no black suit required..

Another day, another funeral.

I was thinking about a friend today, a friend who didn't start out that way—quite the opposite, in fact. Then, quickly and strangely enough, she became someone special, platonically, in my life. We shared our personal journeys, our pasts—hers as a refugee from Vietnam, mine as a refugee from a life lived alone.

Then one day, after a disagreement I can't even remember the details of, came the sudden death. Not of the person, the friend, but of the relationship. Everything we had both expressed to each other about our friendship—how she believed it was my mom in heaven who brought us together because I needed someone I could talk to about the grief and loss of my mother. All of that died in an instant..

So many people who were once a part of my life no longer are, and the funerals haven't all been ones I had to get dressed up for and attend in person. Some have been mental funerals like this one, for those still alive. Old friends who shared all the secrets.. Family members I grew up with. The people I once assumed would remain at least in part in my life simply because they always had been, and others like this one who came unexpectedly out of the blue and became important almost overnight.

Life has a way of quietly rearranging the cast on this journey..

People move on. Relationships change. Friendships fade. Families fracture. Sometimes there is an argument, sometimes a betrayal, sometimes nothing dramatic at all. A person who once occupied a large part of our life gradually becomes someone we no longer know..

And in a way, I hold mental funerals for them like today.

Not funerals of grief in the traditional sense, but acknowledgments that something has ended. We stop expecting the phone call. We stop thinking about them every day. Their name slowly moves from the present tense of our lives into the past.

The peculiar thing is that they are still out there somewhere, quite possibly doing exactly the same thing with us..

Over a long enough life, we collect these invisible endings. Some are our decision. Some are theirs. Some happen almost without anyone deciding anything at all. 

We remember the people. Occasionally we wonder what became of them. Often we wonder if they ever think of us? 

And then we keep moving.

I attended this one in my underpants..

5 weeks

Final WARNING to Christians a few weeks before the November 2026 midterm elections. If Christians come out to vote in MASSIVE numbers, we save America. If Christians stay home and do not come out to vote, America, your future, and the future of your children and grandchildren are FUCKED PERMANENTLY. No do-overs, no replays with different consequences; you either outvote your voting-age, freshly indoctrinated children who get their "news" from TikTok and the internet, or your life, mine, and, ironically, theirs are FUCKED forever.

37 Thousand Strangers. 1 friend.

A friend I’ve known for about fifty years told me recently that she reads this blog from time to time.

My first thought was, oh shit, my version of yikes...

Not because I didn’t want her reading it. What caught me off guard was realizing that somebody who actually knows me had been reading things I’ve spent years avoiding revealing to people who actually know me..

The blog has more than 37,000 views now, oddly enough, probably because during my photography days I had around 5,000 followers on Facebook and would occasionally post links to things I wrote here. I assume a lot of those views came from there.

Most, if not all, of those people were/are strangers.

I was apparently perfectly OK with thirty-seven thousand strangers reading about my life for some odd reason. Strangers feel safe. They don’t know enough about you to connect all the dots. They don’t know what you were like fifty years ago, what you’ve conveniently left out of a story, or whether something you’ve written sounds completely unlike the person they remember.

But knowing someone who actually has some of those dots was reading too made me feel like I needed to go back through the posts and see what all I had revealed..

This particular someone was a girlfriend back when we were both very young, and she hadn’t yet refined her judgment..

Fifty years ago.

I’m still having trouble with that number because there is apparently some part of my brain that thinks I’m not old enough to have known anyone for fifty years. The mirror continues to disagree..

Our lives went in completely different directions a long time ago, but she has somehow always remained around the edges of mine. Every once in a while she checks in to see how I’m doing and what I’m up to. Nothing complicated. Nothing expected. She just checks in, while no one left in my own family knows whether I’m alive or might have died six, eight, or ten months ago..

This year she remembered my birthday when I had nearly forgotten it myself. I wrote here about that , that she was the last person on earth who remembered, and fifty years later she still did.

