Today I learned that I lost a friend to cancer.

I call him a friend even though I only knew him professionally, never met him socially, never had anything to do with him except through our business connection. Yet, I am calling him a friend.

He had the most maddening habit of calling up about a client, and apologising so much for taking up your time that a five minute call never was less than 15 minutes.

But the reason he called and took so much time was only ever because he was worried for a client’s well-being. He only worked with people who had suffered serious personal injury. His passion was to make sure they had received compensation, and having sweated blood on their behalf he was going to do his level best to make sure that the money lasted for the rest of their lives. He was concerned that his clients would do silly things with their claim and end up running out of money.

I’ve just had a text back from a mutual client saying, He was so good to us at the worst time in our lives, and that exactly sums him up for me.

We got the nice bit to deal with, the job of putting our financial planning skills to work to help clients use the money to put their lives back together. I would like to think that he turned to Navigator because we care about our clients as much as he did. I really do hope that is the case. I hope that we never lose sight of why he referred his clients to us in the first place – because the most important thing is them – maybe you! – and what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Now and again we are privileged to get a wake-up call, a reminder of why we do what we do. Today was one of those for me.

My regret is the times I cursed him for taking too long to get his point across, when actually what he was doing was making sure that I really had his, and the client’s, back. Maybe the learning point for us all is never to regret any time spent with someone we appreciate or love, because in the end, once it’s past, we can’t get it back.

Sayonara, Pat, I will miss you. We all will.