As C.S. Lewis wrote in his book “The Great Divorce,” a man or woman who lives a life of unchecked complaining and grumbling may finish it as a mere collection of grumbles.

We have all met people like that, and it’s never pleasant. To grow old and bitter, I reckon, has got to be one of the worst things that can happen to a human being.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Below I write about two key people who taught me the better way.

Daisy

She was a frail 103 years old when I met her in a South Carolina nursing home in the spring of 1989 during a tour with an acting company. She was sitting comfortably in a window seat, framed by the golden rays of the late afternoon sun, her tiny body tucked under a thick, multi-colored quilt.

Our conversation was brief, but revealing.

As a Black woman born in 1886 in the Jim Crow South, 21 years after the American Civil War, and after the United States government had given up on the promise of Reconstruction, Daisy had no doubt witnessed terrible things, and suffered countless humiliations and slights in her long life.

She had also outlived all of her children.

It could not have been easy.

Yet, there she was, emanating such warmth that a person could have been persuaded to warm their hands over her as they would do before a fire on an icy winter night.

Yes, she knew her time was not long, but she was not afraid to die, not at all. Indeed, she said, she was looking forward to it.

As I had not met anyone like Daisy before, I asked her if she had any bitterness?

“No, no,” said Daisy, as her wrinkled face lit up like burnished gold would do if it could smile. And she explained why.

“Love of Jesus, love of Jesus.”

I knew at that instant that if heaven were full of souls like hers, that was just where I wanted to be when my life was over. I still feel that way.

To this day, Daisy remains the closest thing to an angel I have ever met on this planet, or expect to meet.

John Kirner

Former Clallam County Commissioner and Sequim City Councilman John Kirner was also more than 100 years plus when I met him in Sequim in 1993.

In his younger days, he told me, he was a star pitcher for the Washington Huskies baseball team. Afterward, he was a lumberjack on the Olympic Peninsula.

Thing about old Kirner: he was the kindest man I have ever known.

I never knew him to grumble or harbor bad feelings or utter a harsh word about anyone. That’s not how he talked, not how he’d lived his life.

I remember asking the then-sheriff of Clallam County, Joe Hawe, if he could identify a man by his greeting. Hawe laughed and immediately gave the answer.

I’ll clean up Kirner’s greeting as it could be misunderstood by people who did not know him.

“Gd Bob, JC, how the hell you doing?” he’d say, always delivered with humor, a smile, a twinkle in his old blue eyes, and the shake of a right hand that had no right to be as strong as it was at his age.

I don’t know how Kirner came by his goodness to me and to everyone else he met. Was it just his nature or was something else involved? But much of what I learned about simple human decency I learned from him.

I can never pay back the debt I owe to both of those souls, except by saying God bless ‘em. They did it right.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.