I would like to tell you the story of the greatest milkshake ever made.
Although it happened in Wisconsin, the land of dairy cows, it could have been anywhere and it could have been concocted by anyone. It was made in January, a month not particularly ideal for milkshakes, at least in Wisconsin.
The hourglass of my father-in-law’s life was down to its last grains of sand. Gary suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis since being diagnosed as his marriage was just getting started, And he suffered heroically. I don’t think there was a day he wasn’t in pain, although most days, you wouldn’t have known it.
I doubt the doctors expected him to live much past fifty.
He made it to an early retirement after qualifying for disability at 55.
And there he was, still going at 77.
But as it is with all of us, time is undefeated. He landed in the hospital, and as the doctors tried to fix one issue, another emerged. They were like sailors trying to bail out a boat that had sprung a leak. Any success was followed by another leak, and then another, and another.
Gary was a house of cards. All the medication, therapy, and artificial joints were no longer enough. The house was falling, and Gary was out of fight. He’d finally had enough of the pokes, the prodding, and the pain that would have done in lesser men decades earlier. When given the option of halting all tests and treatments in order to round third on his journey to his real home, Gary eagerly said yes. Arrangements were made for him to be transferred to a hospice center. It was a wonderful time of relief and peace for him and the whole family.
One particular moment stood out to me.
In the first hours after his arrival, the hospice team gave him a menu and told him to pick whatever sounded good. It was his first chance to eat real food in weeks. Gary scanned the menu, but what sounded best was not on it.
“Boy, I’d really love a chocolate shake. Can you make me a chocolate shake?”
They could have said, “Sorry, that’s not on the menu,” which is a close cousin to “It’s not our policy.” They could have even softened it by saying, “But we’d be happy to bring you absolutely anything on the menu.”
If they had said that, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.
Without hesitation, the nurses jumped into action. It took a while to pull things together, but they eventually emerged with a chocolate shake.
And then a miracle happened.
It reminded me of something Willy Wonka would have been proud to create. This seventy-seven-year-old man, who was completely spent from a fifty-plus year fight with a devastating disease, magically transformed into a seven-year-old boy. Joy burst forth as he attacked that shake with reckless abandon. He was no longer a broken-down body in its last days, he was a zealous youngster who would not be cheated out of even one sweet spoonful of that delicious treat.
It was a magical moment.
A Milkshake Moment.
A Milkshake Moment is when you embrace an opportunity to use what you have on hand to ease a burden or enrich someone else’s life, making them feel seen and valued. It may not be everything you wish you could do, but at least it’s something. Something is always better than nothing. And sometimes it’s the best thing because it comes from the heart.
A Milkshake Moment is the encapsulation of the value of whimsy and the supernatural power of small things.
We almost always wish we could do more. We see what’s possible if only we had a little less regulation or red tape; a little more money or time. It’s frustrating.
The tragedy is that too often, we let that lack keep us from doing anything.
If they could have waved a magic wand, I’m sure those nurses would have loved to give Gary another five or ten years of pain-free living.
That wasn’t something they could manage, so they made him a milkshake instead.
It may have not seemed like much. A drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. Something they probably thought little of.
But they made him feel seen.
They made him feel special.
They delivered a time machine that made him a boy again, reminding him of the sweetest parts of life while serving up a small foretaste of Heaven.
And that’s not nothing.
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