Free to be alone while surrounded by thousands of creatures who neither know her nor judge her — yet somehow still recognize her presence.

She is free of pain and dementia. Free from her battles — with her past, her friends, her teachers, her father, her mother, her choices, her loves, her losses, and yes, even the television. Free to think without distraction as she floats around the world, the ocean her pathway.

Free of when.

Free of why.

Free of what.

Free of how.

Free of should.

This is real freedom. She just is. Floating. Watching. Seeing. Being seen. All without judgment — neither judging nor being judged. She is finally accepting where she is, who she is, and what it all is — as God’s plan. Right now. Exactly as it should be.

She is finally experiencing God. Not reading about Him. Not hoping for Him. Experiencing Him — His majesty, His power, His love. A perspective only available after one dies. She has entered the supernatural. Her eyes are open to God and His secrets. Her meaning is now possible for the very first time in her life.

And that raises the question I kept turning over while standing at the water’s edge: What is it all about?

The answer, I realized, is both obvious and humbling. And here is the hardest part — even if Janet had known the answer while she was living, it would not have mattered to her then. Not because the answer isn’t true, but because we are not built to receive it this side of eternity.

Why? Because God. That’s why.

God is God, and we are simply not. He is the Alpha and the Omega — the beginning and the end. And we? We are a morning mist. Here at dawn. Gone once the sun rises.

We disappear. Leaving only God.

My friend told his son, a talented high school baseball player, “Remember. Your identity isn’t being a baseball player. Your identity is in Christ.”

I disagreed.

The Christian thought around identity is exactly what my friend told his son.

But when this was said to me years ago, and still today, I didn’t know what to do with this answer.

Everyone I associated with in the marketplace, the VC’s, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, identified me as an angel investor. That was my identity.

The Christians I know who explain that my identity is not an angel investor but rather in Jesus Christ are all Christians who have a job and an unmistakable identity in the marketplace. In other words, their identity in the world is settled, so now they can be philosophical.

When I ask them what it means for my identity to be in Christ rather than in what I do, I never get a good answer. What I mean is, I’m not sure what to do with “my identity is in Christ.”

Thinking through this issue, here are my thoughts on identity.

We live in the world. The world demands we have an identity.

At a networking event, like a cocktail party, what are the first two questions everyone asks you?

What is your name?

What do you do?

I answer, “I’m Charlie Paparelli. I am a professional angel investor.”

But there was a time when I wasn’t an angel investor. I was an unemployed CEO.

I lost my job, and my identity went right out the window with it. I hated networking events during this time because I didn’t know how to answer the “What do you do?” question. My answer was a recount of my resume. The real answer was, “I’m an unemployed tech executive.” Not a very impressive identity.

And this was embarrassing. It was also a very difficult time in my life. I was a man with no job, no identity, and no God. I was adrift.

One day, I found myself driving my four-year-old son home from school. He asked me, “Dr. Phil next door is a doctor. What are you?”

“Yikes!” I thought to myself. I froze—such an easy question to answer. I had no answer. Right then, I was nothing. A what? Unemployed? How do I answer my four-year-old son’s question?

And then the right answer just came to me.

“I’m your dad.”

“That’s great.” He said.

And that was that.

I learned a lot about identity from that conversation.

I learned that I have many identities, not just my career identity. And now, at seventy-three, I realized the list of identities was very long.

Take a look.

Brother
Son
Grandson
Nephew
Cousin
Graduate
Accountant
Partner in a startup
Friend
Husband
Dad
VP of Technology
General manager
VP and President
COO
Son-in-Law
Brother-in-Law
Bible study leader
Keynote speaker
President of a ministry
Chairman of the Board
Community leader
Angel Investor
Father-in-Law
Dad
Uncle
Grandfather
Executive Coach
Born-again Christian
Disciple of Jesus Christ
Caregiver
Child of God

See…lots of identities.

Identity is what makes the world work. It makes it easy for us to figure out who we are in our families, in our occupation, and in our community. Because it identifies who we are to everyone else.

For startups, the first threshold to success is achieving product-market fit. Here is the test for product-market fit. If a potential customer has a problem they want to solve, which happens to be your specialty, do you come to mind as the person or company they should call? Some simple examples are:

I have a toothache. Who do I call? The dentist.

I just made a deal with someone, and I want it in writing. Who do I call? An attorney.

I’m in London, and I need to go somewhere. Who do I call? Uber

I’m looking for a place to eat. Who do I call? Google maps

This is true for our identity, too.

People need to know when to call us. We achieve this through identity, our ‘personal product-market fit.’ It is our identity that makes our network, the people we know, valuable to us and us to them.

And that is why we must have an identity for each area of our lives... family, business, and community/neighborhood.

But where does my identity in Christ fit in?

It is my foundation. It is my anchor. It is my unchanging identity.

Every other identity I have in the world can go away. My wife can divorce me. I can get fired. I will someday retire. Worldly identities are only for a time.

But my relationship with Jesus Christ is now and forever. The bible tells me, “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”


And Jesus told the Apostles in Luke 10:20, “However, don’t rejoice that the Spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.”

He is telling his disciples, don’t celebrate what you do here, your worldly identity. Celebrate that you will be with me forever, in Heaven.

Yes. My unchanging, rock-solid identity is in Christ.

So what is my identity now that I am retired?

My former business partner Bob told me, “Do you know how to end a conversation quickly at a cocktail party?”

“When they get around to asking you what you do, tell them you are retired. They’ll be graceful about it, but they’ll be gone in sixty seconds.”

He’s right, I tried it.

I am going to tell them next time that I am a baseball player.

7. Don’t wait for a term sheet. Start with a handshake agreement before dragging lawyers into the room.

6. Lawyers give you confidence that the deal is done right—peace of mind worth both the time and the money.

5. Never finalize a deal until after your attorneys have written it up.

4. If you wait for a term sheet first, the negotiation becomes the term sheet instead of the actual business relationship you wanted.

3. Talk through the entire deal before lawyers get involved—that’s how you preserve the spirit of the agreement.

2. Three crucial details drive everything: How much is invested? How and when is it returned? And how does the company protect the investor?

1. If you skip having a real business agreement, the investor’s lawyer will draft terms that tilt heavily in their favor.

What’s the biggest deal lesson you learned the hard way?

“Sometimes I think it would be easier to go back to working out of my house,” he said.

Bob is an entrepreneur friend I have helped for the last five years. He came to me right after his company cut his territory and commission plan…again. He had all he needed by way of experience and network to start his own business. I encouraged him to do it, and he did.

“Why would you want to go backward?” I asked.

“Trying to build a business is loaded with people problems. I think I can make the same amount of money if it were just an administrator and me,” he explained.

“You have a gift from God which most people don’t have. Making money for you is easy.” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Look at all the ways you make money outside of your main business. Everywhere you look, you see opportunity. Whether it be reselling unique items on eBay or selling your advice.” I said.

“You know what? You’re right. So what’s wrong with that?” he asked.

