Tony Snow, R.I.P.

Some twins have to flip a coin—who gets mom and who gets dad for the graduation ceremony. Laura and I were blessed. When we both graduated from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. last year, the whole family was together, sitting in front of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception adjacent to campus under the May sun—beaming grandparents, placid sisters, and squirming brothers eying the cookie platters. And of course, mom and dad keeping everybody together, a skill they’d been honing for twenty-two years.

Being a twin teaches you to share things—clothes, toys, birthday cakes, bedrooms, and the blankets at grandma’s house. It teaches you to share the important moments in life, and to share life itself. Laura and I have often wondered—anticipating each other’s thoughts—why God doesn’t give everyone a twin. But that sounds soppy.

When Tony Snow stood up to deliver our commencement address last spring, he reminded me why graduation doesn’t take place by e-ceremony or in a private meeting. It’s a celebration not simply to pay homage to a piece of paper marked “diploma” but also to give thanks to and for the people who have shown the graduates what true excellence in all its dimensions is. Nothing is accomplished in a vacuum, and joy is only joyful when it is shared.

Tony Snow, who had learned about his cancer relapse just a few months earlier, stood before us as a model of excellence and accomplishment. He was also a model of down-to-earth joy. His speech—summarized by “live boldly, live a whole life”—is worth reading in its entirety , with its five “road-tested” tips for the graduates. Sweet and simple to list, though maybe not to practice: think, go off-road, commit, get out. And then the most obvious of all:

Finally, love. How trite is that? But it’s everything. It separates happiness from misery. It separates the full life from the empty life. To love is to acknowledge that life is not about you. I want you to remember that: It’s not about you. It’s a hard lesson. A lot of people go through life and never learn it. It’s to submit willingly, heart and soul, to things that matter. Love is not melodrama. You don’t purchase it, you don’t manufacture it. You build it.

Every time I buy something gaudy for my wife she says, “Oh that’s nice,” and then it goes away someplace. The love letters she keeps; I don’t know where the jewelry is.
. . .

Think not only of what it means to love but what it means to be loved. I have a lot of experience with that. Since the news that I have cancer again, I have heard from thousands and thousands of people and I have been the subject of untold prayers. I’m telling you right now: You’re young [and you feel] bullet-proof and invincible. [But] never underestimate the power of other people’s love and prayer. They have incredible power. It’s as if I’ve been carried on the shoulders of an entire army. And they had made me weightless. The soldiers in the army just wanted to do a nice thing for somebody. As I mentioned, a lot of people—everybody out here—wants to do that same thing.
. . .

And finally this: Wherever you are and whatever you do, never forget at this moment, and every moment forward, you have a precious blessing. You’ve got the breath of life. No matter how lousy things may seem, you’ve got the breath of life. And while God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.

That day, May 12, 2007, I received a piece of paper marked “diploma,” and Tony Snow did too. His was an honorary degree, embossed with gold to be framed and proudly displayed. “Let me make a confession,” he said at the end of the ceremony. “I’ve never been happier than I am today, not because I got this wonderful, fancy degree. But because the tips that I’ve been sharing with you are leading me toward my next graduation.” For Snow, all of life was an education. May he now rest in the peace of eternal summer.