What I didn’t know was that she had also been reading some of this stuff here..

That immediately made me wonder exactly what the hell I had written..

The answer is apparently quite a bit..

The strange part is that this blog exists largely because there are things about my own father I will never know. He died in 1980, and I didn’t even know.

I never really knew him; we had only met once or twice when I was a kid and it was just a kid and a man I was told was my father. By the time I reached the age when I wanted to know more about him, who he had been beyond the basic facts of his life, he was gone. There was no written trail telling me what he thought about, what he found funny, what worried him, what made him happy, what he regretted, what mattered to him, and maybe even what he thought about me, if at all..

Those are the things I would like to know now but never will..

That became part of the reason for this blog. I had a son while I was still pretty much a kid myself, and he was barely over the age of two when I was summarily kicked to the curb, so he never really got to know his father either.

I didn’t want him to someday reach the point I did a few years ago, realizing I was now an orphan and finding there was nothing left about my father but unanswered questions..

So this blog became a de facto documentary and eventually a very long letter to my son. Something he might find someday if he ever wanted to know who his father was in my own words, how I lived, what mattered to me, and some of the good, bad, and uncomfortable things that normally don’t make it into the official version of someone’s life.

Whether he ever reads any of it is another matter.

I’ve always assumed he probably won’t.

That made writing here strangely easy. I could put things on a page I would probably never sit across from somebody and say out loud. Nobody interrupts a page. Nobody changes their facial expression halfway through the sentence. Nobody tells you what you should be feeling or asks what you really mean.

I write it down, get it out of my head and move on.

A few months ago I described myself as having an audience of one. Me.

I wrote that whatever I put here wasn’t designed for anyone who just happened to stumble across it. Apparently I forgot that public websites occasionally have a public.

Meanwhile, everywhere else, I was purposely going in the opposite direction.

Years ago I started deleting people I actually knew from Facebook. Eventually I deleted almost all of the 5000 thousand followers I had accumulated and nearly everything I had posted.

I wanted to disappear from view and, frankly, I still like the idea. I think I just stopped wanting an audience, especially an audience that never really knew me and never will.

Which makes it fairly amusing that while I was busy erasing myself from the place where thousands of people could casually see me, I left this blog sitting here containing more about who I actually am than anything I deleted.

My plan to disappear apparently included leaving a detailed map. One that I clearly hadn’t thought through. Then somebody from fifty years ago found it. That is part that surprised me most.

She knew the much earlier version of me, before most of what I write about here ever happened. Now, from time to time, she gets a glimpse of what became of that guy and some of what was going on inside him along the way.

Thirty-seven thousand strangers can read these pages and remain strangers. She can’t. She already knew the person before the story, and now she knows some of the ups and downs along the way to here.. 

But no, Teresa, it doesn’t bother me that you’re reading some of these things. If anything, I’m glad the one person I discovered sitting out there was someone who has known me for fifty years.

I just wish some of what you found here had been a little more uplifting.

I’ve become very accustomed to living inside empty rooms and was surprised when I found out I wasn’t actually alone in this one.. 

Peace

 It’s been a while. A few important things have transpired over the past several months, or longer; I can’t remember. Health, Mom’s house and belongings, Linda, and my peace of mind. Not necessarily in that order.

My colonoscopy = better than expected. No polyps or signs that things had worsened after finding almost a dozen polyps last year. I'll take it..

New findings = I have fibrosis of the liver, a cyst on my kidney, and one on my pancreas. This and these, I'm guessing, are what is meant by getting older sucks. 

The liver doctor says I need to take a new drug that has been shown to prevent further deterioration of the liver scarring and may keep me from progressing to stage 4.

Great.

Then she said, "but the drug is extremely expensive.." Expensive, I thought, is a relative term, so I asked, "so how expensive?" Her response was something like, "thousands.." How many thousands are we talking about here I asked.. Turns out this drug is $4200 per month! OK, well, that actually IS expensive.

