BUFFALO, N.Y. — James Taylor has been part of Jill Fink's life for decades. The Amherst woman has collected all of his albums, and plenty of concert tickets, but a catastrophic health event made her realize just how much his music could mean.
It was September 21st in the yard of their Amherst home. She was gardening and her husband Jim was cutting the grass when she called to Jim and asked him to pick up the weeds. He wondered why she didn't do it herself. In the seconds that it took Jim to get across 15 feet of yard, it became very clear to him she wasn't being lazy, she was having a stroke.
That is when the health crisis, says Jill, took another turn. "We went from the stroke to Gates Vascular, thank God, because the stroke saved my life." As bad as the stroke was, it shed light an even greater threat to Jill's life. As doctors were treating her, they discovered she had 5 aneurysms in her brain, one of them required surgery right away. So once she recovered from the stroke, they tackled an extremely complex procedure to address the major aneurysm. They implanted 23 platinum coils, as neurosurgeon consulted remotely from Houston and 5,000 others watched a web feed.
While Jill remained optimistic that she was in good hands, Jim felt helpless. He wanted to do something, and a friend, who knows Jill's love of James Taylor, mentioned that you can send James Taylor a message through his website. "A couple days before her major surgery I clicked on it." Jim is a journalist by trade, and put all of his writing skills to work in a heartfelt email to the music legend. "I also put the clause in that I know you're busy and this is the longest of long shots. If you could call her, or send her a text or voicemail, send her a card or something, it would really lift her spirits, because she has been scared, concerned she was frustrated."
The surgery went off without a hitch and as the months passed and Jill's recovery progressed he forgot about the email, until a couple of weeks ago when a package arrived in the door. It was a lyrics sheet to the song "The Secret of Life," addressed to Jill and personally signed by James Taylor himself. Jill was blown away. "That somebody took the time to read Jim's email. You don't get that a lot and to have somebody do this, a perfect stranger do this, it's kindness."
Kindness that cuts through the dark clouds, and shines a light of happiness and hope.