Preface (2007)
About thirty-five years ago, at the age of ten, I lost my mother to cancer. Since that time, my life has been a journey and a recovery that I am just now beginning to fully understand. Her death has affected me in ways I never could have imagined at the time. Through good times and bad, the emotions associated with her passing have been a part of my life, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Once the initial shock of her death passed, my life resumed in a somewhat normal fashion. There have been periods since then however, when I’ve been overwhelmed with feelings that I couldn’t understand. These feelings have been powerful to be sure, affecting the very core of who I am. They’ve impacted my career, relationships, family and at times, even my ability to enjoy life.
Until recently, I had dismissed these feelings as nothing more than feelings a lesser man would be bothered by. You see, I had not allowed myself to really understand and deal with what I was feeling. Rather, I diverted my thoughts and energy into other directions. However, as I look back upon my life, I now realize that from my career to the relationship I have with my family, to the extracurricular activities I occupy myself with today, my life has largely been about the road home after such a significant loss.
I don’t know that I have it all figured out today, but I do believe that I have a much better understanding than I did even just a few years ago. And admittedly, it’s only after a lot of soul- searching, some help from my wife and some time with a counselor that I’ve gained the insight that has allowed me to move forward with a healthy, happy approach to my life.
Given the heartbreak of losing my mother, as well as the happiness I’ve been able to achieve since then, my hope is that my story will help others cope and heal. Specifically, I hope that both adults who have experienced similar childhood losses and anyone close to children that have recently lost a parent, will find my story compelling.
Inspiration
I’ve recently become aware of a children’s grief services program provided in my area, led by a local healthcare system. A friend of mine made mention of it and introduced me to the program’s director. She and I met and I decided to get involved. Since that time, I’ve served as a “camp big buddy,” which means I’m there to help the kids fish, build a campfire and mourn. Sometimes, the topic of my loss comes up and when that happens, my hope is that I will be an example to the kids of someone who has also lost a parent; I’m the kid who survived the trauma of loss and managed to reconstruct a normal life regardless.
Having also lost my father a few years ago, I know that for me anyway, losing a parent as an adult is a much different experience than losing a parent as a child. While I was very sorry to see my father pass, especially at age sixty-two, the experience of grieving was completely different than it was when I was a ten-year-old boy. Don’t get me wrong; it was incredibly hard to accept that the man I looked up to for my entire life had been reduced to a box of ashes, but I took solace in the fact that I had learned a tremendous amount from him, that he was a part of me forever, that he had known my wife and two sons and that he knew how I had turned out.
I actually started writing this book a couple of years before my father passed, but it was never intended to be a book. My original motivation was for my own therapeutic reasons. I was struggling at the time and writing helped me to work through my emotions. However, once I got into the book, I realized that another of my fears could be at least partially subsided by telling my story.
Shortly after my father died, I had a health scare of my own. I wasn’t feeling myself, so I went to see my doctor for help. She ran a series of blood tests and found that I had elevated levels of bilirubin, which prompted another series of tests, including a chest scan. The results of the scan came back and I found out that I had an enlarged kidney. Of course, because I worry more than I should, I ventured onto the Internet and really got myself worked up. Apparently, an enlarged kidney can mean one of many horrible conditions and diseases, including cancer. After fretting for a couple of weeks, I was finally able to get in and see the specialist. Fortunately, it was a rare, harmless condition that ironically tended to prevent many forms of cancer.
During the experience of not knowing if my fate was to live another day or die before my time, I worried most about what would happen to my children. They were ten and seven at the time and I worried that if I died, they would hardly remember me, let alone anything that I had taught them. I’m not talking about how to walk, talk and be nice to people; I’m talking about the passions in my life that I’ve just recently begun to share with them. I am an avid woodworker for example, which is a hobby I very much want to teach my sons. I also enjoy the outdoors, so I wanted them to gain an appreciation for the woods, rivers, lakes and wildlife that the outdoors has to offer.
Chapter 1: My Early Years
My life started out like any other typical American kid. I was born in 1967. I am the oldest of two sons. My brother is five years younger than I am. We grew up in southern California, close to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. We were just a few miles from the beach, yet we were surrounded by strawberry fields, dairy farms and orange groves. We lived a very middle-class life in a very working-class neighborhood.