 On the bright side, Medicare approved coverage for it, and a grant from a foundation that helps people who need seriously expensive medications covered the copay. Wow. I was shocked but pleased. 

I've dropped 60 pounds since August 2024 when I began learning of my health problems. My BMI has gone from the obese range to normal today. I go to the gym almost every day now and do cardio and some strength exercises. Turns out at 70 you can't eat like you're 17 anymore. Who knew- 

So, there’s that.

About four weeks ago, after seven years of holding on to Mom’s house and everything in it, I decided it was time to begin the process of letting go.

I think my various health issues finally kicked me into gear. After seven years of paying the taxes and insurance, keeping everything clean, mowing the yard, and maintaining the place, it was time.

I would say I am about 97 percent finished now. There are only a few remaining items to clear out, followed by the sale of the house.

That final 3 percent will not be any easier than the first 97 percent. Watching the things Mom loved leave the house and be rehomed has been tough, but she left it all for me to handle because she believed I could get it all done, and I am honoring her faith in me to do so.

Some of the rehoming has been surprisingly heartwarming. Several people have sent me photographs showing what they have done with the things they took and how they are now being used.

I have had to do all of this by myself and, considering the health concerns, the physical work, and the emotional toll it's taken, I think I have held up pretty well. (so far)

I did make the mistake of feeling proud enough of what I had accomplished that I wanted to share my progress with a family member, and true to form, I regret it. 

Instead of encouragement to keep pushing through what has been the most difficult experience of my life since Mom passed away, I got "so why are you telling me this," and "you're upsetting me.." etc.

Every time that call crosses my mind, I ask myself: What was I even thinking? Then, headlong into the conversation I had with Mom one time where I was complaining about some of the people I was working with who didn't have the same high standards I did, and Mom explaining to me something I should have already known at that age: that the fastest path to disappointment is expecting others to work the way you do, carry the same standards and so on. 100% right and 100% hard to accept.  

Why did I expect even a slight recognition, even from a family member, for managing to survive such a gut-wrenching time in my life? Why did it feel like a gut punch when I know how people are and had the luxury of a mother who had already explained that path to disappointment I was feeling yet again? 

Maybe because my experience with almost everyone other than Mom has always been some version of the same discouragement:

"You can't do that. You aren't allowed to go there. You aren't qualified. You don't understand; there's a process. I can't let you. You’re going to fail. It isn't done like this, and what makes you think you can just walk in here and do this?"

I realized the mistake only after I hung up the phone. I was pissed off, but not at the one on the other end, at myself for even attempting to share. 

Lesson learned, provided I never make the same mistake again during whatever time I have left.

Then there is my sweet sister, Linda.

I went to see her at the facility where she lives last week. The experience was both the same as usual and very different.

When I walked inside, I looked around and asked where she was. A worker I did not recognize, who must be new, asked, “Which Linda?”

I told her, but she did not seem to know who I was talking about. I finally just said I'll go look for her.

I walked past the large common room and continued down the hallway, and there she was, standing with her back against the wall beside another patient.

She did not seem to recognize me.

I told her that I was her brother, which appeared to confuse her a little. She did not know my name. After I told her, I asked whether we could go into the large room and find a place to sit.

We did.

Once we sat down, she became more talkative than I had ever seen her in that facility. I could see the Linda I've always known in her reactions and in the conversation we were having.

She looked at another patient and remarked that the woman was sweet and then added, "well she looks sweet anyway." 

I was surprised and happy at the same time. Linda was still herself to a degree I had not seen in a very long time.

As we sat there, she leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder.

It was the sweetest thing.

She laughed several times. She even punched me on the shoulder after I made a sarcastic remark about a noise.

Her mind and thought process seemed more alive that day than I had seen in quite some time.

Eventually, it was time for me to begin the process of leaving—a process I find incredibly soul-crushing.

We had been sitting off to the side by ourselves. The rest of the group was gathered in front of the television, and an empty chair was available. I asked her if she wanted to sit in that chair and watch some of the show that was on.

She was reluctant.