“Like the rest of us, your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. Because you find making money so easy, you never build value.” I said.

Building value is all about being narrow and not wide. You have to focus on one particular niche for a long time. You must go deep to build sustainable value. People with my friend’s gift are always fighting their attention deficit disorder. They are always chasing the “low fruit” because their eyes are drawn to it.

In addition, these entrepreneurs are action-oriented. They don’t sit around thinking about how they can make money. They see there is money to be made and immediately take action. The rest of us sit back in amazement at how easy they make it look. ‘Why can’t I do that?’ we ask.

I’ve observed three types of entrepreneurs over the years.

1. Entrepreneurs, like my friend, who see how to make money in everything they do, even in their hobbies.

2. Entrepreneurs who focus narrowly on building value without regard to profit. They are always looking for the grand slam home run. These folks need VC funding to succeed.

3. Entrepreneurs who build value by growing profitably year in and year out. They want to build value but rely on the business to generate enough cash flow to do it.

I convinced my friend to focus on his business. He is smart, hard-working, and knows his industry cold. If he can make himself stay focused, he’ll make the big money and build value at the same time.

Kathy told me this morning that she is feeling a heaviness in our house. This is the result of my sister Janet’s death. She brought this up because I walked into our living room to have morning coffee with Kathy, and the first thing I said was, “Good morning, Janet.”

Why did I give my dead sister this greeting?

The Urn containing her ashes is sitting on the floor in the corner of our living room.

My first reaction to Kathy telling me about her “heaviness” is to cut and run. I didn’t want to deal with Kathy’s heavy feeling because I was feeling the same way. I didn’t want to admit it.

When I spoke, I said, “I feel the same way. Her death has brought us into a new season. Something new. Something we didn’t expect.”

It reminded me of my friend Sheri Dresser’s comment when I moved my sister from Miami to Atlanta.

My sister turned eighty, and she began having health issues. I was flying back and forth to help. On one of the visits,s her doctors told me she can’t live alone. I had to decide whether to continue supporting her by helping her commute or bringing her to me.

The prep for the move was difficult.

Kathy, my sister, and I were going through fifty years of accumulation. We threw out what was deemed unnecessary. We packed the rest. I called my buddy Chuck, who lives in Florida and has a trailer. We set a date for the move, met, packed, and hopped in his truck, heading for Atlanta.

Then I had to fly my sister up here. This included flight reservations but also help from her neighbors who were kind enough to get her packed, to the airport, and on a plane.

Finally, I had to find a realtor to sell the condo. That started another whole process.

You get it. Lots of stuff to do. Which included: Getting Power of Attorney. Getting access to banks, credit unions, and other assets. Crazy and completely consuming!

It all got done.

I furnished my sister’s new Assisted Living apartment. I moved all her stuff with my friend’s help. I get Janet in the room. Fill her refrigerator. Show her around her new facility. And then leave.

As I walked to the elevator in her building, I took a deep cleansing breath. The project is done. It will all go well from here. I walk into the parking lot and see an old friend from Atlanta Tech and fellow church member, Sherri Dresser. She told me her mother has been in this same facility for the last six months.

I said, “I finally got my sister up here and settled into her new place. It is done. What a relief!”

Sheri stared at me. I must have stunned her with what I said.

She broke her silence by saying, “Done? This is just the beginning. You have no idea. I am sorry to tell you this.”

And now, after this conversation with Kathy, I realize it is Kathy telling me: “Done? This is just the beginning. You have no idea. I am sorry to tell you this.” She continued, “It took me a year to begin dealing with my father’s death.”

Then it became clear to me. Janet was in my life for 73 years (my age). She was in Kathy’s life for 49 years. Her death ended the caregiver chapter of our lives. Her death started a new chapter of grieving and reconciliation. We are in a new season.

The last season was active caregiving. This season is about winding down our caregiving.

This includes dealing with the vestiges of Janet’s life:

1. Her art - Lots of works and big pieces

2. Her family and friends’ photos

3. Photos + slides of her work

4. Her website

5. Her journals from over the years

6. Her friends who want some of her art and other items to remember her by

7. Her financial + legal issues

8. The Urn that contains her ashes

We are now living in the Janet Paparelli Museum; this is a big part of the heaviness. What do we do with all this stuff!

What do I do with the urn that contains Janet?

So what does the future of this new season of my sister’s death mean? What needs to be done? What emotions need to be addressed by me, by Kathy, by Kathy and me together, by my daughter, by my sons, by Janet’s friends?

I have no idea what is coming and how it will affect Kathy and me. But as Sheri said when I brought Janet up to Atlanta, “This is just the beginning.”

Final Thought

Kathy and I made a pact. Over the next couple of years, we need to get rid of our stuff so our kids don’t find themselves sitting in the Kathy and Charlie Museum after our deaths.

She said, “So you won. Does that make you happy?”

“Won what I asked?”

Of course, I wasn’t going to get an answer as my eighty-four-year-old sister was in the hospital and in a state of dementia confusion. But I learned in life that there is always some truth in the words spoken to me. I may have to think through what is said, but there is truth in there somewhere. It is so easy to discount something someone says to me. To do this is a disservice to them and to me.

What was she trying to say?
What emotion is bottled up in her that needs to come out?
Why is she saying this to me right now?
Why in this hurtful and argumentative tone?

This statement from my sister is in my head. It never left. I need to explore it, to find the truth in it.

Were we competitive?
I didn’t feel that way, or did I?
Am I being honest with myself?
Did this competition provide a life-long wedge in our relationship?

As her 11-year-younger brother, I never saw a competition. I went on with my life, working to better myself and provide for my family. My motivation was not to “win” or do better than my sister. I wasn’t aiming to create jealousy; I was aiming to achieve my goals for my family and me. I do not believe I was in a competitive race.

But my sister clearly did.

In the end, she was either jealous or envious. She was the beneficiary of this success and stability, but clearly envied it. This is a difficult situation to live in.

She lived in the tension of “My brother loves me and will help me anyway he can. I hate that I need this help. I wanted to be successful and independent, too.”

But along the way, my sister made life and career choices that laid the groundwork for a dependent life.

She chose to attain advanced degrees.
She chose to become a teacher to create financial stability.
She chose to be a painter.
She chose to live alone rather than marry.
She chose not to have children.
She chose to leave her teaching job.
She chose part-time teaching work.
She chose to accept a monthly stipend from me to keep her financially stable.
She chose to accept a gift of cars and a condo.

And now she asks me, “You won. Are you happy?”

No. I am not happy.

I didn’t want you to have the life you chose. I wanted you to see the consequences of your choices long before you had to live them out. To see that retreating from society, for whatever reason, would result in loneliness and dependence.

I know you were depressed, but you chose to stay under the care of a psychiatrist who made you into a non-functional lump of clay.

This broke my heart.

But what was I to do? I had a wife, four kids, and a career I was pursuing. I invited you for the holidays. I accepted the friends you brought. I visited you. My kids visited you.