Foster’s Freeze was about a five-minute walk from our house, which I suppose is why we were there just about every day during the summer. They made a chocolate dipped ice cream cone that was better by far than anything I’ve found since then. Foster’s Freeze also housed what would turn out to be my first exposure to the video games Asteroids and Pac Man. I can’t begin to imagine the number of hours spent dumping quarters into those machines, but for my friends and me, it was a significant part of our Saturday morning ritual for several years.
When we weren’t playing Asteroids, we sped down the street on our bikes and onto the ramps we had built out of plywood and 2x4s, hurling ourselves into the air, pretending we were Evil Knievel. In hindsight, it was risky business, but as most young boys are, we were invincible. The risky part however, wasn’t so much that we were launching our bikes into the air at uncalculated angles, but rather that we were jumping over the younger neighborhood kids that had volunteered to lie down on the other side of the ramp, just to keep things interesting.
On really hot days, we set up the slip and slide in our backyard and risked life and limp while sailing down a wet piece of plastic with no way to stop before hitting landscaping rocks, rose bushes or worst of all, the brick wall that surrounded our backyard. Nobody ever got seriously injured, but I did take a fall once that I swear to this day, partially disabled my back permanently. Following that little incident, I couldn’t put my shirt on without assistance for at least three weeks. And at least in my family, you didn’t go to the doctor just because you couldn’t lift your arm above your waist, so who knows what my actual diagnosis would have been?
We walked to school in those days, even though it was a good two miles away (or so it seemed), starting in kindergarten. Either the threats that exist today weren’t well known or they didn’t exist, but back then, at least where I lived, there was no bus to take us to school. You either walked or rode your bike. Of course, it was southern California, so we didn’t have the weather to deal with, as my kids (I now live in Minnesota) do today.
My parents were pretty typical as well. My dad worked as a salesman for a moving and storage company and my mom stayed at home, undoubtedly trying to ensure we didn’t suffer an untimely death from our extracurricular activities. I do think my mom was somewhat oblivious to the reality of what we were doing however, because had she known, we never would have been allowed outside of the house.
We took vacations each summer, many times on a tight budget. We’d mostly camp, at places like Big Bear, Yosemite, the base of Mount Whitney and once on the beach near San Clemente. When we weren’t camping, we’d travel upstate to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in Healdsburg, which is in the middle of the wine country (Sonoma Valley) of northern California.
When we needed to stay overnight somewhere, if the tent or a relative wasn’t close by, we stayed at the closest Motel 6 we could find. I remember we’d sometimes drive miles out of our way to stay there. We didn’t mind however, because they always had a pool, which was all we cared about as kids.
On special occasions, we watched the California Angels play baseball in the open-air stadium in Anaheim. We sat in the upper-level seats (also known as the “cheap seats”) of course, so the players seemed much smaller than life. Still, there was no thrill I enjoyed more than getting to watch a baseball game with my dad and our friends. I don’t know if the game itself necessarily created the excitement, but the sights, smells and of course the hotdogs, ice cream bars and boxes of Cracker Jack were something I always looked forward to.
The only real negative memory I have of that time was the problem I had with the class bully in 5th grade. In hindsight, it was innocent enough. I had mentioned to a mutual friend that I could “take him with my eyes closed.” But talk is cheap as they say, so when the bully heard of my comment, I was promptly challenged to a fight. The problem was that I had never been in a fight in my life. I was more the academic type; I certainly wasn’t a fighter.
I successfully dodged our fight dates for a few weeks, hoping for rain each afternoon so that my mom would have to pick me up from school, thus avoiding the possibility of an “after-school” altercation. But at some point, the pressure became too much and I had to confide in my parents. I told my dad that I was afraid to fight him, but that he wasn’t letting up, so something would need to happen. Of course, getting my dad involved directly would have made things worse; there’s nothing a kid fears more than his dad calling the school, or worst of all, calling the bully’s parents, in an attempt to rectify the situation.
So my dad, being the machismo guy that he was, took the approach of teaching me how to fight. I remember an episode of the Brady Bunch that was much the same story. Peter was being bullied at school, so Mr. Brady taught him how to fight. Anyway, my dad and I practiced accepting challenges and throwing punches most of that evening, to the point that he actually had me believing I was tough. I later found out that my dad had never been in a fight either.
