marking time with Ruben - (original draft 2021)

It seems the only conversations I have left are with myself—and putting them on a page feels more sane than keeping them in my head.

Depression has found its way back in. Or maybe it never left. Either way, it’s taken up space again, and every so often I feel the need to empty out what’s inside me, though I couldn’t tell you why.

The life I built—quiet, controlled, mostly solitary—has started to echo. There’s guilt in that. Regret too. I didn’t realize I was designing a future where the one person I let in would one day be gone, and I’d be here, alone in what was left.

I’ve known hard times. I’ve walked through them before. But this is different. There’s no clear road ahead, and looking back doesn’t help—it just leaves me empty. I was always alone without feeling lonely. Now I’m not so sure. Now it feels like the only thing willing to stay is depression.

It’s 8 p.m. The TVs are off. The clocks tick. That’s it. That and the thought that maybe I’m a little more unwell this time than I’ve been before.

A friend offered me some work. I said yes, hoping it might pull me out of this. But after two years of trying to be okay, I’m not. And I don’t know if I can hide that anymore.

A few things this past year have pulled me back into places I thought I’d outgrown—people, distance, family that doesn’t quite feel like family anymore. Add in the weight of everything happening beyond my front door, and it all feels heavier than it should.

The other night, sleep didn’t come. That alone told me something was off. Around 3 a.m., I went for a walk and ended up at my mom’s empty house. Sat on the back patio, staring into the dark, trying to make sense of anything.

Then I heard it—a faint meow.

Ruben, the neighbor’s cat. 

He comes around during the day, but this was different. I hadn’t made a sound. It was nearly 4:30 in the morning. And still, he came—running toward me, calling out with every step.

He settled in like he belonged there. Like he’d been sent.

I don’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore. That moment felt like something else—something placed in front of me exactly when I needed it. Maybe from my mom. Maybe from God. Maybe both.

All I know is this: for a few minutes, the noise in my head went quiet.

And that was enough. 

The Wealth I Once Had

Success isn’t for everyone. It demands a lot that most people never see, and when you reach it, some people treat you differently—some admire it, some quietly resent it, and you can never talk about it. It's "rude..."

Life doesn’t reward everyone with a place to belong; some of us spend it quietly learning how to live without one..

There was a time when I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, punching a time clock in a cold warehouse and living paycheck to paycheck. That’s where I learned what separates those who wish and those who do, and the costs of my choice.

While others made friends and went to parties, I worked. Quietly. Alone. Trying to make myself valuable enough to people I couldn't stand to overcome my greatest fear, living broke. 

Fear of living broke drove me harder than anything else. I made sure it would never happen.

It didn’t.

But it came at a cost.

Now, having gotten older, I’m not broke. Still, the old saying that runs on a loop in my head: 

Some people are so poor all they have is money...

The memories that still make me smile come from the days when all we had was just enough.

Riding a used bicycle Mom gave me for Christmas because she couldn’t afford to buy me a new one. To this day, I remember being disappointed but I never let her know. I hope she didn't know.. Watching her work herself to exhaustion just to keep a roof over our heads. Gus, my dog.

I  didn't know we were struggling; we just didn't have a lot, but we had enough, and we had each other.

I was already rich beyond measure and didn't realize it. Oh, but I do now, oh do I ever know now..

Mom was proud of me, and I know that to be true. Still, she would have loved a house full of family and grandchildren from her son that would never come to be. She understood something it took me a lifetime and much loss to learn. 

That family is the real wealth.

They’re all gone now. What remains are the memories of a life that once held everything important.

As I move through what feels like borrowed time, I am grateful for those old memories and every extra day I’m given.

I spent a lifetime making sure I would never be broke.
It took nearly seventy years to realize I once had the greatest wealth a person can have.

A family. 

The Strange Reality of Turning 70

So I made it to 2026. I'm 70 now, and my health has begun to decline rather precipitously. After being on extremely expensive blood thinners for about three months to prevent clots, stroke, and heart attack, my body is now, for some reason, making far too many red blood cells. The result is very thick blood. My rising hematocrit numbers are a growing concern.

There are indications that, along with heart and kidney issues, this blood problem may be part of the larger process of decline that eventually comes for all of us.

If it weren’t happening to me, it would actually be a fascinating look at how humans age and slowly break down before the end.

Reaching seventy is a strange milestone. In my head, I’m still twenty-five.

The late George Harrison once said in an interview, “It’s nothing to go from 17 to 57. It just happens so fast.”

For me, the years from 50 to 70 passed in the blink of an eye.