You insulted me, my wife, my kids, and my friends. You judged me all along the way because you weren’t happy with yourself and your choices. Yet you doubled down on your life choices. “I am an artist!” you would say. Like, there was some nobility to this occupation, despite it making you my dependent.

Maybe this is some of my fault. In 1981, when we sold our company, I should have given you nothing. I should have left you to your life consequences.

If I did this, you would have to figure out how to make money. How to live without financial help. You figured it out for the first forty years. Then I stepped in and changed your motivation. You realized you had a safety net that let you lose your self-sustaining financial discipline.

When you no longer needed the money…

You stopped taking responsibility for providing for your most basic needs. You stopped living and needing others. You became all about yourself. And I allowed it to happen. And I supported you in this decision by continuing to provide for you, your choices, and their consequences.

What have I done?

I stepped into and disrupted the natural order of life. The way these systems work and have worked for millennia.

We must be educated.
We must stay in good health.
We must find an occupation that provides enough money to live on.
We must find a spouse to live our lives with (two is better than one)
We must save for retirement or harsh financial seasons.
We must have kids to honor what God commanded in Adam and Eve from the beginning, to go forth and multiply.
We must engage with society and contribute to the furtherance of a healthy mankind.
We must help others financially. Those who made bad choices are now living through bad consequences. (Although Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.”)

This is the order of the world.

These are the choices that make for a healthy person, community, and society. This is God’s design.

So, did I win, or did I make the godly choices that led to a better, more stable, healthier life?

Winning in life is choosing God’s way. Winning is not about money. Wealth may result from these choices. But wealth, as is everything else in life, comes from God and by following God.

I didn’t win as in, I did better than you did.

I followed God’s plan. The results of my choices made you envious, and I am sorry for these feelings you have. But your feelings, like your life, are a result of “doing it your way.” Your choices, which began with walking away from God, led to the consequences you faced—a life of dependence for the last 40 years of your life.

And this makes me sad for you. I am sorry this happened. You fell in with the wrong crowd and followed them to their predicted consequences.

In the end, we are who we hang with. The people we hang with are following somebody and their teachings. I followed God. Who did you follow?

Is her question to me a result of living a life ending in regrets? I don’t know.

I open my voicemail, and it is a message from a monsignor from a Catholic Church. I never heard of the guy or the church. Then I remembered. When I completed the registration forms for my sister to enter the hospice facility, I was asked to choose her religion. I wrote “Catholic” because that was how she was raised.

The fact is, she hadn’t been to a Catholic Church more than a half-dozen times in the last 65 years of her life. I didn’t want to answer the religion question with “None.”

This simple question was confusing to me because my sister was someone who claimed she was “spiritual.”

I never knew quite what that meant.

When we talked about spiritual concepts, she would quote Eastern philosophy, Jesus, Judaism, Hinduism, the Buddha, and even the Bible. We even had conversations where she wondered what happens after death. And in these conversations, over the years, she would flip-flip from “When you die, you’re just dead and gone, to “We are reincarnated.” So now you see my difficulty in answering the religion question. A most important question to me was about her about to enter a hospice where she would surely die.

The voice message from the Monsignor said, “Father John will be coming to the hospice facility to give your sister the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Having attended Catholic schools for 12 years, I am very familiar with the Catholic beliefs, traditions, and theology, including the Sacraments. And the last of the Sacraments to be administered is Extreme Unction, or what has been renamed the Annointing of the Sick.”

I kind of panicked knowing the Catholic priest was going to walk into my sister’s hospice room any minute.

I panicked because I believed she didn’t know she was in hospice. Meaning I didn’t believe she knew she was in a place where she was most definitely going to die. This was the last place she would be on earth. This bothered me because I didn’t want her to freak out, get upset, and start screaming, “Get me out of here.”

My sister was somewhat lucid when she arrived at hospice. I wasn’t in the room when they settled her in and gave her the drugs that were designed to keep her comfortable. When I made the decision to move her from the hospital to hospice, I never talked to her about it. And the reason was that she was not rational. Her dementia got to the point where she could not process simple thoughts. A to B to C made no sense. How would the reasons for hospice make sense? How would moving from life-giving care to what the doctors call, comfort care make sense? It all happened so fast for me. I knew she could not process and understand that these were the last days of her life.

But the priest was on the way. I’m thinking, “If she wakes up when he is administering the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, then she is going to know she is about to die.”

This was my panic.

In walks the priest. He introduces himself. I introduce him to Janet, who is asleep, drugged, and unresponsive. She was like this for three days. She may have said a couple of words to the nurses or me intermittently.

He puts the stole (a scarf-like garment) around his neck and opens his prayer book. He begins speaking the prayers of death, the next life, life everlasting, God, Jesus, Heaven, sin, and forgiveness. I’m praying with the priest, but also praying she won’t wake up and realize what’s happening.

After the priest prayed from his prayer book, he asked me to join him in three Hail Marys. We ended by reciting the Lord’s Prayer together. The priest then blessed my sister by saying, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As he said this, I looked down at my sister, and she was making the “sign of the cross” with her right hand. She did it just like we were taught in Catholic School.

Just like they are doing it today in the Catholic Church.

Just like she heard every word of the Anointing of the Sick Sacrament.

Just like she knew she was in hospice.

Just like she knew all along that she was in the process of dying.

She knew. She never opened her eyes. Her breathing didn’t change. She was out of it. But she knew.

I thanked the priest. He left.

I stood beside my sister’s bed and cried. She was spiritual. She knew God. She rebelled all her life. But here, in her hospice bed, when the priest gave her absolution for her sins, she knew. She accepted it all, even the forgiveness of sins. She made the sign of the cross and was ready.

It was one of the biggest blessings of my life. I believed from that moment on, when she passed from life to death, she would be with God. Her spirit would leave her body and be with the Spirit of God.

God, in his mercy, saved my sister for a moment such as this.

I am so grateful to God, to Jesus my Savior and Lord, that he planned for me to be with my sister and to see her make that sign of the cross. I knew she knew and she was ready to leave me and meet God face to face.

Wow! How great is our God.

Only one of my three friends showed up that day for our regularly scheduled monthly dinner. The one who showed said, “I just heard from my doctor. He told me I have Stage IV colon cancer.

“I am so sorry. That’s awful,” I said reflexively. Then I asked, “What are you doing here with me? You should be home with your wife.”

The real question banging around in my head was, “Why am I the only other friend from our group who showed up?”

As the hostess was seating us, I was praying to God.

“What do I say?”

“What should I do?”

“Should I insist he go home and be with his wife?”

God told me to stay and listen. And that is what I did.

When we sat down, after the drink order was taken, my friend told me this meeting was meant to be. He was supposed to be here, and so was I. It was God’s appointed time for the three of us.

This made the burden I was feeling even heavier. But I stayed and listened, just like God told me to. It was time for me to trust God, because I knew, deep in my heart, there was no trusting me in this situation.