What happened next can only be described as a small miracle. I went to school the following morning, all set to accept the bully’s challenge to a fight, but while lining up to be marched into class by our teacher, the bully informed me that he no longer wished to knock my head off. We shook hands and as it turned out, we were friends for years to come.
That night at dinner, my dad of course asked how things had gone, at which point I told him the story. He commented something like, “Well, he must have finally realized how tough you are.” I knew that wasn’t the case, but I thought it best not to let my dad know that, so I just said, “Yep, you must be right, Dad.”
Years after that, the bully joined the army and we lost touch, but as I understand it, he became an Army Ranger. I’m thinking it’s really good that the fight between us never happened.
Although my life was pretty “apple pie” up to that point, it was all about to change.
Chapter 2: The Day I Learned of Her Illness
At ten years old, I hardly understood what cancer was. Sure, my grandfather had battled it years before, but I was too young to really know what was going on. But on that day, cancer changed my life forever. The image is burned into my memory every bit as much as the day I got married and the births of my two sons. Unfortunately, it’s now the strongest memory I have of that period in my life, with the other memories fading a little more each day. In fact, just hearing music from that era makes me sad, even though (in my opinion, anyway) the music that came out of the sixties and seventies was some of the best music ever composed.
It was late summer and I had just walked in the door at the end of the school day. I was greeted by a neighbor and close friend of my mother. Immediately, I knew something was up, but I had no idea how serious it actually was until she began to tell me that my mom was in the hospital. As you can imagine, a sense of shock and extreme fear came over me, since I had absolutely no knowledge of anything being wrong. I was told that my mother had been to the doctor, that a lump had been discovered in her breast and that she was in the hospital so that she could undergo surgery to remove it.
She spent the next several days in the hospital, undergoing a mastectomy of her right breast, finally returning home after about a week. I remember that my dad was so excited to have her home again, that he went out and bought a new car to bring her home with. Although I hadn’t been allowed to visit her in the hospital (something I’ll explain a bit later) I did accompany my dad and younger brother to the hospital to pick her up. We got there just in time to see the hospital staff wheeling her out in a wheelchair, a sight no ten-year-old would ever want to see. But despite her condition, I had never been so happy to see my mom as I was that day.
Of course to me, she looked frail and that sent questioning thoughts and fears throughout my body. But my mom was a deeply religious woman and sensing my concern, she assured me that she was going to be okay and that God had chosen her to represent the power of prayer and healing. It all seemed a little far-fetched for my liking, but given the seriousness of the situation, I would have grasped at any glimmer of hope at that point, so I took what she said at face value.
To this day, I don’t know if she really believed that or not, but my dad told me shortly before he passed that neither one of them actually expected her to die, despite the fact that the doctors were calling her disease terminal, giving her no more than nine months to live.
Chapter 3: The Treatment
For what felt like years at the time, but turned out only to be a few months, my mom underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This was a sad time indeed and my memories of that period are mostly filled with trips to the hospital for treatment, my mom’s hair falling out and utter paranoia on my part at the mere mention of her illness.
I remember that my family and our close friends and neighbors went out of their way to try to reassure me that everything was going to be okay, but even at ten years old, I was pretty astute and I quickly realized that at least some of what I was hearing was just to make me feel better. I learned not to take anything at face value, but instead to listen to everything I was hearing and then draw my own conclusions.
I remember one conversation in particular. It was in our living room and I wasn’t involved, or at least that’s what my dad thought. The neighbor, who was one of my dad’s closest friends, had dropped by to talk to my dad and offer his support. I don’t remember the specifics of the discussion, but I do remember the neighbor saying that we should all be thankful that they caught it as early as they did. This of course left me with a sense of hope that very likely got me through the period of her treatment with greater ease than what would have otherwise been the case. What I learned later however, was that they didn’t catch it early at all. In fact, by the time they caught it, the lump in her breast was very large and it had metastasized.
