Don't Wait: Lessons from the Zen Hospice Project

In our training, through the Zen Hospice Project, to serve at the bedside of the dying at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, we are given the Five Precepts Of Hospice Care:

One: Bring your whole self to the bedside. You owe it to those you serve and yourself.

Two: Welcome everything, push away nothing. You cannot choose the circumstances under which you may be asked to serve another.

Three: Find a place of rest in the middle of things. You extend your kindness and caring, but you cannot own another’s plight. It is their passage. Your ability to serve depends holding that distinction.

Four: Cultivate the don’t know mind. You can never really know what’s going on with those for whom you care. You can only stay alert, respond to what arises, act from compassion and do only what you are competent to do.

Five: Don’t wait. You only have this moment in which to be of service. If you are aware and attentive, you will do your best. If you wait, the moment will pass and you only will have regret. Now is the only time for caring, for serving, for doing your best.

I continue to find so many circumstances, outside of the Ward, in which these precepts serve me. This story concerns Precept Five: Don’t wait.

I had met Frank Yatsu at a dinner honoring Louise Renne, the former San Francisco City Attorney, for her efforts in bringing about the construction of the new Laguna Honda Hospital, which had only recently opened its doors. I serve with Louise on the Laguna Honda Foundation Board, which raises funds to supplement hospital services and programs. Frank was a longtime friend of Louise.

The event, held in a delightful, small restaurant along San Francisco’s northern waterfront, began with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and was followed by a sumptuous, yet understated, San Francisco meal. I don’t believe that I had met Frank before the dinner. Nor had we sat at the same table to eat. But as dinner began to wind down, there began a series of short testimonials, honoring Louise for her work in handling the various legal issues that threatened to close the old hospital, the efforts to secure funds for the new hospital, and her continuous leadership in preventing this monumental project from being sidetracked by the myriad of “unique to San Francisco” regulatory and political snares. Following the planned remarks of several speakers, the evening’s emcee and Louise’ husband, Paul Renne, asked if anyone had anything else to add. I volunteered with remarks directed toward the remarkable people who served the largely indigent San Francisco population, resident at the hospital, as well as that population itself.

Whatever I may have said resonated with Frank who, as the evening began to break up, came across the room to introduce himself to me. Although I was later to learn he was in his late 70s, he appeared much younger. He told me that he was a physician and a professor at the University of Texas Medical School. He thanked me for my remarks and told me that he greatly appreciated my perspective. We began a conversation in which I revealed to him that I had written a series of stories about my hospice work at Laguna Honda as well as my first “#DEATH Tweet” book. I promised to forward my writings to him following the dinner.

Frank was an easy man to remember. He possessed a welcoming and sunny disposition. He invited conversation and was an avid listener. He was someone that made you feel that friendship would always be available for you for the asking.

Eventually, we departed. I sent him my writings, as promised. Thereafter, we began a series of telephone conversations and e-mail exchanges which began to move our fledgling friendship forward. As I would write new stories and articles, I would forward them to him only to receive a kind thanks and an encouragement to do more.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that Frank was wrapping up his academic career, preparing for retirement. His career had been quite distinguished. He had served as a professor of neurology at UCSF, was the Chief of Neurology at San Francisco General Hospital for a time, later served as the Chairman of Neurology at the University of Oregon, became the first Asian American to serve as a trustee of Brown University, held the post of Chairman of the World Health Organization and, ultimately, was the Chairman of Neurology at the University of Texas. His specialty was stroke research.

In late September 2011, in response to an article I had written to young lawyers in the Los Angeles Lawyer, “The Practice of Law: Your Job, Your Career, or Your Calling?,” Frank wrote to me, “What a beautiful article! I would be interested in writing on the subject of “job, career and calling” with a brief comment about life’s meaning, with your help for a medical journal.” I quickly responded to the invitation, which was followed by a telephone conversation. Frank told me that he had some items to clear up first, but that he would be back to me. At the end of February 2012, Frank again contacted me:

“You may recall that I contacted you sometime ago after reading one of your articles about how attorneys were not living up to their initial high ideals about their profession. I thought that your views applied to physicians as well, and you agreed. I wanted to postpone writing anything then because I was involved in writing up and presenting research. But I am now retired and have more time to do other things, which is the reason for this email. Are you still interested in helping me do a collaborative article? It might be submitted to a journal with a large circulation such as the JAMA — the Journal of the American Medical Association, as opposed to specialty journals, which have a smaller audience.”

We spoke again by telephone shortly after this transmittal and, for the first time, we began to discuss our personal lives and interests. Among other things, I learned that Frank had spent several of his young years in a Japanese-American internment camp in Poston, Arizona during World War II. I researched the history of Poston, saw photographs of the camp during the war and in its current dilapidated state, as well as photographs of the attendees to the occasional “Poston reunions.”

In his next transmittal, on March 4, Frank expressed:

“I’ve been doing literature searches on the above topic, and it turns out there is a plethora of very good articles on the above subject, books and journal articles. I won’t make your life tedious by listing the many articles I’ve read, but seeing all this material makes me reconsider my original proposition to you about writing a joint paper on the subject.”

I immediately responded that I hoped he would retain all the many articles he had reviewed and that I had another approach as to how such an article could be written collaboratively. He replied the next day, “I’d love to cooperate with you. So I’ll be waiting [to hear from you] with bated breath!”

We scheduled our next telephone call for Wednesday, March 14 at 11 a.m. I telephoned Frank at the appointed hour and there was no reply. I waited 15 minutes then tried again. No response. I tried a third time with the same outcome. While I had no reason to worry, I felt something might be wrong.

On Saturday, March 17, I received the following email from Frank’s daughter, “This is Libby Hsu, Frank Yatsu’s daughter. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this over email. My father passed away unexpectedly last Friday, March 9 at his home in Houston.”

I was greatly honored to have even the briefest life encounter with Frank. “Don’t Wait” had served me well. The Five Precepts are, after all, Life Precepts, not Hospice Precepts. In my last e-mail correspondence with Frank’s daughter, Libby, she wrote: “My mom was telling me how my dad would howl on the phone while talking to you. You both had a connection.” I wrote in Frank’s memorial guest book, “Though we didn’t find the lifespan to write our article on reframing attitudes within our respective professions of law and medicine, we sure had a good time pondering it. I’ll still be looking for your part of the outline when we next get together.”

Don’t wait. If you have something to say, say it! Something to do, do it! Someone to love, then love now. Be all you can be at this very moment. You never will know what you otherwise may have missed.