My friend confessed to me that he was afraid. He was afraid of what was to come. The treatments, the sickness from Chemo, the pain, and ultimately, death. He confessed he was afraid to die. Not so much being dead, but the process of dying.

“What is your biggest fear?” I asked.

He thought for a moment and then said, “I am afraid I won’t die well. I want to be a great witness for Jesus. To all who know me.”

I knew my friend well. He ran two companies for me. We’ve been meeting for these monthly dinners for thirteen years. I knew him and loved him.

But I learned at his funeral three years after his fatal diagnosis that I only knew a part of his life. There were over one thousand people at his funeral. I figured I only knew twenty percent of them, at best. His communities and network ran much deeper and wider than I ever would have guessed.

These are the people my friend was thinking about when he said to me, “I am afraid I won’t die well.”

That night marked the beginning of a long, hard battle for survival.

He observed, “I start Chemo in a couple of weeks. The doctor told me I’ll be on it until it eventually proves ineffective. I’m thinking these next two weeks are the best I’ll feel for the rest of my life.”

For three years, he fought, suffered, and beat the cancer into remission. He showed up every two weeks for the chemo treatment at our local hospital. Every two weeks, he would suffer through the recovery from the chemotherapy. And every time he won this bi-weekly battle, the next day, he went into his next chemo treatment. He did this for three years.

While praying for him early in this process, God told me, “Go with him to his treatments.” If you know me, you know, this is not me. I am not the empathetic friend who does hospital support. But God told me to do it.

I asked my friend if I could attend some of the in-town treatments with him. To my surprise, he agreed. That was an incredible experience for me. I got to see up close what it looked like to try to beat cancer with Chemo.

Just walking into the cancer center’s “infusion room” was overwhelming. There were seventy-five recliners, each filled with seventy-five people. Each of them had one or two bags of clear liquid hanging from a pole, with a tube running directly into the port in their chest—a direct infusion.

To see a room that size with that many people really set me back. “Is this modern medicine? Is this how we fight cancer in 2023? Is this state-of-the-art medicine?”

By joining my friend for these infusions, I now realize I was with him on his best days. His worst days immediately followed the infusion of the chemotherapy. I wasn’t there for those days. But his wife and kids were. He was there too.

Recently, after this battle with Stage IV colon cancer, he called me from his hospital at 7 AM. He was rushed to the hospital in unbearable pain from the cancer and went to the Emergency Room. Three days of painkillers, tests, and consultations, He called me.

My friend said, “The doctors told me last night they are out of ideas to fight my cancer. There are no other trials I can be admitted to that will have any positive effect against my cancer.”

Then my friend told me this story.

“Last night, my family surrounded me as I lay in my hospital bed. We talked. We prayed. We cried. We decided together that it was time for me to accept home hospice care. To go from life-giving treatments to comfort care, ending in death.”

I caught a vision during that conversation. A vision of my friend, his wife, and his kids standing together before God, holding hands, crying with relief. They were there to accept that it was time to let their father go. His wife was there, finally accepting that it was time to let her husband go. They asked God if he was ready to receive my friend. God told them that evening, “Let me have him.” How beautiful it was to write what I pictured so clearly.

I was allowed to visit my friend at his home twice more before he was too weak to receive visitors.

The last time we met, I was determined to keep the meeting under fifteen minutes. He was frail. He was weak. This man of six foot one and, at his strongest, two hundred and thirty pounds, was just a shadow of himself: clear eyes, strong jaw, and sharp mind, but a weak body.

I asked him about that dinner question.

You’ve been through a lot in these last three years. And now there is no one better equipped to answer that question than you. What’s the answer?

You told me, “I am afraid I won’t die well. How do I die well?”

He said, “My answer is this. It doesn’t matter.”

I didn’t discuss this answer. I didn’t pry or probe for a better explanation. I just took it for what it was.

We prayed together. We embraced, and I kissed him on the cheek. We said we loved each other. We committed to seeing each other in Heaven. We said goodbye. I got up from my chair, and as I was walking toward the door, I looked back. My friend was sitting in his chair by the fireplace. He was at peace. There was no fear, just love.

That was the last time I saw my friend.

He died well and left a big hole in all our hearts.

Death is so final.

Life goes on.

God is still God.

Love prevails.

Nothing else matters.

My sister died.

I’ve been her caregiver for the last three and a half years.

Over the years, she suffered from increasingly severe dementia and cognitive impairment. This was matched by a decline in her physical capabilities. Getting up was painful.

Every step she took was painful. She lived in a place and town she hated. It all reminded her how much she enjoyed her former life of independence and full agency. She pined for Miami and the beach, the pool, the weather, her friends, her apartment, and Miami’s culture, the people.

Her nights became horrific.

The dementia would cause bouts of confusion, hallucinations, and crippling anxiety. She wasn’t experiencing bad dreams; these were nightmares. And these nightmares were her reality. She would speak of these nightly, awful experiences as though they were true.

The men who abducted her, the women who wanted to have sex with her, the men who wanted to rape her, the people who were transporting her to dark cellars with no way out. Wanting to leave but being held hostage or finding herself in jail for no reason at all. It was her mind living a life of its own, and her body was along for the ride.

After one of these awful nights, I picked up my sister to take her to the dentist. On the way out, she fell and broke her nose on the frame of an elevator. EMS was called, and she was taken to the hospital. It was there, for seven days, that she literally lost her mind. The only thing that helped her stay calm was psychotics, and even they weren’t effective.

I happened to talk to a geriatrics consultant who knew my sister. She gave me a lot of good advice, but the best advice was to ask for a Palliative Care Doctor consult in the hospital. No one in the hospital brought up this option amid the chaos.

On the sixth day, the Palliative care doctor appeared.

This changed everything.

It was the first doctor in our healthcare system who talked about her quality of life. They wanted to know all about my sister. They asked questions about who she was, how she got to Atlanta, what’s been happening since she’s been here, what happened that might have caused the fall, and what’s been happening at the hospital.

After this unhurried discussion, the Palliative care doctor asked if we could talk the next day. She needed to research my sister’s case and medical history. She came back the next day and recommended Janet to the hospice service. She further recommended we move her from full medical care to comfort care.

There was a nurse’s aid in my sister’s room with us when I got off the phone with the Palliative care doctor. I told the nurse’s aide that I had decided to move my sister to “comfort care” status.

She said with shock in her eyes, “I’m so sorry.”

I asked, “Why?”

She answered, “I’d rather not say.”

I sought out the nurse and told her, “We decided to move my sister to comfort care.”

She said, “Really?”

I said, “Do you disagree with my decision?”

She said, “Are you asking me for my opinion?”

“I guess so,” I answered.

She said, “I am not going to give you my opinion.”

The question then became, where does my sister go next for care?

She was not ambulatory, so the next step was to send her to a skilled nursing facility for physical rehab. But I objected to this. She was not in a sound state of mind to be motivated to rehabilitate. She just wanted to be left alone.

I called the palliative care doctor and discussed this with her. She had me speak to a hospice specialist who then consulted with the palliative care doctor.

