Nowadays J.P. is known better as Zach Parise's father, but he, too, had a great career of his own. He played 890 NHL games, most with the Minnesota North Stars, and suited up for Canada's 1972 Summit Series team. You can read more about J.P. Parise's career here.
A few months before his passing, he spoke about his life with THN's Ken Campbell in a great interview called A Life Well Lived. Here is just a brief clip of a great piece:
As J-P stares down his mortality, all he feels is pain. Pain can be managed much of the time. Sometimes, it goes away. One thing J-P doesn’t feel is fear. The way he figures, he has packed an enormous amount of living into his almost 73 years and there is little sense in spending what time he has left worrying about what lies ahead.
“I’m not dying tomorrow,” he said. “If I’ve got another nine months, it’s not a death sentence for tomorrow. I’ve enjoyed life. I’ve had a great life. I have a great family. and I’ve had a great career. So there’s no sense getting excited about anything.”
We are fascinated by other people's death partly because it is our final good bye. But we also look for snippets of advice from the dying. That is because our time is limited. Perhaps we want to, probably sub-consciously, better prepare ourselves for the inevitable. Or, hopefully more consciously, we want to add more value to the time we still have.
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