The Hickses live just up our gravel driveway and a bit down the paved road. Bobo was married to Carolyn, who is on my "how to live" list as well. Just shy of three years ago Bobo got sick. As cancer took over his body Bobo lost weight, and treatments left his head bald and smooth. As Bobo got smaller and balder, he began to look like a Buddha to me. Over time he became a Buddha, which means "an awakened one."
One day Bobo shyly showed me the essays he'd been composing. He had a small, fat spiral notebook written in pencil. He asked me to help him edit his work, and that day I left with a fistful of smudged pages, ruffled at the torn-out edge.
Bobo's writing was powerful, but he wrote like he spoke, and I didn't want the spark of Bobo to get lost through editing. I tried to keep his unique phrases while untangling them from each other. The process began to feel like loosening a knot in a chain necklace. What emerged were Bobo's ideas, which he felt some urgency to express. They hung together in a strong and meaningful way.
Bobo's tears fell when he read the final version of "Stand Up" and realized the power of what he had written. He began giving copies to friends and visitors. He started hearing the words, "You should publish this."
One day Bobo called me at work to tell me that "Stand Up" would be in the newspaper. That morning he had grabbed a few copies and driven to The Herald-Sun office, where he made his way to an editor's desk. That weekend, on June 11, "Stand Up" was printed in The Herald-Sun with the title, "Illness, Debt Can't Erase Faith."
"My name is Edward (Bobo) Hicks and I am writing to say some things that are important to me to say ... I am a cancer patient who enjoys life. ... It can be hard to trust God during these hard times, but I know that my God will lead my family and me through the bad to the good. It is because of this bad that we can see so much good all around us."
Bobo's second essay was titled "Dumb and Hard-Headed," which was a bit more confessional. "God loves me in spite of my stubborn ways, and through them God has shown me how to love. God has given me someone to love and that someone loves me."
Carolyn told me that Bobo first proposed to her 20 years before they finally married. Her first response to her good friend was, "I wouldn't marry your short self!" But finally she did, and she maintains that they weren't ready for each other until then.
Bobo was awake to life. He managed, in my presence at least, to look neither backward with regret nor forward with anxiety. No matter what came his way, be it pain or joy, he never failed to express gratitude for his life.
Bobo got out of his wheelchair on July 4 and walked out to shoot some fireworks. He fell down in the process, but only laughed when he told me about it.
I last spoke to Bobo on the phone as he was heading to the hospice. His voice was raspy and weak, but he managed to say, "We'll talk later." As I looked back over Bobo's essays, I realize that we are talking, and he'll keep speaking through his written words. Bobo will remain on my short list of vital teachers.
Susan Gladin is a United Methodist minister and executive director of the Johnson Intern Program in Chapel Hill. She lives with her husband on a farm in Hillsborough, and their two grown daughters live nearby in Durham. You can reach her at sglad1210@aol.com, or at The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514.