The decision came back that my sister qualified for inpatient hospice care. We chose a facility. The facility’s doctor approved her, and we arranged for transport from the hospital. I visited the hospice facility and was amazed by their understanding, empathy, and professionalism.

The mission of inpatient hospice is to keep my loved one comfortable until the moment of their passing. I couldn’t believe my sister was in the last days of her life. But the hospice staff convinced me that this was true. She wasn’t eating or drinking, and she was experiencing terminal agitation, a medical term.

They kept her comfortable in a beautiful place, Wellstar Hospice Center, called Tranquility. It is a beautiful facility with eighteen beds located on the edge of the Kennesaw Mountain State Park. It is staffed by the kindest and most loving people I have ever met.

My sister told me two days before she died, “I like it here. I love you.”

These were her final words of life to me. She passed on two days later, with me in her room.

It was so calm, unhurried, and peaceful. I would be so lucky to go this way.

The greatest lesson I learned.

If ever I am getting to the end of my life, I will request the services of a palliative care doctor. These doctors stand in the doorway between preserving life at all costs and keeping people comfortable as they die.

These doctors are the counterbalance to our healthcare system.

We are not designed to live forever. We are designed by God to be born, live, and finally, to die. The healthcare system will wear itself out on the “live” part of life. They will do everything they can and spend every dollar they can to keep a person alive. This is their mission.

The palliative care doctor draws us back, as patients and caregivers, from the disease being treated. The focus is on how to fix that which is threatening the patient’s life. The palliative care doctors give us all a perspective on the big picture of our lives.

They ask the question, “If your sister is kept alive, what will be her quality of life?”

This was the first doctor to ask this question during the three and a half years of caring for my sister. As my sister’s dementia progressed, I would ask this question, but never to a doctor. Now, finally, a doctor asked this question. A doctor who understood the alternatives to doing all that can be done to preserve life. A doctor who was concerned about the quality of life.

I learned it is critical to get a palliative care doctor involved in treatment early in a chronic disease process. As the patient, I’ll still make all the decisions about my health, but at least I’ll have balanced advice from two MDs.

And this is why I think palliative care doctors are the greatest secret in healthcare.

I read an article today about the NFL draft, and it sparked gratitude in me. The point of this article was this: these men did not get there on their own. So many people stepped into each of these men’s lives and sacrificed their time, talent, and treasure to them to become one of the 247 NFL draftees.

This is true for me in life and business. How did I get here? People invested in me. They saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, and they decided to help me develop it.

At twenty-two, I knew I wanted to run companies. I didn’t know what that meant. I had no idea how to get there. I didn’t have a process. I did know that I had to pour myself into everything I did. Every opportunity I was given. Every task I was assigned to complete. This dedication to excellence yielded opportunities for increasingly larger roles.

But as I look back on my career, I see the people who poured into me. They wanted me to keep growing so I could achieve the career success I dreamed of. Without them, I can now clearly see that I would have stalled out long before my desire and capabilities were exhausted.

Here is the list of people who brought me along...

1. My sister, Janet - Open my eyes

2. Jack Goldstein - Taught me accounting and opened my eyes to possibilities

3. Richard Brock - Taught me entrepreneurship and equity ownership

4. Jim Porter - Taught me professional general management

5. Sterling Williams - Showed me the way to building a public enterprise

6. Bill Leonard - Discipled me in the ways of my Lord, Jesus Christ, in life and business

7. Sig Mosley - Demonstrated how to serve a community and invest in Startups

8. Kathy Paparelli - My most important coach.

Janet Paparelli

My sister wanted me to get a great education. But she also wanted me to be exposed to the world of ideas, the arts, and people with an expanded view of what was possible.

To this end, she was the first actually to listen to me. She believed in me. She loved me. She wanted more for me than my parents could imagine. When I was nine years old, she would engage me in conversation. She asked questions about the world. She wanted to know what I saw and what I thought. These conversations were of no interest to my friends. They didn’t have a family member like my sister, Janet. Their world remained small, and so did their ambitions.

Janet challenged my father to support me in attending Xavier High School in NYC. She insisted it was important for me to “get out of Jersey City” and its small-town thinking. There was so much for me to learn by going to school in NYC. She didn’t know precisely how it would change me to go there. She did know it would change me for the better. She convinced my father she was right. My dad, still not completely convinced, decided to pay for this private school and all the associated expenses. It was a big financial decision for a man who worked on the railroad as a trainman.

Jack Goldstein

And then there was Jack Goldstein, who hired me as a junior accountant in a CPA firm. He taught me accounting from the ground up. He showed me how to be a professional. He taught how to interact with clients. He moved me from accounting theory, which I learned in college, to application. In less than a year, he transitioned me from student to professional. And he did all this because he believed in me. He invested in me.

He also knew me well enough to see that being a CPA was not my future. He saw my interest in CPA office automation using computers and encouraged me to step out and take a chance in this new and expanding software industry.

Richard Brock

I joined Richard Brock. He was the first tech entrepreneur I ever met. He was the founder of a software company that sold to CPAs. He was a CPA himself, and he saw how automating a CPA office could drive growth and profitability.

He also saw that I could help him build his company. He believed in me. He hired me. He told me that if I helped him grow his company rapidly, he would make me a partner. We grew the company together. I was loyal to him and worked as hard as he did to make the company a success. He came through for me and made me a partner.

I still remember that first performance review in his office so clearly. Richard was the most exciting businessman I have ever met. He had a wall full of degrees, which showed his academic success. And he had certificates of recognition in academic excellence and in business.

During the review, he asked me, “What is it you are trying to achieve?”

I quickly answered, “I want to be you.”

Then we sold the business, and I had new ambitions.

Jim Porter

I wanted to be a general manager. I wanted to run a business, lead people, and help them succeed. In walked Jim Porter. He led the team that bought our company. He spent hours with Richard and me. He wanted to ensure we were committed to growing the business, post-sale. He also wanted to understand our interests and how they intersected with his ambition to become the CEO of the public company that bought us.

Jim and I hit it off. I learned so much from Jim. He taught me how to be a professional manager of integrity. How to choose and manage a leadership team. How to do forecasting and how to lead a company to achieve those forecasts. He coached me on how to present to upper management and build their trust and support. In short, over 4 years, he coached me into becoming a respected general manager and, eventually, a division manager with multiple general managers reporting to me.

Sterling Williams

But the public company we sold to was acquired in an unfriendly takeover. Jim Porter left the business, and Sterling Williams, the CEO of Sterling Software, walked into my life. Jim coached me to become a business general manager. Sterling was coaching me to become an upper-level executive of a public company. Because of Sterling and his belief in me, I upped my ambition. I wanted to become the CEO of an enterprise software company.

I remember sitting in the President’s meetings. Six presidents were running Sterling Software. We all reported to Sterling Williams. I learned so much by watching Sterling lead those meetings. His talent was an unwavering focus on results, combined with building a team of trusted leaders. He was the smartest businessman I ever met. He could distill information quicker than anyone I have ever met to this day. He was also practical and truthful.

