So, I’m on my way to spend some time with my younger daughter, Brittany, and do some father-daughter bonding…over pedicures.

Bonding is one of those things that we talk about but, at least in my case, had largely left to her mom and my late wife, Sharon. But bonding is what I promised I would do when Sharon was no longer with us.

“I know you don’t think that real men do girly things,” she said, part of the series of life lessons she offered before her passing from ALS. “But our girls need you every bit as much as me, and even more after I’m gone.” She adjusted her hospital bed to bring her eyes level with mine. “So you WILL bond. You will do things you never expected to do, because that’s part of what unconditional love is all about.”

And so I committed to rethinking my relationship with our girls, Brittany and Chelsea, and developing a friendship with her “sister/friend” of more than half a century, Nancy. I would explore Unconditional Love, one of the ten promises I made to her. Death, she said, brings “grief but it also brings opportunity.”

I shook my head. “Are you kidding me?

“Serious,” she said, and then giggled. “Dead serious.”

I rolled my eyes.

Remember “’love means never having to say you’re sorry’?” I nodded. “Well, love means never having to turn down a pedicure—you’re going to take my place with Brittany…promise?”

And so I promised, and committed to follow the principles she laid out for me, that I would live fully and well after her passing, and would share her approach to life with our girls and her sister/friend.

But a pedicure? I was apprehensive even as I committed. First pedicures, I thought, and then heels.. Slippery slope. Not good, especially as I’m in my second career, a professor at Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical Christian university. What does the Bible say about pedicures? Moses probably could have used one, what with all that wandering around the desert—but did he get one, say, before he visited Pharaoh? Not the first time I regretted neglecting the Old Testament.

But I committed to a pedicure in her place as the first step toward bonding. What next, I asked myself. Pink shirts? Painted toenails? The only other person I know who wears pink shirts is our department chair, and nobody says anything because…well, he’s the boss. And he doesn’t wear heels—at least not around the university.

Fast forward. Now, love for my late wife and a commitment to make the world a better place, starting with family and friend, has me on my way to a seaside resort to sit next to my daughter while someone takes a sander to my feet. And how exactly do you bond when a perfect stranger is clutching your toes and peeling your skin away from the bone?

The stuff of nightmares. Rewind. And what happens, I asked her, if I have a pedicure moment?

“Pedicure moment?” she rasped.

“Sort of like a senior moment,” I said, “But for a guy, with worse consequences.” What if I mentally drift, and allow polish on my toenails—am I still a man, can I remain a professor at a Christian university? Before I joined the faculty at Liberty I was a consumer merchandising executive, a tough operator used to leading—“you remember—a manly man,” I said. But now I’m a university professor…but, I mused, if any guy could get away with wearing toenail polish it would be a professor.

She laughed. Good to hear. “Go with dusky beige,” she said. “It will play off your tan. You tan wonderfully.”

Then, ever the devout Christian, she came through with a bit of Bible: “Fear not,” she said, bonding and giving, “even to the point of pedicure,” is part of unconditional love. Let unexpected setbacks “such as my passing” give you permission to break out of old patterns. In fact, all setbacks do.” She lay back, exhausted from talking. “That’s tonight’s lesson.”

And so, 11 months later, I’m on my way to meet Brittany and do the spa thing. And, the more I think about it, dusky beige polish would, in fact, play off my tan!

But most important: As that great theologian, Meat Loaf, with whom I once hit some balls before a golf tournament in Davenport, Iowa, the only time I’ve been close to a hall of fame philosopher, so aptly put it: “I would do anything for love…”