The Sound of Silence

Sometimes I think about dying alone and no one noticing for a long time.

Living alone carries a peculiar fear. Not the fear of death itself, but the thought that I might die and no one would notice..

At my age, three things occupy my mind almost daily: my health, the reality of living completely alone, and the strange truth that—unsettling as that loneliness can be—I still have little to no desire to live with or even around anyone.

For decades, I’ve tried to understand that contradiction. I’ve read about people wired this way, hoping to uncover the source of  self-imposed solitude. The research never brings an answer.

Reaching out from time to time rarely helps either. Silence—or a quick reply that fades just as quickly—usually confirms what I already suspect: this quiet life inside my own thoughts may simply be how my story was meant to unfold.

I sometimes ask myself whether I was happier back when life included passions, work, and relationships.

There were moments—when a relationship was new—when life felt exciting, even joyful. But those moments never lasted forever. When they ended, the same question always returned: was the brief happiness worth the inevitable ending?

I’m not sure it was.

Logically, the fear of dying unnoticed shouldn’t matter. After all, I would already be gone.

But it matters anyway.

Perhaps because it would confirm the quiet truth of my life—that no one was checking the door, the phone, or wondering if I was still here.

It isn’t a legacy I’m proud of. In fact, it’s a little embarrassing.

How does someone live six decades and arrive at a place where no one would know if he disappeared?

Solitude may be a choice at first, but eventually it becomes a life.

Sometimes I wonder how many or even if, others are living this same quiet story.

Or am I the only one listening this closely to the sound of silence?

The Weight

My mother’s photograph was smiling at me from the table beside my chair.

The house was silent except for the slow ticking of the clock, and my mind was moving through one heavy thought after another—world problems I can’t fix, careless words that linger too long, things left undone, and things I’ve done that no longer seem to matter.

This is the only life I get. And the measure of what I’ve learned isn’t found in the easy days, but in moments like these—when the weight presses down and I have to decide whether the lessons of this life meant anything at all.

It was one of those nights when the quiet feels heavier than it should.

Then I looked again at her face in that photograph.

The storm in my head began to slow.

It happens like this sometimes. I get buried beneath my own thoughts, tangled in worries and noise from a world I can’t control. Too often I can’t get out of my own way long enough to simply be alive and feel some peace.

Let it go, my friend, I tell myself.
Just let it go.

Sitting there in that quiet room, something simple came back to me.

I’m not alone. I never have been.

The things my mother tried to instill in me are still there. They helped pull me out of that dark corner of thought. And God—He has always been there too, every time I felt like I was walking this road by myself.

So I said a prayer.

For those who are suffering.
For those who are sick.
For the ones carrying burdens they rarely speak about.
For the people who look fine on the outside but aren’t.

And for people like me—who sometimes feel the weight of the quiet more than they should.

I wrote this tonight as a reminder to myself.

The weight of life can get heavy, and there are moments when I feel too weak to carry it.

Some nights I forget that.

But the truth is simple.

I never have to carry it alone.

When the room finally grew quiet again, I looked once more at my mother’s smiling face beside me—and realized that even in the loneliest moments of this life, I have never truly walked it alone.

God bless.

The Papers - March 19, 2023

The Papers

I kept my divorce papers for forty-seven years.

They lived in the back of a closet inside a plain folder that followed me through every move, every house, and every stage of life.

I didn’t read them often.

I didn’t need to.

I already knew what they said.

They were handed to me at the front door of our house in 1976 by a process server. My wife, on the phone with her friend who helped her with this plan, stood watching me while my young son played in the living room, unaware that anything had changed.

Before I finished reading them, she said something I have never forgotten.

“Don’t get upset about some of the things written in there. The attorney said we needed to include things like that in case you contested the divorce.”

Some of those things weren’t true, some of them burned a permanent hole in my soul. 

Words have a strange power. Sometimes they settle deeper than the truth itself and stay there for years.

Those papers followed me through decades of life—through work, travel, mistakes, successes, and long stretches of solitude.

Every now and then, I would run across them while cleaning out a drawer or box. I would feel the same old knot tighten in my chest.

Then I would put them back.

A few weeks ago, I found them again while looking for something else in the closet.

This time I didn’t put them back.

I read them one last time, then carried the folder to the shredder and began feeding the pages into the machine.

Page by page.

The strange thing is, those papers stopped mattering years ago — but I've carried the words and meaning my entire life. 

When the last page disappeared, the room went quiet again.

The past was still there.

But it no longer had a place in my closet.

And after forty-seven years, that felt like enough.