I got her up and began walking with her toward the chair. When we reached it, she did not want to sit down.

Instead, she held tightly to my arm.

When I told her I had to go home, she said she wanted to go with me. She asked me to take her to her home.

She said she had not seen her husband and wanted to know where he was.

All I could think to do was redirect the conversation. I told her I had just come from a doctor’s appointment and had not spoken with anyone. She reluctantly sat down, and I held and kissed her, and told her I loved her and I would see her again soon. 

Linda—the old Linda, the person she once was—was still in there.

I could see her.

I could hear her.

I did not sleep for one single minute that night because I could not stop thinking about her being in that place and what she said to me when I was leaving.

I pray for her regularly. I visit Bobby’s gravesite and tell him that she is being taken care of.

I pray for the people responsible for making decisions about her life, and I ask God to give them the guidance and light they need to change course if a change is necessary..

I have to keep faith and believe that Linda is all right and at peace.

But I fear she may not be at peace at all.

Mom, if I had ever known, I would have never let you go- 

if you know you know.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91IrYX7DIrM&list=RD91IrYX7DIrM&start_radio=1

yes, this one is for you.

Call who calls you. 

Love who loves you. 

Support who supports you. 

Ignore who ignores you. 

Never chase people who are comfortable losing you. 

Your life, mine, are not random. Our story was written before we were born.

not for everyone

I tend to react to news, good or bad almost immediately. Not because it serves me well, but because that is how I am wired. I would not recommend this method to others if they can avoid it.

It does not always put me in the best position for personal peace. But it is real, it is me, and it is not designed for an outcome. It simply feels better mentally to release whatever pressure the news builds inside me.

I do not have much of an outlet for expression anymore, other than my audience of one, myself.

I feel something, I write it out, and my audience of one appreciates rather than judges, takes my words as they are, and doesn't try to interpret. 

However, my writing is perceived by those who may accidentally run across it, I would simply say this: my style can be heavy, brutally honest, and unfiltered. My writing may not be for you, and be assured it was not designed with you in mind.

Given that, if anything I do or say makes you feel uncomfortable, I would strongly suggest you find another source of reading that better fits your journey to find your own peace.

A letter to my son.

 This blog began as a documentary of sorts and then just a letter to my son Jason Michael Zukerman, and not Jason Harvey Zukerman. The latter, I don't even know who that is. 

I never really knew my own father, and after he died, it became almost impossible to learn who he had been. What he felt was important, his health history, his sense of humor, and his favorite jokes, and what he felt were the important things in life. I never knew any of those things, and I never will. 

Only now, after learning of his passing some 20-30 years ago in 1980 and much too late, did it become important enough to me to search for anything I could find about the other half of me. I did not want my son to face that same silence if he should ever come to that place where I am today where it begins to matter. 

 These pages here are meant to leave behind a firsthand account to fill the void if one is ever felt and if my son has questions about what his father was about. Who I was, how I lived, what mattered to me, the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable, in my own words. Something I wish my father had left for me. 

Although the words contained in my posts are often heavy, they are a true and honest account of a man who had a son while still a kid himself, who never really got to know him. I came into this world under difficult circumstances. I often felt what I could only express in words on a page and not in person. So I wrote in my own voice and tone, not as some cry for sympathy or approval, but just a raw account in case the day ever comes that my son might want to know.

 

old photos

The older I get, the quieter I become.

No longer chasing friendships. I stopped reaching out to people who stopped reaching back many years ago. Validation isn't important to me. I already know who I am, and I no longer have the time or workspace in my head to waste being concerned about what others think of me.

There are fewer people and much less emotional noise from the outside making it inside.

Self-reflection and mindless regret fill my days. Solitude has become my peace.

Family has become an old photo and a distant memory. Old photos from a life that slipped away many years ago are scattered around in my mind while the link to my past continues to fade. 

Time is more precious than anything I thought mattered before I understood how little of it I have left. Take care of your health while you still have some left. 

It's not the number.

