An early tragedy of a friend didn’t stop a life from being well lived

Last Saturday my wife Liz and I drove down to Campbellsville so I could help memorialize a boyhood pal, Jimmy Whitlock who died in January at 63.

Long ago, Jimmy and I were in the same graduating class at Campbellsville High School. He was a sweet, mischievous boy who loved hunting and fishing.

I moved away shortly after high school.

A couple of years after we graduated, Jimmy was injured in a car wreck. He spent the next 43 years as a quadriplegic.

His mother, Barbara, who served as his primary caregiver the whole time, said he was thought to have been among the longest-surviving quadriplegics in the nation.

Over the decades I had intermittent contact with Jimmy. I ran into him at a John Prine concert or two. We occasionally traded emails or texts; despite his disability, Jimmy could use technology. We talked briefly on the phone a few times. We tried to get together for dinner; the logistics never worked out.

So when Barbara asked me to deliver Jimmy’s eulogy, I was surprised and touched.

To catch up, I sat down with her and a family friend, Gerry Lamothe. Later, at the memorial service, I listened as other friends and family of Jimmy’s shared stories.

Shortly after his accident, in the hospital, when things were still very much touch and go, Jimmy experienced a revelation.

His spirit left his flesh, he said afterward, rose above the room and watched all the frantic work going on below. As he looked at his own unconscious body, something pulled him back into it. He didn’t want to come back.

After that, he wasn’t afraid of death anymore, though. He told people that if he died again, it was no big deal.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Dying was joyful.

Still, he returned to live with gusto, grace and a great deal of humor.

He earned a degree in business at the University of Kentucky. After graduating, Jimmy worked in health communications for a while.

Particularly fond of horse-racing, he expended a lot of effort—and joy—studying the odds and betting on the ponies.

He was no plaster saint. To everyone’s amusement and head-nodding agreement, buddies testified at his memorial service that he could be persnickety and prickly.

Yet he didn’t worry or brood. He wouldn’t wallow in self-pity.

Barbara told me he once admitted he was feeling down, but said he couldn’t figure out why. He said, “Sometimes you feel depressed and there’s nothing to be depressed about.”

About 10 years ago, he lost an arm to cancer. No big deal.

“I couldn’t use it anyway,” he said.

Before his surgery, friends threw him a “Farewell to Arm” party.

Early this year, he sent me some of his thoughts about spirituality. We hadn’t communicated in a while.

“I truly believe I’m still here to spread the news of the gospel,” he wrote in one of a series of text messages.

That surprised me, because until then he’d rarely mentioned God or faith or religion.

He apologized for typos, saying he was having trouble texting on his cell phone with a mouth stick and was looking forward to getting a new voice recognition system.

He’d survived many brushes with death: “I have outlived the nine lives of three cats.”

Somehow, in it all, God had always been present with him.

In 1980, his mother became ill with stage 4 cancer, he wrote.

“I was laying in bed in a malaise when God came to me to let me know … that everything would always work out well so all I have to do is keep up the faith.”

He referred to this as a visit from Christ.

“After the visit occurred I was so awestruck I couldn’t talk about it for many years because the visit was so powerful it was hard for me to even begin to describe.”

He told me other stories—times God showed up when needed.

Less than three weeks after that text exchange, Jimmy unexpectedly passed away from an infection.

I have a difficulty thinking God causes everything that happens to happen. We live in a mysterious world, a fallen world, in which terrible events occur. I don’t know why Jimmy had to spend 43 years without the use of his arms or legs.

But to me he’s evidence that the grace of God is present with us even in the worst of tragedies. The Lord can redeem glory from all our lives if we’re willing.

Jimmy touched so many people. That’s what folks kept saying over and over.

Lamothe said Jimmy didn’t really have a body—but Lamothe learned from watching him that we’re mainly spiritual beings, because Jimmy thrived without a body.

I suspect Jimmy understood that his state here was only temporary. He was an eternal being caught briefly in a broken body, yet upheld by an eternal God.

He believed that death, whenever it came, as it always does, wouldn’t be the end but a joyful beginning.

That’s the good news of the gospel. And even though he’s gone, Jimmy is still spreading that gospel here.

Community columnist Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. He can be reached at pratpd@yahoo.com.