From that day forward, or at least until my mom died, I believed that some combination of medical science and religious faith would get her through her illness. So for me anyway, life took on a sense of normalcy that today I would compare to my life before she was diagnosed with cancer. I distinctly remember happy holiday celebrations, weekend getaways, school conferences and even one particular trip the grocery store, where my mom gathered ingredients to make my favorite meal.
Yes, there were good times during the period of her treatment, but recently I’ve put the pieces together and realized that there were also a lot of days that my mom spent in bed, in pain from the cancer, not able to do the things she wanted to do. Although my brother (then just five years old) and I were largely sheltered from what was really going on, I’ve come to recognize in my adult years, that the experience must have been sheer agony for my mother and father, as well as our family and friends, in that they had to watch the cancer slowly but surely take control of her body.
As anyone can likely imagine, the thought of this really bothered me as I got older and was better able to understand it, but I did ultimately find a certain peace with all of it once I realized that she was surrounded by friends and family who genuinely cared about and contributed to her last days on Earth in ways that I will forever be grateful for.
You see, my mom was one of those people that everyone liked. She was honest, giving, friendly and she loved to have fun, so naturally she was surrounded by people who called her their friend. One friendship she had then, still means a lot to me today. This friend was my mom’s best friend. She did anything and everything she could to help make the treatment period bearable. She helped take care of my brother and me after school and she helped my mother get through each day while we weren’t there. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when visiting this old friend while in California on business, that I realized just how much she had actually done for my mom. It was during that visit that I also gained some very helpful insight as to what my mom was thinking about while she was sick.
Whether she admitted it to my dad or not, at some point my mom must have realized that she could die, because she apparently talked quite a lot with her friend about what would happen to my brother and me if she passed. From what I got out of my conversation with my mom’s friend, my mom had the utmost confidence that my dad would do just fine with raising her sons, even without her. I suspect however, that this friend must have made her some promises, because as it turned out, she became our surrogate mother, not out of sympathy for us, but rather as a result of her character, dedication and love for my mother and our family as a whole.
After a Christmas celebration I’ll always cherish, I came home from school one day, with my mom’s friend there again to greet me, only to find out that during the day, my mom had been sent back to the hospital. Once again, fear and anxiety took control temporarily, but then my analytical side came to life, with my first question being something like, “How long will she be there?” and “What specifically is she there for?” The answers I got were very vague and that didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to know exactly how many days she would be there and when specifically, I could see her again. As it turned out, I had seen her alive for the last time.
Chapter 4: The Night She Died
After my mom had been in the hospital for several days, I began to put serious pressure on my dad to let me visit her. Right or wrong, he had made the decision that he didn’t want me to see her in such a vulnerable state and so beyond a telephone call toward the very end, my contact with her was nonexistent. The story I got was that hospital rules prevented children from visiting, which I now assume was made up to protect me.
The following evening, my brother and I were staying late with my mom’s friend, when my dad knocked on the door at about 9:00PM. I didn’t realize it then, but I later came to understand that my dad had said his “goodbyes” earlier that night and had motioned to my mom’s friend that my mom would die that evening. He took us home, put us to bed and then woke me up at about midnight.
I’ll never forget the memory of my dad carrying me down the stairs, shaking feverishly from the fear of having to tell his oldest son that his mother had just died. He was so nervous in fact that he actually dropped me at the bottom of the stairs. He picked me back up and carried me to the family room, where his two closest friends were there for moral support.
Within three words, I knew what he was going to say and to this day I cannot describe with words, the distraught that I felt. At ten years old, my mom was the center of my world, so the realization of her being gone was just too much to comprehend. I very much loved my dad too, but his role in our family was largely to earn money to support us, so I mostly saw him on weekends. I was much more attached to my mom at that point in my life.
I’m not sure why, but one of the clearest memories I have of that moment, is my dad saying, “I know this is tough and upsetting, so if you need to throw something to help with your anguish, go ahead and do it.” I’m certainly not going to criticize my dad’s judgment at that point, but looking back, that seems like an odd thing for him to have said. He probably knew however, that I wasn’t the type to be destructive; but I did think about it.
That night it rained and thundered like I had never seen in southern California before. For those who are familiar with the weather patterns in southern California, you know it rarely rains, which made it a pretty spectacular event, in a strange way giving me a sense of calm. I think that in my mind it represented everyone’s sorrow for my mom’s passing, which somehow made it a little easier to accept.
