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 in my life ever 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 that security.

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

 

        

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 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.