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 strogly suggest you find another source of reading that better fits your journey to find 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 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 thought to leave 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 has replaced mindless regret. 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. Trust me on that one.  

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, has become a real thing, and it 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 excercise 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 I don’t need it 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, and 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 can I 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 - (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.