I try to imagine how I would have handled that final night if I had been in my dad’s shoes. It bothers me that my mom died alone that night, but it was the 1970s; dads waited outside the maternity ward when babies were being delivered for example, smoking cigars and waiting for the news of their new baby’s arrival. It was a different time and apparently there were different norms and expectations.
The next morning, when my brother awoke, my dad and I tried to explain to him that our mom had died. At five years old, he of course didn’t really understand, but he seemed to grasp the concept of God and Heaven, so was satisfied with “Mom’s gone to heaven to be with God,” followed by “She won’t be coming back, but she’ll be looking down on us from now on.”
The next days were filled with enormous support from family, friends and neighbors. They were there 24x7 to comfort us, make us meals and help us with arrangements. I remember my friend and next-door neighbor was even allowed to skip school for the next couple of days, so that he could hang out with and comfort me.
A day before the funeral, my dad asked me how I remembered my mom. When I answered that I remembered her mostly as being sick, he suggested that I go to the funeral home with my grandparents and uncle, to see her one last time. I did and now view that very moment as the point when the reality of her death really sank in. There she was, lifeless and very clearly ready to be buried.
On that Saturday, the limousine showed up to take us to the funeral. It was my first ride in a limousine and to this day, riding in one makes me a bit uneasy. The mood on the way to the church was pretty quiet, but there was an obvious sense of support in the air. When we got to the church, it was filled with people, some of whom I knew and some of whom I met for the first time that day. It was a defining moment for me, in that I realized then that my mother had quite a following of friends. That day and for years afterward, people would tell me how special a person my mom was, which to some extent at least, I viewed as just a nice thing to say. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that she really was somebody people viewed as special.
I managed to hold it together during the funeral service, but as soon as we came out of the church, I broke down like I had never broken down before. It was as if all my emotions had come forward like a rushing river and there was no hope whatsoever of holding them back. What’s interesting about that moment is that I had not cried like that before that day and with the exception of the day my father died, have never cried like that again.
Chapter 5: The First Twenty-Four Months in My New Life
Following my mom’s funeral, it occurred to me that as innocent and uninterrupted as my life had been and while I had always considered myself one of the fortunate ones, I was now living on the flip side of that equation. In other words, where I had always viewed other people as the ones who things “happened” to, I was now in that category, which may not seem relevant at this point of my story, but as it turned out would haunt me for decades to come.
While this feeling I now had was new, it was soon forgotten (or at least softened) by the enormous outpouring of love and support we received from friends and family. My mom’s best friend was fully invested by this point, trying her best to fill the gap left by my mother. My dad would bring my brother and me over to her house each morning and she would feed us breakfast and then get us (in addition to her own two daughters) off to school. In the afternoon, we’d go to her house until my dad came home from work, which given his “workaholic” status, was typically after dinnertime.
My grandparents on my mom’s side-stepped way up as well. My grandfather later told me that he felt extreme sorrow for our loss, but more than anything I think, he just loved to spend time with us. He was the kind of grandfather that I hope to be someday. We spent many weekends with my grandparents, which I will treasure forever, but nothing was going to replace my mother. Again, having them there softened the blow and provided a connection to my mother, but it didn’t make it go away altogether. Regardless, some sense of a normal life did begin to emerge. Changes had to be made however, again shaping my life then in ways I never could have imagined.
It’s funny the things you remember, but one of my clearest memories during the early parts of that period, is of my dad taking my brother and me to the grocery store. I don’t remember what we bought, but I do remember him walking us over to the camera counter and asking me to pick out an alarm clock. I didn’t understand why, but he explained that from that point forward, I was going to have to take on some responsibilities that I hadn’t had to be concerned with before; namely, I was going to have to start to get up on my own each morning. As it turned out, that was the beginning of the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adult life, largely skipping past the adolescence period.
With that alarm clock came not only getting myself up in the morning, but getting my brother up and dressed, walking over to my mom’s friend’s house for breakfast and then making sure we both made it to school safely each morning. The older I got, the more the responsibilities began to mount. Soon I was responsible not only for looking after my brother, but helping with the cooking, laundry and cleaning, amongst other household chores.