He taught me that the truth must become self-evident in business. It must be pursued, uncovered, and dealt with if you have any chance to succeed. There was no politics or posturing; there was only the truth, reality, the problem to be solved. This one lesson changed my business life. I still practice this relentless pursuit of the truth to this day. As Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”

My division was sold, and I lost my ambition. I found myself stuck, without a mentor or coach who could help me reach the next level. Stuck in a business and industry that didn’t interest me, I became unfulfilled and rudderless. This led to missed goals and my eventual transition out of the company.

Now what?

A big part of my dissatisfaction with the last management position was my family. I realized I was trading my time with Kathy and my children for money. I began a search for more meaningful work, which would allow me to make my family a priority.

Through what seemed like a long, winding, frustrating personal and professional path, I became an angel investor. The vision was to create a group of companies in which I had majority ownership. I would do this by helping experienced managers start and build their own companies. It was angel investing with a higher purpose.

Bill Leonard

This is when Bill Leonard came into my life. Frustrated and unfulfilled with no job and no income, I turned to God. My first step was getting sober. I went to AA to address my addiction to alcohol. Following the AA steps got me to recovery and sobriety. It also had me asking, “Who is this God that got me sober?”

I met Bill Leonard after the Executive High Tech Prayer Breakfast. He coached me into the Kingdom of Heaven. He helped expose me to his network of high-tech executives, each of whom was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. And he also coached me to become a Bible study leader and the leader of a business ministry. He showed me how to be a marketplace minister. This was the purpose and fulfillment I was looking for all along. Serve and glorify God by using my leadership and business skills to develop and equip other leaders.

Sig Mosley

My next coach, who showed up during my “long winding” road. It was Sig Mosley. He inspired me to become an angel investor. I met Sig in what was his first angel investment. I was the company’s President. I was hired to turn it around by finding product-market fit and getting the company on a growth trajectory. I failed at this. The company eventually delivered an incredible return to its shareholders by turning its patent portfolio into a business. I made my transition to become an angel. I wanted to be like Sig.

Sig showed me how to invest in the community and in our local entrepreneurs. I watched as he met with everyone, helped them in any way he could, and invested in a few of them. I followed most of his model, but not all of it. He invested in companies that would require venture capital. I invested in businesses that would reach profitability and provide cash distributions. The way we got to our investments was the same. The investment strategy was different.

Sig was a great coach in making me a more complete angel and community servant. He is still a dear friend, and we are helping each other figure out this last season of life.

Kathy Paparelli

My most important coach throughout my adult life is my wife, Kathy Paparelli. She kept me humble when I was full of myself. She encouraged me when I was down on myself. She picked me up and pushed me out the door when I was clueless about my next step. She listened to my dreams. She helped me pick the right people to do business with. She made my life full and fun as we created a family together. In short, she loved me.

And there is no substitute for a coach who loves you. These people, these coaches I talk about at the different stages of my life and career, were all people who loved me.

And this is why I am so grateful.

I walked to Tranquility from Wellstar Hospital on the afternoon of March 3rd. I had just received word that my sister, Janet, was accepted into inpatient hospice care. After seven days in the hospital with my sister, I needed the fresh air. I also needed the time to process the decision I made to commit my sister to hospice. There was relief and guilt associated with this decision.

Then I met you.

You were so kind and so understanding. When I described all my sister had been through over the last three and a half years, you listened with such empathy. I was relieved to speak to you because you knew everything I was telling you before I even told you. You’ve seen it, and you assured me Tranquility Hospice was the right place for her at this point in her life.

When you used the term “terminal agitation” and defined it for me, it was the first time I realized the seriousness of my sister’s condition. I still remember sitting across from you in Tranquility’s library when I learned I made the right decision. I saw it in your eyes. Thank you.

My sister died on the afternoon of March 9th.

Every day I visited her in hospice was special and difficult. Every day, I asked Dr. Amdur, Renee, John, and Cheryl to assure me that I made the right decision to admit Janet to hospice. Every day, you, the doctor, and all the nurses were so kind and patient with me. As I write this, I can relive that same feeling of calm and peace they gave to me when we talked.

Renee was the first hospice nurse I ever met. She was so kind to my sister and me. She admitted my sister and settled her, cleaned and comforted her. And that made me comfortable knowing my sister was in such kind and capable hands.

Then John. Wow. We had so many wonderful conversations. He told me, “I really like your sister. We have a special bond. And I know she likes me as much as I like her. She is so special.” John would answer all my questions, calm all my doubts, and be there for Janet and me whenever we needed him—a true servant of God.

I met Cheryl on the day Janet died. I remember that afternoon when my sister passed. I was in the room with the nursing assistant, and we seemed to realize at the very same time that my sister wasn’t breathing. The assistant called for Cheryl immediately. Cheryl came in and listened intently for a heartbeat. After a minute or so, she turned to me and said, “I’m so sorry. Your sister passed.” She shared my sadness.

Amazing people all. I felt like everyone I met at Tranquility was somehow related to my sister and me. That was the level of care, the level of love, that I felt from the moment I was introduced to you all.

Thank you.

Something else I learned about hospice that is so different from the world. There are no atheists in hospice care. I am a follower of Jesus. I realize how difficult it is to navigate faith in this world. Each of you respected me, but also was clear that death is a God moment. I remember knowing God was real at my first child’s birth. I felt that same presence when my sister died at 3:15 PM on March 9th.

We were holding hands. She opened her eyes briefly and said, “I like it here. I love you.”

Thank you for this gift to my sister.

With gratitude and love,

Charlie Paparelli

I got the call on my landline (cell phones weren’t available yet). It was a fundraising call from the University of Miami, my alma mater.

I was about to sit down to dinner with Kathy and the kids. It was hectic and crazy. But despite this family chaos, I was in a really good mood. It was a good day at work, and I was making good money. It would be fair to say that on that night, I was feeling rich.

The student on the other end of the line was asking for a donation to the annual fund. I was ten years out of college and had never given a dime to the U.

The student chatted me up. I was enjoying our time together. He was a junior doing this fundraising gig to help pay his tuition and earn a little spending money. He asked for $1,000.

I was flabbergasted.

“A thousand bucks is a lot of money,” I told him.

But to his credit, he didn’t back off. He learned in our conversation that I was an entrepreneur who sold his company. Now I was running a software company for the new owner. He stood his ground knowing I could afford $1,000.

So I started to negotiate.

“I’ll give you the $1,000 if you send me a U of M hat, t-shirt, and jacket.”

He said, “I’ll do the hat and T-shirt but not the jacket.”

Deal.

I sent him the donation, and he sent me the hat and T-shirt.

I tell you this story because this was the first time I gave more than $50 to anybody.

What I didn’t know was that it was the beginning of my life-long giving. I slowly opened up to the idea of giving. Very slowly.

Eight years after this call, I began a new journey, following Jesus Christ. This got me into the Bible in a big way. It also opened up a whole new community to me. Christians. These business people showed me what it meant to be a good steward of my money. How to manage money God’s way.