In that short stretch of time, I lost my mother, my brother-in-law, a sister entered memory care, a dear friend next door passed away, and a nephew’s young son died far too early. My ex-wife lost her father and her life changed as well.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, my perception of time — and my own mortality — shifted dramatically.

Intellectually, I’ve always known that all living things eventually die. But watching it happen in real time is something else entirely. It’s a jolt to the consciousness.

At seventy, that jolt hits exponentially harder.

Living alone with almost no human contact forces me to have these conversations entirely inside my own mind. There’s no outside input, only my own worries and concerns echoing around.

It probably isn’t healthy to live so isolated.

But it’s the life I chose many years ago for reasons that seemed solid at the time. Back then, it felt easier.

Looking back, I clearly didn’t think it through.

My mind needs more input now — more living, more nature, more discovery, some kind of passion for something… anything.

Today a neighbor and his wife came over and started vacuuming leaves in my yard with two mowers. It was an oddly uncomfortable experience watching it happen.

Just a few minutes earlier, I had been talking with him about some of my health issues — something I seem unable to avoid when asked how things are going. The next thing I knew, he and his wife were bagging leaves in my yard.

Do they see a frailty in me that I can feel but don’t want to acknowledge?

Are my health problems becoming visible to others?

My mother used to tell me, " Never tell everything to anyone."

I’ve had trouble in the past from forgetting that advice and saying too much before thinking.

People — even well-meaning people — don’t actually want to hear all your problems. They probably have plenty of their own. And once they hear yours, they feel obligated to respond: What can I do to help?

But most of the time I’m not asking for help. I’m simply answering the question.

So perhaps the better response when someone asks how things are going is the one my mother suggested long ago:

“Fine. It’s great to be alive. Thanks for asking. How are you?”

One thing has always been certain:

Nothing is for certain.

If I wake up tomorrow, it’s a good day.

If God’s plan for me doesn’t end today, then I need to have a plan of my own and go get after it.

Worry won’t cure anything. Concern won’t heal the cause of it.

Find something else to think about.
Do something — anything.
Just get up, move, and keep moving forward.

If I make it to 71, it won’t be because I sat around worrying about my health when I could have been living every single moment and absorbing some kind of life — any kind.

The end will come soon enough.

There’s no need to invite it early.

More peace.
More music.
Laugh some.
Worry less.

Live every minute.

Go to the gym.

 

Summer 2025

Many years ago,

an old friend of mine—

someone I hadn’t spoken to in decades—

learned, one night,

that both of his parents had been in a severe head-on car accident.

His mother…

was in critical condition.

His father…

died instantly.

In a single, fatal moment,

his life changed forever.

No warning.

No consent.

He wrote to me afterward—

because he always wrote when life became unbearable—

that the strangest part wasn’t the accident itself.

It was how the world didn’t stop.

Not for a second.

Time didn’t pause.

People went on, oblivious.

That dislocation stayed with him.

And it would prepare him for another blow.

The eventual passing of his mother.

Making him, in the end, a fellow orphan.

I’ve learned something hard,

something unavoidable:

No matter what life throws at you,

no matter how catastrophic,

you have to get up.

Dust yourself off.

Keep going.

Tomorrow will come.

Then a week.

A month.

A year.

For those left behind,

the alarm rings.

Bills must be paid.

People go to work.

To the grocery store.

To the mundane, ordinary tasks.

And the world keeps spinning.

Night turns to day.

Time marches on.

There’s a saying

that time can heal what nothing else can.

I hope that’s true.

For some.

For me…

time hasn’t healed.

It has, at times, stood completely still.

Until another death.

And then another.

Now, in the summer of 2025…

Four notable deaths.

Since my mom passed.

All sudden.

All jarring.

None I saw coming.

I know some people

can find comfort in perspective.

In support.

They can accept that death is part of life.

I…

would not know much about that.

What I do know is this:

Getting stuck.

In a place—good or bad.

And trying to find your way out.

That is my everyday now.

No matter how deeply you are affected…

You cannot expect others to feel the same.

There are only a few people in life

who will clap when you win…

and cry when you fall.

When they’re gone…

When you are truly alone…

That is when the real work begins.

You either sink under the weight of it…

Or climb out.

Just as the ones who are gone

would have hoped you would.

The summer of 2025…

it has been the hardest time of my life.

I believe in God.

I have faith that there is some purpose behind all of this…

A purpose I am not meant to fully understand.

I know I am not facing it entirely alone.

God walks beside me.

With every step I manage to take.