My brother of course didn’t take well to his big brother telling him what to do, so we have our fair share of pretty funny stories to tell today about that period in our lives. One time in particular is one my sons love to hear about today.
It was a warm and sunny summer day, just a few months after my mother’s passing and I was in charge while my dad was out running errands. I was eleven by then and in those days an eleven-year-old was plenty capable of taking care of things, or so we thought.
We were playing with our friends on the street outside our house. The game we were playing didn’t have a name, but the objective was to ride your bike over a Frisbee and then apply the back breaks so that you’d “power-slide” when you did. Of course at five years old, my brother viewed himself as perfectly up to the task of joining in, despite my warnings that he’d probably break his arm if he tried it. He didn’t listen. Instead, he pedaled his bike as fast as he could make it go, rolled over the Frisbee and then hit the brakes with complete precision. That was where the perfection ended however; he crashed hard and as I had predicted, broke his arm.
That wasn’t the only time my brother broke his arm, however. Years later, he thought it would be a good idea to sit on the hood of his friend’s car while the car was moving. As it turned out, having his friend suddenly hit the brakes of his car had the same effect on my brother as power-sliding on top of the Frisbee.
On another occasion, my brother had roller skates on and was skating down the sidewalk. I told him to stay away from the brick half-wall, to which he replied something like, “Leave me alone. You’re not my boss!” Sure enough, he got too close, tripped and fell, hitting the edge of the brickwork and causing quite a gash in his forehead. My dad had been working on his car and was out for a five-minute test drive. When he returned, all he could see was blood covering the right side of my brother’s face. My dad later told me that he was sure my brother had lost an eye.
Eventually, we settled into our new rhythm, but I remember that first year being pretty tough. To my dad’s credit, he went out of his way to keep the lines of communication open, which in hindsight is pretty remarkable, since as an adult I began to view him as very private and only somewhat communicative. After the first year or so, we were encouraged to honor my mom’s memory, but to put the experience behind us and move on.
Settling into a rhythm didn’t mean everything was smooth, however. I had always been a good student, but my mom’s death threw me for a loop, resulting in part anyway, in grades that slipped right off the chart. The remainder of my 5th grade year was fine, but when I look back, I was really coddled by my 5th grade teacher after my mom’s death, so who knows if I really did well or not? By the time I hit 6th grade however, my grades had clearly suffered, not because I was facing more challenging material, but because I had simply lost interest. I liked my teacher, but suddenly school didn’t mean much to me any longer.
About that time, my dad began to date. This was excruciatingly painful for me. On the one hand I knew he was lonely and I wanted him to be happy. On the other hand however, I wanted nothing to do with a “substitute” mom. It must have had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t ready to let go, because I very clearly remember a recurring dream I had for quite a few years.
In my dream, my mother would somehow come back to life. At the same time, my dad had moved on and was dating another woman. So of course, the conflict was which one he would choose, given the opportunity? I now realize the answer is obvious, but at the time, I felt as though, at least in my dreams, life as I knew it was somehow being threatened by this other woman. Interestingly, I’ve had a similar recurring dream about my dad since his death.
My behavior at that time is something I still feel bad about today. My dad was dating a very nice woman who was very good to my brother and me and with whom my father could probably have been married. When I saw that coming however, I threw a fit, which ultimately led to the two of them breaking up, never to pair up again.
Throughout the years, my dad dated, but he didn’t actually marry again until I was in college. I often wonder if I somehow prevented him from being truly happy for the nine years he was single. I also wonder how things turned out for his first girlfriend after my mother.
Chapter 6: The Middle School Years
By 7th grade, I had a year of poor grades under my belt and until the second semester, that tradition continued. At some point, my dad was able to appeal to my recovering sense of responsibility and managed to get me to think about my future. His reasoning was that some colleges may look back as far as junior high school when considering my college application, so I had better get headed in the right direction. Even at that age, I was driven to succeed, so my dad’s strategy worked and I was able to pull my grades back up, starting then and continuing throughout high school.
Prior to my mom getting sick, my dad had started a business and was doing well financially. However, soon after my mom passed, he realized that he couldn’t continue at the pace he had been going and decided to put it on the back burner and instead pursue a career in real estate. This would allow him to work less and more flexible hours, enabling more time with my brother and me.
