When Joy Defeats Despair; Jason Hearl

Some people will tell you that Jason Hearl died young. They will tell you of an aneurism that he suffered at age 19. They will tell you that he lived another 8 years after that, completely bedridden and virtually unable to speak. They might even paint his life as a tragedy. Not by intention, of course. When a tragedy happens to someone, it just happens to be the primary way we too often remember them.

I won’t shy away in this article from the tragedy Jason suffered. It is too much a part of who Jason became … and overcame. In fact, I hope to connect how his life’s worst tragedy became also his greatest triumph.

I taught Jason in elementary school. I taught him in third grade. Then I taught him again in fourth and fifth.

At Van Pelt Elementary School, we gave a Citizenship Award each year to our “best all-around” student in each grade. It was voted on by the teachers who taught that grade.

Jason had received the award in third grade. When we fifth grade teachers voted a couple of years later, Jason was voted for the award again.

Then one teacher spoke up. She said, “I really think we should choose someone other than Jason. He has already won this once.”

To which I spoke up, “You show me a better all-around kid than Jason Hearl, and I will change my vote.”

Jason received the award, yet again.

Jason spent the night at my house several times. He was great friends with my own son, David, who was Jason’s age. They played in the woods together. They played Little League All-Star games together. They played joyfully, at all times. “Joy” could well have been Jason’s middle name. Everything he did, Jason seemed to do it with a sense of joy.

Sometime after Jason’s tragic event, another former student of mine, Bristol’s Briana Morris Fillers (you can look her up on Facebook), rounded up a bunch of former classmates (and Jason’s former teacher, yours truly) to go visit him.

Jason was almost completely immobile. He could only lay in bed. He also could not speak to where we could understand a single word. Yet he smiled constantly, filled with joy that we came. It was also easy to tell that he understood much of what we were saying to him, by the look in his eyes each time we spoke.

Here is a pic I personally took of that event. My son is the second to Jason’s right. (We all actually visited him for several years running, each time near Christmas.)

Jason loved sports and had been a great athlete growing up. He had a very loving family who all loved him dearly. Yet now, here he lay, unable to speak and scarcely able to move.

Jason could have given up. He could have bemoaned his fate. He could have sunk into the depths of despair (which I’m sure he no doubt did, many times, again and again, as would any human being in his situation).

Yet no matter how often despair may have brought him down, Jason did not stay there.

Despite the dire circumstances Jason had been handed from life’s deck of cards, his spirit chose, instead, to always rise and return to joy.

I cannot write about Jason without feeling more joyful about life myself. Nor can I write about him without thinking of ways to turn my own life’s tragedies more into triumphs.

No matter the slings and arrows that life hurls toward us, Jason showed us (in fact, he lived it daily) that we can always choose to respond to tragedy and despair … by living life with joy.