The Healing Journey

January 12, 2025

The first assignment Jan gave her public speaking class every semester was to write a two-minute speech on the topic, “If you could take anyone to dinner, living or dead, who would it be?” Most of the class was anxiety-ridden when it came to standing in front of their classmates at the podium and speaking. It is, research shows, the greatest fear in life for most people. So at the start of the semester, she was pushing them off the deep end of the pool with no experience and no training.

The first young woman who stepped to the lectern wanted to take her father to dinner. He had died years before, and she said she’d serve him his favorite meal, white rice and milk. During their time together, she would tell him everything that had happened in her life since the day he died and left behind his wife and five children, whom he raised with love and compassion — none of whom were his biological children. “I’d just like to have dinner with him one last time and tell him I love him,” she said.

The next young man, who came from Syria, wanted to have dinner with his older cousin. As teenagers, they played football and video games together, but he was killed in the war in Syria, along with 14 other family members. He choked up and couldn’t finish his sentence as he struggled to say that he never had a chance to say goodbye to him.

Another young woman wished she could make a multi-course meal for her grandmother, who spent all of her life preparing lavish meals on Sunday for her entire family, from antipasto to pasta, to the main course of roasted chicken and later dessert. Her grandmother had died a couple of weeks before Christmas, but the girl never got to the funeral because she had final exams.

So much loss for so many young people. And so much regret that they had never said goodbye. At the end of the class, a girl sent around a text message to everyone that said, “God gave us this opportunity to tell them all how much we love them and miss them.” Jan, smiled when she read it. It must have been God … because it hadn’t been on the lesson plan for that day.
©Joseph Pisani

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