The older I get, the more I realize what a stand-up guy my dad was. He was extremely career- minded, yet he sacrificed it all to ensure my brother and I had what we needed in our childhood. Fortunately, he had made enough money by that point to be able to do it and as a result, I have some great memories of our time together during that period.
Once he had made his decision to transition his career, he decided to take that first summer off. He bought one of those orange Volkswagen “pop-top” vans and we traveled the country for about six weeks in June and July. We traveled as far south as Alabama and as far north as Massachusetts. We toured Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, watched the locals catch crabs in Louisiana, saw congress in session in Washington DC, touched the Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania and visited Wall Drug in South Dakota. The rest of the summer was spent going to the beach and camping and fishing in the local mountains.
Though we still thought and talked about my mother, I began to forget what her voice sounded like and without pictures, would have easily forgotten what her face looked like as well. At the time, I figured my heart was healing and that I was moving on. It wouldn’t be until years later that I realized I really had never dealt with her death. Instead, I somehow managed to stuff all the memories away. It was almost as if I closed the door to that part of my life and started a new one.
By the time I entered 8th grade, I can honestly say I didn’t think about her much at all. I was focused on other things. I had become interested in woodworking for example and poured myself into that. Woodworking, in combination with skiing, school, friends and the hope of someday having a girlfriend, pretty much kept my mind occupied.
Today, I lovingly refer to this period as “being raised by wolves,” given the fact that it was just my dad, my brother and me and we lived like you would expect three guys to live; taking a shower was often optional, especially for my little brother.
Although having said that, my dad did count underwear on laundry day each week and I remember that my brother was particularly challenged in that area. I recall one week in particular when my dad told my brother he was going to need to do better than just one pair in the laundry; I think the number was two or three the next week. Once my dad finally got to the bottom of what was going on, he learned that my brother’s bathing consisted of filling the tub with water, but not actually getting in, hence no need to change his underwear.
Chapter 7: High School, College and Early Adulthood
By my freshman year of high school, the academic pressures began to build. I was still getting nearly all ‘A’s, but it was becoming increasingly tougher to achieve the results. One class in particular was really causing me to struggle; Algebra. Beyond that however, things were good. I spent my days studying, pursuing my hobbies, and hanging out with my friends. That all came to an abrupt stop however, when my father announced that we were moving north to “God’s country.”
He was referring to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in northern California. It’s a beautiful place for sure, but I had no idea what a profound impact this move would have on my life.
We moved to Auburn, California, an old gold-mining town northeast of Sacramento. The move represented huge change, which as it turned out was by my father’s design. I later learned he was concerned with the gangs and drugs that were taking over the inner cities and suburbs of southern California, which is what motivated him to move us to live with the “country folks.” He was right; there weren’t any gangs to worry about in Auburn, but at age fifteen, I was a fish out of water.
Don’t get me wrong; Auburn’s a great place and I learned to love it a lot, but that move was the start of a feeling I had never experienced before; loneliness. I didn’t know a soul and because I wasn’t a cowboy, it was tough to make new friends. I eventually did, but it took a year or so to do so.
About the time I was starting to feel comfortable again, I graduated and went off to college. Like most college students, I made friends quickly, learned how to party and tried to strike some kind of balance in my life; although balance was a tough concept for me to grasp. I was very driven by this point and thought I could do it all. I worked nearly full-time, went to school full time and somehow managed to spend time with my girlfriend. Looking back however, I realize now that I studied just enough to get by.
While I was in college, my dad had found somebody that he eventually married. It was a surreal experience for me, but I was happy that he was happy. My relationship with her however, was rocky, even though it started out fine. She had been married before, but was younger than my dad by eleven years. She had wanted to have kids, but never did. So as expected, she became captivated by the fact that she had just married a guy with two sons; who she too could treat as sons.
The problem was that at least for me, I had learned to live without a mother and I had no intentions of letting somebody else attempt to fill her shoes. Right or wrong, it was about respecting and preserving the memory of my mother and not letting somebody else diminish it. As I look back today, I realize I was in the wrong in the way I approached the situation, but like many mixed families, it was really tough to make it work.
