Quote of the Day (Patrick Swayze, on Honoring Lost Loved Ones)

“When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.”—Patrick and Lisa Niemi Swayze, The Time of My Life (2009)

Patrick Swayze would have been 60 years old today, and though he lost his life to pancreatic cancer nearly three years ago, the example of how he lived his life endures. We baby boomers, faced with the inevitable loss of loved ones, can find special meaning in the lesson that the star of Ghost and Dirty Dancing learned after the death of his father in 1982.

For all his fame, as Swayze and his widow Lisa recounted in this memoir, the actor was not without pain and disappointment in his life, including his father’s death, his sister’s suicide, the loss of a baby in the third month of Lisa's pregnancy, and Patrick's mid-career alcoholism. Wanting to live his life in a way that would have made his father proud helped him to get off the mat and re-commit to the eternal verities.

(A prior post of mine, written after his death, can be found here.)

Quote of the Day (Patrick Swayze, on Those Who “Fight to Survive”)

“People don’t identify with victims. They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”—Patrick Swayze, explaining to a reporter how his character in the Civil War miniseries North and South evolved, quoted in Anita Gates, “Patrick Swayze, Actor With Physical Grace, Is Dead at 57,” The New York Times, September 15, 2009

It is doubtful whether Patrick Swayze (1952-2009) will be remembered as an actor who could transform himself into any character a la Robert DeNiro or Sean Penn.

What he represented was accomplishment enough: a man utterly dedicated to craft and family (married to the same woman since 1975—an extraordinary feat in Hollywood), so much so that he did not let disappointment (a dancing career was hampered by a school football injury), critical dismissal, or bad health interfere. He put in an honest day’s work, without ego or neurosis. (I like his explanation for why he bought a ranch: “Your horses don’t lie to you.”)

I would also argue, the Times headline notwithstanding, that he was blessed with far more than “physical grace.”

By the end of his wrenching, 20-month struggle with pancreatic cancer, Swayze had won a whole new group of admirers beyond his core of Dirty Dancing and Ghost fans because of a Hemingwayesque grace under pressure. He completed a season on the A&E drama series The Beast amid grueling treatment, but sustained by his good humor (he styled himself “the miracle dude”), unpretentiousness, and love from family, colleagues and fans.

The world came down on his head in a way few of us can ever understand. But he understood that the important thing was to rise to your feet again.

May your ghost find rest, Patrick. Thanks for your example.