Last Nov. 26, far enough along into a cancer diagnosis to know it might be his final Thanksgiving Day, Tim Hussey stepped outside his Kennebunk, Maine, home to walk along Parsons Beach “at sunrise, at dead low tide. Simply glorious, and I was glad to be alive,” he wrote in his blog.
Reaching below the water’s surface he found a metaphor. “The sailor in me knows that navigators always prefer to enter harbors at low tide, as the rocks and reefs are exposed,” he wrote. “We are not blind to what lies under the high tide, just waiting to expose itself later. Low tide allows us to see reality more clearly.”
He recorded the reality he saw that morning in a blog that ranged widely, touching on his life as a successful businessman and his richer life as a family man, his spiritual explorations before and after his 2014 diagnosis, and the insights he drew from the coastal waters that had sustained him since boyhood.
“When we are at our internal high tide of peace and stillness, all seems good with the world. But our human condition means these moments don’t last forever, just as the moon inevitably pulls the waters out of the rivers and bays. Our own low tide means looking under the surface of those moments, and seeing our vulnerabilities,” he wrote, adding: “I have come to so appreciate the lessons and gifts of low tide, where life is fully shared and made visible.”
Mr. Hussey, who was president and CEO of Hussey Seating Co., and was the sixth generation of his family to lead the North Berwick, Maine, business, died June 13 in Massachusetts General Hospital of mucosal melanoma. He was 59.
“I have found that writing for others helps me articulate my feelings, my learnings, and my goals and strategies,” he wrote in his first blog post, in August 2014, a little more than two months after he was diagnosed.
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Though Mr. Hussey sailed on the ocean, he was a good a navigator on the written page, too, even before he knew illness would shorten his life. Just a dozen days before a doctor offered a grim diagnosis, Mr. Hussey delivered the commencement address at York County Community College.
Comparing life to a Shakespearean performance, he cautioned that “we never know when that last act will play out. It could be at any time.” On a graduation day filled with hopes, dreams, and excitement, he added, “it’s exhilarating, and you might almost feel immortal. But the reality is that we are mortal. And what matters, for longer than we realize, is how we behave and what choices we make in this mortal world. Yes, we do get to write the script for the drama of our lives.”
Mr. Hussey had always been an animated storyteller, using different voices for characters as he read to his children when they were young. Years of leading his business consumed considerable time until illness prompted him to look more closely at the lessons he might share.
“Once he started sort of letting go and realizing what was more important to him, out flowed these stories,” said his wife, Marcia Landry. “Tim did a lot of work in the last two years developing his spiritual self.”
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On May 10, Mr. Hussey posted the second-to-last entry on his blog. He wrote more than 3,000 words about his spiritual life and how he had reached beyond his upbringing in Kennebunkport’s South Congregational Church in search of more questions to contemplate, some of which he resolved. “Let me start at the end,” he wrote to begin the post. “I have reached the point where I don’t fear death. I actually don’t believe there is permanent death for any of us, and this belief is very liberating! I can release lots of fears after letting go of the fear of death, and live my life with much more peace.”
Born in Biddeford, Maine, Timothy Buffum Hussey grew up in Kennebunkport, the oldest of four children. His father, Philip Hussey Jr., also had served as president of the family business. His mother, the former Martha DeWolf, was a homemaker and a church secretary.
Mr. Hussey graduated from Kennebunk High School in 1974, from Colby College in Maine four years later, and received a master’s of business administration from Cornell University. He spent his entire career at Hussey Seating Co., becoming president in 1995.
On the local and state levels he served on boards for organizations including the Maine Economic Growth Council and Maine Development Foundation. He also was a trustee emeritus at Colby.
“He could pack more into a day than anyone I know,” said his oldest child, Hannah of Jamaica Plain. “He was the type of person who could be running an international family-owned manufacturing business and still have time to show up at his kids’ band concerts and Little League games.”
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“We were always his first priority, which meant the world to us,” said his youngest child, Olivia, who just finished her junior year at Boston College.
In 1989, Mr. Hussey married Marcia Landry, whom he had met at a wedding. “I walked across a dance floor at DiMillo’s Restaurant in Portland, and my life profoundly changed,” he wrote on their anniversary in February. Her father, a minister, officiated at their wedding, and characterized them as “stubborn opposites.”
“I liked romance and poetry, Tim liked figures. He was black and white while I was gray,” she said. “We had these three great kids. They’ve got the best of us, and that’s the legacy that will go forward.”
Olivia said that “definitely the best gift he gave us was his love for my mom. How much they loved and cared for each other really set the bar high for any relationships we’ll be in.”
In addition to his wife and two daughters, Mr. Hussey leaves his son, Philip of Portland, Maine, and his mother, who lives in Kennebunk, as does his sister, Anne, and his two brothers, Jon and Richard.
Family and friends will gather to celebrate Mr. Hussey’s life at 11 a.m. Tuesday in Holy Spirit Church in Kennebunk.
In sailing races over the years from Newport, R.I., to Bermuda, and from Marblehead to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mr. Hussey served as the navigator. “He always had the respect of everyone else on the boat. When my dad spoke, everyone listened,” said his son, Philip. “That was something I came to admire. Everyone always knew that he had the answer.”
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In no small way, Mr. Hussey used his blog and the conversations he had these past two years to chart a course for family and friends through the rough waters of a terminal illness, demonstrating how to navigate life when the horizon is no longer distant. “It really made him stop and reflect and think: ‘How can I use this disease for good in my life?’ And suddenly it became a way for everybody to use it for good in their own lives,” Philip said.
When Mr. Hussey died, his wife was holding his hand. “We never want people we love to die, it doesn’t matter how old they are, but in our lifetime with Tim we were given such an incredible gift,” she said. “Our kids lived a full life with him, even though it was cut short. As desperately sad as I am and the kids are, what a gift that we’ve been given with Tim.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.