What can you say?

Karen Renk has died.  Those four words have hit me with the force of a Cat 5 Hurricane, leaving emotional devastation in its wake.  For the second year in a row, an important influence in my professional life has shuffled off the Mortal Coil.

I had almost a year to prepare for it.  Karen got a horrible diagnosis last September.  Everyone knew the magnitude of the news.  Stage 4 cancer.  Multiple locations.  Which one to attack first?  How hard to hit it?

10 days ago I got the news--Karen had taken a turn for the worse.  Home Hospice.  "The end is near".  And so I told myself "I know what's coming,  I'll go through my mourning now and be prepared for the news when it actually arrives".  I sent a note to my rep team, ending it with "I'm gonna go cry now".  And I did.

Then it arrived.  A slug to the gut combined with a shot to the head.  And I realized I was in no way prepared for the news.  25 years of knowing and working with her had ended.  And as it is with all deaths, I thought of myself and MY loss.  It's a selfish act that ignores the greater impact.

I certainly didn't have a monopoly on the professional and personal gain I realized by knowing her.  She waded into shark-infested waters to create the Incentive Marketing Association in an atmosphere of conflict and bad feelings.  She negotiated truces, made reparations, and handled the highest of the High Maintenance types with tact and consideration.

It was so fitting that we are all together, here at the IMA Summit, when we got the news.  It allows us to grieve as a group, to celebrate the life and try not to mourn the death.  I thought of Kate, Karen's daughter, who has followed her mother into our channel and is growing into a solid professional.  I don't have the eloquence to say how sorry I am.

So I'll mourn, and hopefully will put these emotions to the side.  Not "behind me" because that would be an insult to the power and grace Karen brought to our business.  "On the side"--taking it with me as I move forward, remembering the valuable counsel and partnership that she gave without any expectation of return.

We'll not see her kind again.  I'll go and find the patch for the hole in my heart...


Pete