And yet…

I cannot deny

that I spend too much time thinking about my own mortality.

Death.

Life.

All of it weighing on me

in ways it never used to.

Since I switched from television to YouTube…

Google shows me stories of “notable people” who have died.

I am struck by the ages,

the causes,

the uncanny parallels to my own life.

It forces me to reconsider plans I once thought I had…

Places I thought I might go.

It is sobering to confront my health.

My age.

My limitations.

Things I never had to consider before.

The echoes in my mind…

they come from a time when all I wanted was to be left alone.

To be.

To go.

To do as I pleased.

And now…

I wonder aloud:

Is this what “be careful what you wish for” really means?

Perhaps it is.

Sunlight on an Old Man's face - Feb 08, 2025

Some days are low lights. Today was one of them. I write not for answers, but to acknowledge my own mind.

For years, I’ve thought too much about mortality, about the heart and kidney problems that remind me of life’s fragility. Most of it stays locked inside.

I made a choice long ago to live alone. Today, that choice feels heavy. I wonder how many more times I will feel sunlight on my face, warmth that touches me nowhere else. I wonder how life might have been different with someone beside me in these years.

I see my younger self in old photos: a kid who saw love but didn’t feel it, who laughed alone, unaware of the sadness that would wait. Mom gave us all she could—love, care, a life built against the odds.

Now, the house is quiet. Memories linger, unclaimed joy and silent regrets. Love, it seems, is beyond reach. Someone to share these fears can only exist in thought and words.

Mom, Gran, my father I never knew, my lost family—God, watch over me. And those who touched my life, protect them too.

Peace, Lord, if it is Your will. Forgive me for falling short, and let my heart find rest.

The Quiet Grief of Christmas - 2024

Remembering the reason for the season has never been just a phrase to me. It is a reminder.

A reminder that the quiet melancholy I carry has a purpose. At almost any moment I feel half happy and half sad, and I would not want it any other way. That balance reminds me of the people I have loved and the losses that shaped my life.

There was a time when our family felt whole. That changed when the matriarchs of the family passed away and the center that held everything together slowly disappeared. My father whom I never actually knew, and my mother—who was everything good that remained—eventually left this world as well.

Yet the sadness I feel today is also a connection to them. It reminds me that love does not simply disappear.

Years ago I wrote about walking alone in this world. I did not yet understand how deep that feeling would become. But faith reminds me that none of us truly walks alone.

Christmas brings those feelings close again—the lights, the music, the familiar traditions. Sadness and light, living side by side.

Soon another year will begin. Another chance to do some good for someone else, just as my mother always believed.

Until my time here is finished, I will mention those who carry the same quiet grief in my prayers..

May God bless all of us.

The Knock At The Door

More than forty years have passed, but I still remember the knock at the front door.

When I opened it, a stranger stood there holding papers. A process server. He handed them to me and explained, calmly and professionally, that I had ten days to move out of my own house. I was to leave my wife, my son, and nearly everything I owned behind. I could take a few clothes.

Just like that, the life I had been living was over.

Recently I heard someone telling the story of his own divorce, and it brought all of that back to me. Not the anger—there really isn’t much of that left—but the memory of how suddenly life can change.

My divorce isn’t a story about blaming my ex-wife. Life is rarely that simple. Looking back now, the truth is the divorce was probably the best thing for both of us. Maybe even for my son, though that’s something we’ll never really know.

The reality is we probably never had much chance from the beginning.

We were very young. Her parents didn’t want us seeing each other, and we had just discovered she was pregnant. In those days the expectation was simple: if a child was coming, you got married. So we did.

Our backgrounds could not have been more different.

I grew up in a house filled with arguments and divorces. That was the model of family life I knew. My mother loved me deeply, and for that I’ll always be grateful, but growing up in that kind of turmoil leaves marks you don’t recognize until much later.

My wife came from a large, stable family with parents who stayed together for decades.

Looking back now, it seems almost inevitable that we would struggle.

What stayed with me most wasn’t simply the end of the marriage. It was the feeling that everything had been decided without me. One day I had a family, a home, and a life that—while imperfect—was still mine. The next day it was gone.

The pain of that moment stayed with me longer than I ever expected. Long enough that I quietly promised myself I would never again risk that kind of loss.

And I never did.

My ex-wife kept trying. She remarried several times over the years searching for the right fit. I admire that persistence.

My path went another direction. I focused on work, investing, and building stability where I could. Eventually I retired with some security.

Today I’m told my son and his family are doing well, and my ex-wife seems happy. For that I’m grateful.