        

I notice everything

How Old Are You, Really?

Early this morning the house was completely quiet.

No voices. No phones ringing. Just the kind of silence that settles over a place when someone has lived alone long enough.

A strange question crossed my mind.

How old would you think you were if no one had ever told you your age?

Inside, I don’t feel like someone living in this century.

The smallest things rarely escape me.

When someone stops calling the way they used to.
When the tone of a voice changes.
When the small habits people once had quietly disappear.

Most of the time, nothing is said. Sometimes I do say something, then instantly regret it.

Maybe that’s what happens when you’re an old soul.

Old souls spend a lot of time watching the world and wondering how it became what it is. People change slowly. Life shifts quietly. Most pretend not to notice.

Introverted. Aloof. A loner.

Labels often given by people who have never felt the weight of thinking too deeply about everything.

Once the need to fit in disappears, so do the filters. The performances become easier to see. The half-truths. The quiet ways people avoid what is obvious.

In quiet moments the same questions surface.

Why this place.
Why this time.
And whether anything done along the way truly mattered.

The smallest details hold my attention.

Wind moving through trees.
The quiet shift of seasons.
Leaves turning, falling, disappearing.

The strong people who once surrounded me come to mind often. They made the world feel steady and understandable. Without them, the world feels unfamiliar.

Older people are easier company. Simplicity suits us. Sitting around a fire. Listening to stories. Letting silence exist without rushing to fill it.

With many others, though, there is a feeling of standing outside the room looking in. As if I arrived in the wrong century.

Old souls often walk alone. The pursuits others chase rarely hold much appeal, and that distance creates long stretches of solitude.

But when someone does understand, the connection runs deep. A kindred spirit is one of life’s rarest gifts.

This has always been true.

If the question from the beginning needed an honest answer—

How old would you be if you didn’t know your age?

Somewhere around 150 or 200 years old would be my answer. 

Old furniture.
Horse carriages.
Ancient streets and quiet buildings.

Another era entirely.

Probably the one where I would feel most at home.

Because the smallest changes rarely escape me.

The things people begin doing.
The things they quietly stop doing.

And the exact moment something between two people changes.

midnight potatoes

At midnight on my birthday, I was standing in my kitchen cutting up two potatoes.

For months, I haven’t felt right. The doctors say my kidney numbers are stable, which is good news, but stable isn’t the same as strong. When you live with one kidney running at about forty percent, even an easy day can leave you feeling like you ran a marathon.

I had just finished a three-day photo shoot. Nothing physically demanding, but by the end of each day, I was wiped out.

Then tonight something strange happened.

After falling asleep in a chair, I woke up around 11:30 with something I hadn’t felt in a long time: energy.

Real energy.

The aches were gone. My mind was clear. My body felt almost normal again.

And the first thing that came to mind was those potatoes sitting in the kitchen about to go bad.

Kidney disease makes potatoes complicated. Peel them, cut them, rinse them, soak them overnight to leach out the potassium. It’s a process. But there I was happily working through it like I had somewhere important to be.

After that, I packed up two camera bodies I had sold, printed the shipping labels, and set them by the door. Took the trash out for morning pickup. Kept looking for the next thing to do.

For a few hours, I felt like the old version of me again, the guy who always had too much to do and not enough hours to do it.

Not the guy who spends most days just trying to get through them.

At one point I almost went for a midnight walk. A mile or two just because I could. I wish I had.

So why write about something this ordinary?

Because someday I might stumble back across this and remember there was a night when I felt almost normal again.

When I’m not exhausted and hurting, I’m a different person.

And I like that guy.

Around two in the morning, I glanced at my computer calendar to see what I had coming up next.

That’s when I realized something.

It was my birthday.

I had forgotten.

Birthdays always seemed like things for kids anyway, but I never forgot my mom’s. And maybe the real reason birthdays matter isn’t the day itself, it’s that someone notices you’re still here.

About twenty-five thousand people have read things on this blog. I don’t know who any of them are.

But tonight I felt good enough to wish myself a happy birthday.

Because there really isn’t anyone left who will.

So here it is for the record.

Happy Birthday, old orphan.

And thanks to Teresa, the last person on earth who remembered. Fifty years later, you still did.

Right now, there are two bowls of potatoes soaking in the sink.

And for tonight, that feels like a small victory.

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.

Writing to No One

OFF LIMITS

The alarm clock hasn’t been set in a long time.

For most of my life, I checked the calendar every night, figuring out where I had to be and what time the alarm needed to go off to drag me out of bed the next morning.