This meant balanced spending, sound investments, saving, tithing to the church, and giving to support my community. These people did not hold on to their money white-knuckled. They were generous. And despite their generosity, they were doing really well financially.

It was during that time that I came to realize a truth. I had never met a person who gave so much money; he went broke. But I met many a person who had millions and tried to hold on to it and make even more, only to go broke.

I wonder who that student was who got me started with giving?

He changed my life for the better.

Being a caregiver brought me to my knees.

As a caregiver to my sister, who suffered from dementia, I arrived at a place of helplessness. This never happened to me in my lifetime. It was a feeling I was unfamiliar with. All the experience, money, network, friends, family, and wisdom meant nothing. I was out of answers and energy. I was spent. Done. Finished. But I was still the caregiver. I was still responsible for what to do next.

I didn’t realize it then, but I see it clearly now. I had arrived at a crossroads. It was time for me as a caregiver to decide something much more serious than was presented to me over the prior three and a half years of caregiving.

I was about to be thrust into a decision of life and death. To continue to decide on the next step in my sister’s life. To decide between providing comfort and letting nature take its course. To allow her to slip away comfortably.

But I didn’t know I had gotten to this stage. After three and a half years of doing all I could to keep her “healthy,” my thoughts could not, would not switch to the alternative. I was all about keeping my sister comfortable, safe, and clean. To keep her alive.

When I moved her to Atlanta, the first thing I did was find her a new set of doctors who could help me achieve her health goals.

I found her an internal medicine doctor to partner with me and guide me in this journey. Then a group of specialists who would focus on the critical organs of her body, including her mind. This team provided me with the baseline for managing my sister’s health.

Each of these doctors was on the mission of monitoring my sister’s decline and doing all they could to stop it or slow its progress. They weren’t focused on quality of life. They, like me, were focused on sustaining life. But I also had the added responsibility of the quality-of-life side of the equation.

The internal medicine doctor evaluated my sister every three months. The specialist in cardiology and neurology evaluated her annually. But I saw my sister every day. I interacted with her and evaluated her every day. I witnessed her good days and bad days. I experienced the slow decline early in my caregiving to the eventual rapid decline brought on by her dementia. They couldn’t help me with this. They weren’t there. I was.

Then, one day, I woke up to multiple voicemails from the early morning hours. Voicemails that showed the depth of my sister’s pain and confusion. The hallucinations, the paranoia, the abject exhaustion of her battle with dementia.

That morning, I was to take her to the dentist. On the way to the elevator, she fell. She broke her nose. Bruised her knee. She was rushed to the hospital for evaluation and treatment. Over the next seven days, the symptoms of the dementia were in full bloom. There were no rational thoughts, no reasoning, no way to communicate with her. She was now without agency. She was completely and totally my responsibility. Her life was in my hands. She was mine.

Each morning, I would get up to journal and pray. I journaled to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper. When I look at those journal entries from the first few days of her hospital stay, it is clear I was all about getting her better and getting her out of the hospital. But that changed later in her stay.

The decision process around getting her better hit dead ends. Her mind was no longer controlling her body. Her mind was deregulated, and her body followed. She was no longer capable of doing what was necessary to get better and get out of the hospital. She wanted out, but would not make any sacrifice or put forth any effort to accomplish this desire. For example, when the physical therapy people came to sit her up in bed, she refused their care.

I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea where she might go next. When I grilled the hospital doctors and nurses on the next steps, their answers were vague. The deeper I went into my questions, the more frustrated they became with me. Their ultimate answer was the medicare system. They would end our conversation by saying, “This is the next step as recommended by Medicare.” It solved nothing, and these professionals knew it. The next step in Medicare was a delay in the real decision at hand, my sister’s very existence.

The sixth morning of my sister’s hospital stay, I journaled this one question: “God, tell me what to do with Janet? I need a clear path. I need the truth.”

The answer came to me immediately. “Let me have her.”

When I wrote this down, all the stress left my chest. I never had this happen before.

I wasn’t sure what this meant regarding her next treatment step. But I did know this. I was no longer alone. All I had to do was open my hands, and God, who created her and loved her, would step in and take care of her. I was no longer alone on this journey of my sister’s next steps.

I didn’t have to do anything. God didn’t say, “Give her to me.” That would take effort on my part. He said, “Let me have her.” All I had to do was open my hands and release her to Him. He would take her. My responsibility in this is to let Him. So simple. So easy.

Within twenty-four hours, the right doctors and healthcare professionals appeared. They guided me in my transition from life-giving support as a caregiver to comfort care as a caregiver. They showed me what was happening to my sister and her condition. I observed the changes in her physical and cognitive condition, but I didn’t know how to interpret them. These people showed me. Then they explained the next step. And it was the first time the next step made sense to me.

It was time we moved her to inpatient hospice care. Every morning, I struggled with this decision. Did I just take the easy way out for me? Was it really time for my sister to die?

Three days into hospice, my sister awakened for a moment as I held her hand.

She looked into my eyes and said, “I like it here. I love you.”

Then I knew. She was where she needed to be.

Those were her last words.

Two days later, she died.

Now God has her completely.

But what about me?

After three and a half years as a caregiver, I was no longer a caregiver. For three and a half years, my sister was my first priority in life.

Now what?

Kathy and I walked through the funeral home's door. Out of seemingly nowhere, this lady rushes to us. She greets us with a big smile, leans in, and gives me a long, warm hug. She then steps aside and hugs Kathy. We were both stunned.

“What a welcome from someone I have never met before,” I thought.

She showed us to a conference room and asked us if we wanted a beverage. We declined. She told us she needed to get my late sister’s paperwork and would return shortly.

She sat across from me. Kathy sat next to me. I must confess that I operate in life applying stereotypes. This young woman was not what I expected to find in a funeral home. She did not look like a mortician to me.

My first question was, “Are you a mortician?”

“Yes,” she said, “I am fully licensed and have been practicing for the last twenty years.”

Because her occupation and my stereotype didn’t match (at all), I had to ask her, “When did you decide to become a mortician?”

She said, without any hesitation, “I knew I was going to work with the dead from six years old.”

I reacted to this bizarre statement by saying, “No way, that is true?”

She said, “Really, it’s true.” Then she told us the story.

Her elementary school was next to the town cemetery. One day, her teacher took all the kids on a class trip to this cemetery. She told me she wasn’t weirded out by the experience. Instead, she took writing paper from gravestone to gravestone and created an impression image of the pictures and writing on the gravestones.

When she got home, she showed her mom all she had done and told her all about the class trip to the cemetery. She then told her mom, “When I grow up, I am going to work with the dead.”

Her mom let this comment pass by with a simple, “Ok?”

Years later, as a freshman in high school, there was a job fair to get the kids thinking about making a living someday. There was a funeral director at the job fair, and this woman told us, “I made a beeline right for him. We talked for a long time about all he did, and I knew I wanted to be a mortician for sure.