When I think about having to say out loud that I’m 70, something inside me recoils like waking up and lying next to a slithering snake. It doesn’t feel right. But what I’m learning is that the things that come with realizing I’m 70 are far worse for my mental health than the number itself. 

Nothing really changed in my head when the birthdays before this one came and went. But then I started learning about all my health issues, and overnight my thoughts moved from I’m getting older to how much time do I have left?

My calendar, once filled with shoots and trips overseas to exotic places, is now filled with blood draws, fasting, scans, and doctor appointments. My determination to get to the gym every day has begun to fade. The thoughts about how much time is left keep running through my head on a never-ending loop. This mortality thing is a new and heavy burden to add to lab results and the never-ending worst-case diagnoses.  

Today, a roofing vulture was telling me the roof he could put on would last 25 years. The only thought was how I knew I didn't have 25 more years, so why would I even give a shit. 

That is what has changed.

The time frames of everyday life are no longer the same. The future that once had meaning is now faded and muted. I can actually look back on the same number of years I may have left and remember exactly what I was doing. That realization is tough to absorb.

I feel the downward pressure on my peace of mind every day now. I worked hard to rebuild some of that peace after Mom passed away, and now it feels like I wasted a lot of time doing it. The bad days are worse, and even the decent days are crushed by the reality of my mortality. 

Google's algorithm has been putting YouTube videos of people trying to cope after being told they have very little time left to live. And like a dumbass, I've been watching them. My mind has started going there.

The silence that has become my daily life is deafening. The very real possibility that I may pass away alone without anyone knowing for a long while has moved from a distant bad dream to a very real likelihood.

The emotional toll blindsided me.

When you can actually see the end from where you are, even though you can't know exactly when, it's become a real thing, and one that sits on top of every other thought I try to have. I feel its weight when I go to the store, mow the yards, or listen to music on my headset. It's there when I go to the gym or sit in the sun; it's my constant companion now. 

I've watched many videos of people facing health hardships who somehow find something inside themselves that gets them through to keep fighting and working for a better outcome. I've been working like that too with my weight and exercise and trying to think about something else, and it's exhausting. Most of my health issue findings are only a couple of months old, and I'm still trying to digest the various diagnoses. I am still in shock, and the hits just keep coming. 

Is the motivation coming to keep fighting?

Will it get here in time?

Will all this constant anxiety make my conditions worse?

It is most certainly damaging the time I have left.

This blog is a conversation with my own mind. The questions I wonder about can only be asked and answered by the only person left in my life who is still here.

Me.

It's not the number. 

It's time.

 

who will feed the cats

And now the stress test result = Abnormal.

At this point, it doesn’t look like I’m getting better, only less worse. That is not the outcome I was hoping all the effort I've put in would buy me. More and more, these reports feel more like a look back at the cause of death on my autopsy report.

And the worst part;

What I had hoped for was just some small level of better. What I got was just less worse. After all the effort, that's a real bitch. Every new result looks like a footnote printed on a death certificate.

Wondering out loud now about how much more of this fight I can wage, and whether the fight itself is making these conditions worse. 

I can't stop this truth in my head; no one is coming to save you, my brother. No one.

In life as in death, you will face this alone. 

And who will feed the cats may be the oddest last concern I'll leave having. 

The Weight..

A weak moment, or is my mind finally bending under the weight of several life-threatening conditions? Is this a red flag that this may be more than I can handle? Where did the tough, determined guy go as I begin to question whether it's all even worth it? A diet I hate, exercise that isn't fun anymore; I realize the push that kept me going was the fun of the result: lower weight, more steps, more miles that week. The process is NOT fun, only the result. Same with Doctor visits and research, and printing off test results and repeating it all only to realize I'm battling things that aren't going to end up with the results I'm working toward. 

I keep looking for small rewards, a better number here or there, something enough to make me want to keep spending the energy this fight requires. But then just as fast, the reality of everything I'm looking at wipes it all away..