Now most days contain almost nothing that can’t wait days even weeks.

I’m not officially retired, but between the virus and my health, the odds of setting that alarm ever again are getting pretty slim.

These days my thoughts tend to fall into two categories.

Things that are off-limits to talk about — even if there were someone to tell.

And things that feel like pipe dreams, considering how little time there may be left to do anything about them.

A question circles through my head several times a day.

Is it even worth it anymore?

So I write.

Writing is how I break the silence in this house.

But memory has a way of sneaking in when the room is quiet enough.

The clocks tick loudly here now. Louder than I remember them sounding years ago.

Maybe they always sounded like that.

Maybe there were just more voices around back then to drown them out.

For years I pushed most people away. Often for reasons I still believe were good ones. But good reasons don’t change the outcome.

Silence.

Just the ticking clocks in the background and the long hours between them.

Sometimes I look around and wonder what any of this is for anymore.

Two houses that need decisions made about them.

One that could be remodeled. One that could be sold.

Plans that once felt practical now feel pointless.

The cameras sit in their cases with dead batteries.

They remind me a little of the man who owns them.

Once full of energy. Now mostly sitting still.

I have more of everything than I ever expected to have.

More space.
More things.
More quiet.

Except for one thing.

Someone to share any of it with.

Strange how life can end up like that.

Though if I’m being honest, this ending didn’t exactly happen by accident.

My standards for the people I allowed into my life were always strict.

In the end only one person ever truly met them.

And I miss her more than I know how to say.

My friend.
My mentor.
The reason for anything good I ever managed to do.

My mom.

I knew losing her would be hard.

I just didn’t know it would leave the world this quiet.

So now I write to no one about everything.

There are no arguments here.
No interruptions.
No one trying to fix a life they didn’t live.

Just the clocks.

The silence.

And my prayers that God keep his arms around me and those who need it.

Even the ones I pushed away.

I pray for you, too.

Everything works out in the end.

But in the meantime…

The clock keep ticking and I hear ever second.

old dogs

A few nights ago I got the idea of searching the internet for the name of an old friend from decades ago and while I didn't exactly find him, I found an obituary for his father who I had also known long ago. In the obituary for his father it named survived by with the name of the friend I had looked for, his brother who I had known, and then the part where his mother had also passed away years before and his sister all that I had known and been very close to all those many years ago when I was in the process of getting through the trauma of divorce and just trying to find my way. 

As I have gotten older I've found that deaths have the effect of forcing me to look closer at my own mortality and just how quickly death can come and how instant the finality of life is at death. 

I began looking up other names from the past and even the high school FB page from the class I would have graduated in. This was a mistake for me as many names I was familiar with have died. This put me in a place of deep sadness when I realize how short a time we are actually here and how much of that time we just waste as if we can make it up tomorrow. 

I've done very well in some areas of my life and failed miserably at many others. I've spent more time trying to look back and figure out how those failures happened even while knowing there is no going back to fix that stuff and none of those opportunities to make wonderful memories has a do over option. My time spent looking back is an example of the waste a lot of us probably do that makes no sense but we do it anyway and then some of us write about it compounding the waste.

When the minutes, months and decades are pissed off, we don't get any of those back. They are gone forever and in their place lies piles of regrets we take with us for the rest of our days. I'm finding the load to be quite heavy and hard to manage these days. I need to stop beating myself up so viciously at this stage of the life I have left and find ways of not adding more weight to the regrets I already carry. 

Can't go back, can't recover what has been lost or given away, and those who have passed before me would have given anything to have had one more day and you can bet it wouldn't have been wasted looking back and drowning in grief and depression. 

what I miss most

My brand of therapy is writing or purging. This is both. The death of a family member spurred my need to relieve some of the pressure so this, is that. My Gran's sisters babysat me when I was a little kid and I remember them being so sweet and caring. We didn't stay close and now both are gone. Like so many other members of this family a lot didn't stay close and most of those people have since passed away. I find death forces me to search what is left of my soul and more often than not I don't like that I find more regrets filling the space where peace should be. 

The DEATH OF THE FAMILY itself has to be acknowledged and given its due in order for me to find perspective when a new death brings back old memories. I am old enough to remember when we were all gathering around Gran's dinner table and actually seeing each other and hugging and hearing each other's voices that are just a memory now. The cousins playing in the backyard when we were little now we rarely even speak to one another until we find ourselves at a funeral for someone we cared about decades ago but didn't show up much while they were here. Everything that was good and better than we knew at the time, is gone now. While many have passed away, so many others have just disconnected from all that was. All thats left for me now is some of the memories and visiting the graves of those people who created me and those memories, that is all I have to hold on to.