Life didn’t turn out the way I imagined when I was young.

But I’ve learned something over the years: gratitude and disappointment can exist at the same time.

And sometimes that’s enough.    

Even now, all these years later, I sometimes think about that knock at the door and how a single moment can quietly divide a life into before and after.

  

  

When the Circle Gets Smaller

For most people, Thanksgiving and Christmas are filled with warmth, family, and celebration. But for some of us, the holidays arrive quietly.

I am among those who no longer have family to gather with during this time of year—or at any other time, for that matter.

I deal with it the only way I know how: by being grateful for the memories from when things were different. When people were different. When family filled the room and the holidays meant noise, laughter, and togetherness.

The people who once held my family together have all passed away now. Those who remain, I hope, are somewhere making their own gatherings and building their own memories. That is how life moves forward. Toward the later chapters, things tend to thin out. The circle gets smaller. The house grows quieter.

I have made my peace with that, but I know many people struggle deeply with this stage of life, especially during the holidays. I get them..

Somewhere along the way I realized something important: silence is also a form of communication. When the phone does not ring and messages stop coming, that too says something. Once I understood that, it stopped hurting the way it once did.

Now that I am older and dealing with health issues, Thanksgiving is no longer just one day a year for me. It is every day. I am thankful for another sunrise, another breath, another chance to listen to the wind in the trees, hear the birds sing, and feel the warmth of the sun.

Christmas, too, carries a different meaning now—one deeper than the excitement we felt as kids.

If you find yourself alone during these holidays while others celebrate the way you once did, try to look up instead of down. They are making the same memories you once made, memories that will carry them through their own quiet seasons someday.

And remember: we are never truly alone in this world. God is always there, waiting patiently for us to turn to Him when the weight of life becomes too heavy to carry alone.

 

        

Ruben, Mom, and the Spaces Between - 2024

I ended my last job before retirement quietly, sharply. American Airlines, a contract signed and signed again until it felt like a mantra I no longer believed. I doubled my rate, expecting the break. And it came—in one line from Steve: “We won’t pay your new rate.” No explanation. No conversation. No thanks for letting me know you had changed your rate so I wouldn't face explanations to hirer ups. Just gone. Another job. Another “friend.”

Friends drift like leaves in wind. You should get used to it. I never do.

April 17, Ruben died. My neighbor’s cat, a lifeboat in fur. After Mom passed, he never left my side. Lap, chair, floor—he stared into my eyes as though he could absorb the grief and hold it so I might survive. And I did. He was love without words, quiet and unwavering.

August 22, diabetes?? Not a companion I wanted stacked atop kidney and heart disease. I responded with fury: bread gone, potatoes gone, vegetables and air-fried chicken in. Daily walks turned into miles in Texas heat. Mom’s treadmill returned home. Fifteen pounds lighter. Alone in the world, I chose charge over surrender.

September 17, Bobby and Linda to Alzheimer’s care. Painful, necessary. What is happening-

2024 has been absence after absence: jobs, friends, pets, certainty. And yet here I am—still standing. Still moving. Still breathing into the empty spaces. I’ve discarded the hollow comfort: “It can’t get any worse.” It always can and often does..

a look back, at the future..

People say the most important part of a headstone isn’t the dates carved into the stone.

It’s the dash.

That small mark standing between the beginning and the end — our entire life reduced to a single line.

I think about that sometimes when I remember the people who are gone. I wonder if they would recognize the versions of themselves that live inside my memory. Memory edits things. Softens edges. Rearranges moments.

The people we remember are never exactly the people who lived, or maybe they are.

My faith tells me that everyone still here already knows where they stand with God. I believe that, even while I struggle with feeling less than worthy. Even while knowing I've fallen short of what was expected of me.

The past several years have worn me thin. Living alone turned out to be harder than I imagined, even for someone who thought he preferred it. Depression has been a familiar companion for years. Recently, grief pulled up a chair beside it.

They seem comfortable together.

There are moments now when I barely recognize the man I once was. The weight of grief settles deep into the bones. I try the old trick of telling myself that others have it worse, but the mind knows when it’s being negotiated with.

Still, I made a promise to my mother before she died.

I told her I would be okay.
I told her I would keep going.
And I told her I would keep moving closer to God so that one day we might meet again.

So I keep going.

Life has knocked me down more than once. Eventually, I learned something simple: getting back up isn’t just an option.

It’s the only thing on the list.

And so I move forward the same way everyone does — carrying regret, gratitude, faith, and memory through the narrow space we’re given.

The dash between the dates.