“As soon as I graduated from High School, I entered a three-year certification and training program to become a mortician. I have been doing it ever since. I am now forty-two years old. I love every day of it.”

We then got down to business. This included signing all the cremation documents. It also included the required information for my sister’s death certificate.

With this completed, Kathy and I were shown into a room for one last viewing of my sister before she was cremated. I was dreading the thought of seeing my sister “prepped and ready” for viewing and then cremation. I wasn’t sure how I would handle this emotionally.

We then went back to the conference room. We had a couple of next step questions. She answered all my questions. We thanked her and stood to leave.

She said, “Wait. I have a gift for you.”

She stood quickly and returned with a black shopping bag. There was something big and awkward in the bag from what I could see.

She said, “This is for you. It’s a frozen Stouffer’s frozen lasagna.”

I was stunned. I asked, “A what?”

“Yes. I do this for clients. I am the only mortician who works here who does this.”

“Thank you?” I said, quizzically.

She hugged me and Kathy goodbye. She said, “I am sorry for your loss.” She turned and headed to her office and was gone.

I looked at Kathy as I held my black bag with the lasagna and asked her, “Did that just happen?”

We went home, and Kathy cooked the lasagna. We ate it while remembering my sister. She had an adventurous life that is now being remembered over a lasagna from a funeral home.

This really happened!

Trump, for the first time in his life, is negotiating with people who are religiously principled. They are willing to die for their beliefs. Their mission, as commanded by their god, is to eliminate the infidels.

He asks, “Don’t you care about the Iranian people?”

Iran’s leadership’s answer is, “The Iranian people are either on our mission or they are not. If they are on our mission, they, like us, are willing to die to obey god’s command. If they are not on our mission, then they are no better than any other infidel.”

Trump’s entire history is negotiating with people whose core values are money and power. He gets them as these are his values.

But even with the entire power and might of the United States military, he can not get the Iranian leadership to capitulate.

It is impossible to negotiate when there is no overlap in values, including the value of life itself. Religious ideology-driven values will win unless they are obliterated with force.

There was a scene in The Godfather II. Michael Corleone, the new head of the family, is in Cuba. He is there to negotiate his piece of Cuba’s future. The Mafia is negotiating with Cuba’s then-president.

Michael is being driven to the meeting. His car is stopped by the police. They are dealing with a protester who is intent on overthrowing the Cuban government. The protestor fights with the police as they try to control him. He sees he is outmanned, so he blows himself up and takes everyone around him with him.

In a meeting with the Mafia boss, Michael says, “This government will not stand. They will lose.” He then tells the story of the protestor.

He concludes with, “The Cuban President can not win against a people who are willing to die for their cause.”

The Godfather, Part II - “They Could Win”

There is no win-win in this negotiation. You win by killing them all. Short of this, you will lose in the long-term and they will prevail and kill you.

Who wants to be the President of the United States?

Every day presents a seemingly intractable problem on the mission of protecting the American people and their allies throughout the world.

“Wow, what a talented artist. I am equally blown away by how many pieces she created and the variety. She had a fascinating level of creativity.”

I share this quote from a friend who visited my sister’s website after reading my Eulogy of her death.

Because of his interest and others’, I have decided to share a bit more about Janet, my sister, the artist. I believe it is a continued tribute to her body of work and love of art and artists.

Here is a short video of Janet about her life:

Visit her website.

I hope you enjoy Janet Paparelli and her life’s work.

Love,

charliep

Here’s what nobody tells you when you start backing founders — the ones who make it aren’t the ones who control everything. They’re the ones who finally figure out what was never theirs to control in the first place. These six lessons took me decades to learn — and I’m still learning them.

• When I’m looking forward or back and become anxious, I say a prayer and ask God to bring me back to the present. He is in control, not me.

• God has a plan, so you never know where your work will take you or the destiny it will fulfill.

• If God wants you there, there you will be. The question then becomes: Why did God put you there?

• Occasionally, God gets our attention by eliminating what the focus of our attention and time is.

• The entrepreneur plants, waters, and tends the field. God brings the harvest.

• I am powerless, but I am in God’s hands. That is the best place to be.

What is one thing God removed from your life that you later realized was clearing the way for something better?

Celebrating with Janet on her 81st birthday.

Tasha, the caregiver at the hospice facility, asked, “Your sister was an artist?”

I said, “She was very well recognized back in her day. She still has paintings hanging in all the Florida Neiman Marcus stores.”

I showed her the picture of Janet in her heyday.

She said, “Did she always paint such big paintings?”

“Yes, she did.”

When we ended our conversation, I remembered how talented Janet was as an artist. She told me several times, while she was here in Atlanta, how she painted.

She said, “I never had a plan. I would walk up to the canvas and paint what I painted. I don’t know where it came from. There was something in me that needed to be expressed and it came out through my brush on to the canvas. That’s how it worked. It was such a wonderful feeling to paint. It freed me.”

This thought came to me and made me cry. Not from guilt but from joy. She found something in life we all want. We want to find a way to express ourselves. Some of us do it by creating companies. Others through the friendships we make and maintain. And still others by marrying wonderful people and creating beautiful families.

Each of these, in my mind, is from God’s hand. He created each of us uniquely and for a purpose. And when we express ourselves through that unique gift and purpose, we are making the world more beautiful. And we get to enjoy the fulfillment that comes with this purpose. God is good.

Janet created over 400 paintings.

They are all over Florida and all over our houses, from Miami to Atlanta to NY to London. Each of these is evidence of her self-expression. It is her gift from God and her gift to each of us.

I loved my sister through thick and thin. And while lying in hospice in a moment of lucidity, she looked me in the eye as I stood at her bedside and whispered the words, “I love you.” I’ll never forget her eyes and the way she spoke those words.

There is a lot of water that has flowed under the bridge of life for all of us. Janet wanted friends and family. And she wanted to be alone and independent. The difficulty for her was living with this tension. It was a lifelong struggle. Life was hard for her.

If each of you stood at her bedside in that hospice facility just like I did, I believe she would hold your hand and tell you, “I love you.” In the midst of all the relational chaos, she really felt this way. She never felt she deserved love, so it was difficult for her to share it.

My prayer is in death, Janet finally came to realize how much God loved her. And I pray she will know that love for eternity.

I’ve been doing this a long time — investing in entrepreneurs, sitting across the table from founders who are convinced they've got it all figured out. But the lessons that changed me? They had little to do with deal terms or valuations — and everything to do with getting out of God’s way.

1. When the dissatisfaction comes, trust the process. Step out and see what God does to bring you to your destiny.

2. Life has taught me that God has me in a process. His journey. Never mine. This is a lesson I continue to learn.

3. When faith meets initiative, God’s plan is about to happen. Watch out!

4. Discontent can be God’s way of letting you know He has an exciting plan just waiting for you.

5. Don’t let your insecurities limit the Almighty.

6. An entrepreneur can control risk, but he can only experience destiny. One is controlled by him and the other by God.