When all you have left are memories, you have reached a place in line you may not be fully ready for. It's a very heavy place, an empty solitude surrounded by sadness, grief, and regret. A look back at how we all began to disengaged with one another and drift apart isn't a pretty picture to spend the time I have left painting but I often feel the need to go there and try and find the reason. This is what happens when the well runs dry and I wish I hadn't been so wasteful of so much time. 

I will press on like I promised mom that I would and I will continue to thank God for giving me the mother I had that continues to save my life every single day, and on days like this. 

it doesn't matter anymore

This morning I was up at 6:40am and I was in the newly renovated bathroom debating where to put a new box of kleenex I had in my hand. Would it be better here or over there and just as that was actually happening I began to realize how insignificant so many things are that I spend time on even at a stage in life where my time is running low. 

If you were in a desert and only had water to survive another day you wouldn't waste a drop of it yet there I was standing there deciding on where to put a box of kleenex. When I was shooting photos, one fraction of a second was the difference in an incredible captured moment and a forgettable one anyone could take. Life is also like this, an ongoing succession of tiny moments that seem to go on forever until they don't. Not wasting any of our moments is all too often learned only during the last breath we take. 

These past two years, since my mom passed away, it has been my task to sort through and do something with about two hundred years of my family's belongings that were kept throughout generations. Little did I know there would be more than just the house to contend with, but the memories, mementos, photos, furniture, some a hundred years old that had value to the lives of loved ones no longer here. Those larger-than-life people who had very little yet raised, fed, and clothed the generations that comprise the family we have today left these things that the younger generation has no practical knowledge of or connection to, and I have an understanding of that. 

I'm cutting myself some slack over the gut-wrenching time and emotions going through these things has brought to me and I will be eternally grateful to God for choosing me to have these connections. At times, I have felt and still feel that I am not living up to deserving to have come from these people who were my family, but I know completely that God doesn't make mistakes, and he made me a part of them because he thought I deserved them. I have to remind myself of that often, and it's up to me now to live the life that honors God's choice of giving me the roots that I have to some of the most wonderful, resourceful, and loving people that will have ever walked on this earth. 

A recent visit with my nephew and his wife gave me some particular insight that I didn't think I wanted but in the end I knew I needed. We cling to things that belonged to the people we loved when those people pass away as if it were a piece of them we can't let go of. Those things can and in my case do, number in the hundreds and thousands from several generations. Those things can become a burden of weight in ways our loved ones would never have wanted for us. While it's somewhat uncomfortable to say it this way, but it is of monumental value to acknowledge that weight and then lift it off our own shoulders.

Cyndi sat there listening to me whine about what to do with these thousands of photos I have, some dating back to the 1800s, and of people I'm not even sure who they are, and when I asked her what she thought I should do with them she very calmly looked me straight in the eyes and said, either scan them and get rid of them or just get rid of them. 

Wow....... That was the moment I began to realize a lot of this weight is self-imposed and not at all what those people I desperately miss would want for me. I love you Cyndi and your candor and perspective out of care was exactly what I needed. Even though I already knew it to be true, I just needed to hear it from another source. I'm intending to implement that sentiment throughout the rest of this journey I'm on. 

the people, not their things.

Sure, I'll keep a few things, but I can't keep it all, and most of it has to go. It's on me now, but it always was, and my mom left it to me because she felt confident that I could handle it and do the right thing. Her own words to me were to be right and to do the right things. 

I'm evolving from grief and loss into realizing that the things we leave behind don't really matter. What matters is that we are remembered as having done our best to be right and to do the right things.  

One of the mind tricks I have to get over is the self-induced and completely manufactured guilt when thinking of getting rid of things. It says nothing about how I feel about the people who owned and kept them. Those feelings are in my heart and will go with me the rest of my life. It has everything to do with saving myself and my sanity to go on living like I promised my mom I would do. I miss her like crazy and giving clothes and stuff to the Goodwill is exactly what my mom would want me to do. The habit we all have of accumulating things is nonsensical to me and we all do it. When we are gone and that can happen in two seconds, this practice of accumulating goes from nonsensical to burdensome on those we leave behind. 

One of the greatest gifts you can give today to those who will grieve and suffer at losing you one day is to do the work while you are still here to declutter and purge your accumulated stuff so others already grieving your loss don't have to.   

Thank you Cyndi and David I love you to pieces. I'm unloading as much stuff as fast as I can so you don't have to do it.