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.

Notes from the Edge of the Circle

If I were to die right now while writing this, it might be months before anyone discovered it.

My bills are on autopay. Months sometimes pass without a text or a phone call from anyone I once knew. That’s simply the reality of the life I ended up living.

Being just a couple of years shy of seventy has me conserving what energy I have left to live the days God may give me. Yet I still spend long stretches of days looking back over this life, trying to understand how I arrived here—living in a quiet isolation that sometimes feels like a hermit’s life.

I’ve managed to avoid the usual woe-is-me that often accompanies stories like this. I did well financially and spent years traveling the world with a job that was often interesting and sometimes even fun. But none of those things ever quieted the restless places in my mind.

At my age, thoughts about mortality seem natural. For me they come almost daily. Not in panic or fear, but in quiet acknowledgment of how life has unfolded.

When the matriarch of our family—my grandmother—passed away, the family slowly drifted apart. What had once held everyone together disappeared, and we rarely gathered again except when someone else died.

The Bible says we are meant to leave our parents and go build families of our own. That seems to work for most people. I tried once. Soon after, I found myself pushed out of that life and never attempted it again.

Looking back, the pattern may have started earlier than I realized. As a child I was often told to play alone rather than with the other kids in the neighborhood. That solitude followed me through school and into adulthood, where being quiet and apart was sometimes mistaken for arrogance when it was really just distance.

A kid who played alone.
A man who stayed that way.

The square peg.

Being young and alone is one thing. Growing old and alone is something else entirely.

Still, I sometimes miss the years when it might have been possible to turn things another way.

In memoriam to easier times—and to those of us who never quite fit anywhere.

Note to Self at 4am

I will likely be a broken man for the rest of my life.

It has been more than four years since my mom passed away, and the void she left behind has never closed. Her absence has taken a deeper toll on me than I ever imagined—physically, mentally, and spiritually. Some losses do not heal. They simply become part of who we are.

When a matriarch dies, the emptiness left behind is something no one truly understands until it happens to them.

It doesn’t help that the world itself feels upside down. The country I grew up in feels almost unrecognizable now, as if the familiar ground beneath my feet quietly disappeared while I wasn’t looking. Even without personal loss and health problems, that alone would be unsettling. Layered on top of everything else, it feels overwhelming.

Things that once excited me—making photos, creating videos, chasing the next job or the next adventure—have quietly slipped away. The well that once fueled those pursuits feels dry now, empty of whatever spark once lived there.

I’ve always been something of a loner, never entirely comfortable around people. Since my mom passed, that tendency has multiplied a thousandfold. Solitude has become both my refuge and my trap. There are people I care about deeply—family included—and yet the comfort that should come from being around them just isn’t there.

My mental and physical health have both suffered, and the peace I once felt in my soul seems harder to find. I keep telling myself that everything around me has changed since my mom died. But the truth is harder to admit: the biggest change is in me.

Sometimes my mind drifts toward drastic ideas—packing up, moving somewhere new, changing everything, starting over under a different sky. Then the latest lab results arrive, and I’m reminded there may not be as much time left as I once assumed.

I asked a friend recently to help me put one of the houses up for rent or sale. She kindly agreed, then quietly disappeared from the effort. And that was that.

Still, I know I cannot keep treading water like this. Even if the next step turns out to be wrong, I have to take one. I trust that God will lead me somewhere better than standing still.

Over the past year, I’ve been steadily clearing things out—from my mom’s house and from mine. Lately, the pace has picked up, almost instinctively, as if some quiet voice inside me knows the clock is moving faster than I’d like to admit.

It’s four in the morning as I write this. I should be sleeping so I can make better use of another new day. Instead, I’m sitting here thinking about something I read earlier—an interview with Suzanne Somers’ husband after her passing. He spoke about how peaceful it was at the end. She had battled more health problems than most people face in a lifetime, yet she managed to live fully and remain in a loving marriage until the very end.

Her enormous home and fortune couldn’t save her. And none of that will comfort those left behind when they miss her voice or wish they could feel her arms around them again.

How we carry that loss forward becomes part of their legacy.

And right now, if I’m honest, I don’t feel like I’m honoring my mother’s legacy very well.

That needs to change.

I still have work to do.

The Quiet Reckoning of the Fourth Quarter

This morning I woke around nine, went through the usual routine, and sat down to watch the markets.

Hours passed. I watched numbers move across a screen and did little else. At some point I fell asleep in the chair and woke again around six-thirty in the evening. The sun had moved across the sky without me, and I had never stepped outside.

My Gran never had a day like that.

She raised 5 kids, sewed clothes, cooked meals, and worked because her husband died young. There were too many mouths to feed and too much life demanding her attention for a day to simply disappear.

And yet mine did.

Moments like that make a man take stock of the life he has lived.

For years I measured my success by numbers—how many jobs I completed in a week, a month, a year. Bank balances. All proof I thought, that I was doing well in the world.

Only later did I discover the cruel irony attached to those measurements.

A life can look successful by many standards, but if relationships are not among them, the result is flawed. I learned that lesson slowly, and far too late.

Age has a way of sharpening the view behind us. I see now how often I valued the wrong things while simply being with people took a back seat—or no seat at all. I believed I could always shift toward a quieter life later, one centered more on peace and connection.

But life rarely works that way.

As a kid, all I wanted was money so I could buy things. Today I can afford almost anything I once dreamed about.

What I want most now is what I used to have.

Before I ever had a dollar, I was already rich.

My mother loved us without condition while carrying burdens that might have crushed someone else. My grandmother held a family together with little more than determination and sacrifice.

I didn’t know then how wealthy those moments made us.

My mind drifts often to those gatherings at Gran’s house—kids playing outside, the old telephone party line we used to fool with, and the spearmint Lifesavers she handed out one at a time because the rest of the roll cost another nickel she didn’t have.

Kenneth’s strange laugh. Peggy’s big hair and beautiful smile. Cousins running through the yard.

A world that felt uncomplicated and permanent.

Of course it wasn’t.

Time stepped in and carried it all away.

The weight I carry now is regret—regret that I pushed some people aside who are gone forever, regret that I didn’t show them often enough how much they meant to me. In prayer, I ask God to forgive those things, and I believe He does.

But forgiving yourself can take longer, if at all.

Faith is what remains for me now as I move through this final chapter. I pray for those who are gone and for those who remain.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to add my own name to that prayer.. 

These days I ask God for guidance and a path that is clearly lit. What I should do with whatever time I have left is a question I ask almost daily.

The days are quiet now.

And my mind keeps returning to a place in my life when I already had everything I would ever need—

long before I realized it.