My visit to the hematologist was one of those moments. A few bright spots on bloodwork, and then all the rest.. I listened to her analysis, but didn’t quite have the strength to challenge any of it or even get a word in the way I normally do. I ended up like the old days of doctor visits, where you just sat and listened while your mind drifted toward some other place. Did she just say it could be a blood cancer? One life-threatening reality after another. My body is responding/attacking itself, with the cause still undetermined, and the possibilities are a jolt to the mind. Nine chronic conditions. Are you kidding me?

Last night, sitting with it all swirling around in my head, I found myself for the first time wondering how much of this I can keep up with.. How do you fight one thing when several other things are waiting to take its place? Fighting in the face of defeat can look admirable to some, but it can become an exercise in futility and be foolish. I wonder if one day I will look back and think that instead of spending all this time, energy, and stress researching and learning about my conditions, making and driving to doctor appointments, and all, maybe the time would have been better spent just putting it all away and going out and living whatever life I have left and letting God sort it out..  

Even sitting here writing about this is exhausting, and writing used to be a refuge for me, the only one I had.. 

Then came the night, and after that, the morning. I slept reasonably well, or well enough that I thought I might wake up with at least a little perspective-type relief. But no, it's worse. The same heaviness is weighing me down.

So I checked again for bloodwork results, even though I know full well some of them may take up to two weeks. Still, I look several times a day. Just more waiting. More watching. More time for my mind to go where it doesn’t need to be. All of this would sound like a pity party, a woe-is-me festival if I were to have this same conversation with an actual person, but again and again over the years, I've learned that people are only really interested in themselves. There is nothing to be gained, not even comfort, in sharing anything personal with anyone. It's just a fact. Perceptions are hardened realities today, not facts, and no, I don't feel sorry for myself. This isn't a pity party. I am pissed off, worn out, and questioning where the tough, determined guy went. 

What's wearing me down is not only all the appointments, specialists, and tests, or even the unknowns. It is the feeling that all the work I’ve been putting in to get well, to be disciplined, to fight back, may still end up being just a futile attempt. That thought lands somewhere deeper than fear. It's frustrating and angers me. A wearing down. A quiet realization that the fight itself is beginning to take almost as much out of me as the things I am fighting..

Maybe this is just a weak stretch? Maybe a natural response to too much piling up at once? But it doesn't feel temporary this morning. It feels like the emotional cost of carrying too many serious possibilities for too long.

And that may be the heaviest weight to carry: not just wondering what happens next, when the next appointment is, what pill to take, jumping when the phone rings thinking it could be the results I'm waiting for, but wondering how long I can carry all of this and keep up the fight.. 

 

One Last Right Place

I’m not sure if I was looking for something better—or just trying to feel like I was moving.

Today I drove west, looking at a couple of properties I thought might suit me better than my current place.

Lately, I’ve been overthinking everything. Not the useful kind of thinking—the kind that leads somewhere—but the kind that drifts and starts asking questions that don’t need answers. I step outside my own thoughts sometimes and write about them as if they belong to someone else, because from that distance, they don’t even seem logical.

My health takes up more space in my mind than I’d like. It’s always there, quietly influencing everything. Then there’s the reality of having two houses and only living in a small part of one. That should probably mean something. I’m just not sure what.

Lately I’ve been going down a different path in my head—one that feels clear and completely out of reach at the same time.

My latest YouTube obsessions are people my age living off the land in remote places—the kind of life I can see myself in without much effort.

What I can’t see as clearly is how to get there.

The nightmare stories of buying raw land. The unknowns. The mistakes. And before any of that, selling two houses without really knowing how to do it.

Spinning my wheels is the feeling. Not stuck exactly, but not moving either. Motion without progress.

And it’s starting to weigh on me—turning something that should be possible into something that feels difficult, then distant, then almost impossible to imagine getting done in whatever time I have left.

While everyone else seems to be out living their lives, I’ve been sitting here, not doing much at all. 

I don’t want more options. I want fewer decisions..

Marking Time With Ruben Who Took Me In and Saved my Sanity

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.