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 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.

  

  

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..

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.

twenty twenty four

Another year is almost gone.

One failed marriage quietly set the course for the rest of my life. A long road of solitude that now stretches behind me farther than I ever imagined it would.

The old music still brings the same emotion it always did. The songs, the memories, the people who once filled my life—they all come back the same way they did then. Those days were beautiful, and like most people living through them, I had no idea how quickly they would disappear.

A small part of my life today couldn’t be more perfect. The larger parts remain broken beyond repair—questions that will never be answered and paths that can never be walked again.

Many times I’ve wondered what it would mean if I could trade the successes I’ve had for the failures that mattered most. Would the world look different to me today if I had?

But life doesn’t offer replays. There is no turning around and choosing the other road.

The new year approaches whether we welcome it or not, and I step toward it with more apprehension than hope. The country I once believed in feels like it’s drifting toward something darker—something we fought wars to prevent. If the will existed to stop it, we would have seen it by now. Millions would already be standing up.

But I don’t see it.

So I move forward the only way I know how—through prayer and memory. I think about the people who fought before us, at home and abroad, so future generations would never have to face the kind of world I now fear may be coming.

I listen to the old music. I remember the old days. And I think of those already hurting, and those who may soon feel the weight of what lies ahead.

My hope is simple: that the people who can least afford to suffer somehow find the strength to endure.

Good luck in the year ahead.

Stay close to God. Speak to Him often.

And to the millions of patriots who must still be out there somewhere—may you find the will to act before it is too late.

Godspeed.

hello there old friend

The house was quiet tonight. The kind of quiet that almost has a sound to it.

It’s been a while since I last wrote here, though not much has changed. There have been a few good days scattered in, but mostly the kind where nothing much moves you. I still miss the people who are gone, and I still say real prayers for the people who remain. Sometimes I have to remind myself to include my own name in those prayers.

Jason had a birthday a few days ago. The kid I used to hold next to me is now a middle-aged man with a family of his own. I didn’t call. I never want to force myself into a place where I might not be wanted. He knows how to reach me if he wants to.

That thought always takes me back to my own father. Neither of us called. Not once. And then one day it was too late, and he was gone.

Maybe that’s why I stopped in here tonight. There’s a chill in the air outside — not cold, just uncomfortable enough to notice. I know that feeling well. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s the same quiet chill that settles over a life lived mostly alone.

Still, there is peace in knowing that, unlike so many others who have passed through my life, my God has not left me. Even when the darkness and silence try to convince me otherwise, I believe his promise that I will never walk alone in this world or the next.

Physically, I haven’t been feeling well the past few weeks, but the lab results tell a better story. The disease that should be getting worse has, at least for now, stayed where it is. For that, I’m thankful.

Ruben stopped by a few days ago to check on me. He didn’t look so good himself — maybe a little thinner than usual. I fed him some of his favorite cat food. One tub turned into three, and he ate almost all of it before wandering over to sit with me for a while. We took our first selfie.

Truth is, Ruben may be the only one who regularly checks to see if I’m still around. No one else ever knows if I’m dead or alive these days.

And if I’m being honest, some days I feel like a little of both..

At least the practical things are getting done. I sent all the tax prep to Mel today and took care of some banking and Ameritrade business — things I usually put off until the last minute. It felt good to finish them early this year.

Tonight the house is quiet again.

But for a little while, it wasn’t.

Thanks for stopping by, Ruben.