We eventually fell into a comfortable place that did work, but the relationship was always what I would describe as distant and sometimes cold. I blame myself, because she without a doubt tried a lot harder than I did.
I eventually graduated with a degree in marketing and went to work for Maytag, as what turned out to be a lonely salesman. My first assignment was in Newton, Iowa, which is where Maytag was headquartered and where its training center was located.
Now I had spent every bit of my childhood and college years living in sunny California, so a move to Iowa was quite an experience. As I mentioned earlier, I now live in Minnesota, but at the time Iowa was the coldest place I had ever been, by far. It probably didn’t help that I moved there in January, but needless to say, I couldn’t wait to get out.
After the deep-freeze experience in Iowa, I thankfully was relocated to Florida in April. When I got word of the move, I couldn’t wait to point my car south in search of warm weather. I drove that evening all the way to Champagne, Illinois, found a motel room and woke up early the next morning to get to warm weather as quickly as I could. The problem was that I woke up to six fresh inches of snow. Regardless, I was determined to find warm weather and did so in Tennessee that night.
Once I finally made it to Florida, I spent the next several months traveling throughout the state and enjoying the warm weather. Most of the months spent in Iowa and Florida were pretty lonely, but I did meet somebody I really liked while on vacation with a college friend down in Key West. Unfortunately, I moved to Maryland within a couple of weeks of meeting her, so our time together was minimal.
Maryland represented another adjustment, but the girl I met in Key West would come up to visit about once a month, so it was bearable. I will say however, that most of the time in between her visits was spent anticipating the next time I would see her. Fortunately, one of the guys I went through training with in Iowa had also been relocated to the east coast, so most weekends were spent hanging around with him in Washington D.C., Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. I have great memories of very fun times while I was on the east coast, but as I look back today, I now realize that even then, I yearned for the satisfaction of what I considered to be a “normal” life.
It wasn’t that my life wasn’t normal, but it was almost as if I wanted my life to pick up where I had left it when my mom died, which ultimately resulted in this girl and I breaking up. I wanted to get married, settle down and (as I now understand it) live the American dream, but we were just twenty-two at the time. In fact, she had just graduated from college and was just getting started in her career, so marriage was not something she was ready for. I never proposed, but I was persistent in my desire to get serious, ultimately pushing her away.
Shortly after she and I broke up, I decided to move back to California to be closer to friends and family. I moved to southern California, which as I mentioned earlier, was where I lived until I was fifteen. I think I thought I would find things as I had left them seven years earlier, but in fact everything was different. My friends were different, the places I was familiar with were different and I was different, except that I was still lonely and now not quite sure where I fit in. I was about to meet the true love of my life however, which would change everything for me yet again.
Chapter 8: The Night I Met My Wife
My east coast friend was actually from Iowa, so when he got married (to a girl from Iowa), the wedding was there. We had become good friends by then, so he asked me to be in his wedding. I was thrilled at the honor, but once again found myself in Iowa in January. It was different this time however, since despite the cold and snowy weather, I was among friends and we were having a great time.
I was there for several days with the bachelor party, wedding rehearsal and the actual wedding, but the night of the wedding turned out to be the highlight of the trip. After the ceremony, we all gathered for the reception. I was having a great time, enjoying time with people I hadn’t seen in a while, etc., when unexpectedly a friend walked up and introduced me to a friend of his, Dawn. By this time, I knew many of my east coast friend’s friends, but I had never met Dawn. She lived in Minnesota, but had grown up in Iowa.
Dawn and I hit it off right away and when the night was over, I suggested that we get together in the morning for breakfast. We did and we wound up talking for hours, until the point when she had to head north and I had to head to the airport. By the time I left Iowa, I was in love and as it turned out, so was she. I had a layover in Chicago for a couple of hours and while I was there, I picked up a card, wrote Dawn a note and mailed it before getting on my connecting flight. Dawn must have had similar intentions, because there was a message waiting on my answering machine when I got home later that night.
Since I lived in California and Dawn lived in Minnesota, I found myself once again in the “long distance relationship” scenario. This time it was different however, since Dawn was a couple of years older than me and ready for a committed relationship. By the fall, Dawn had moved to California so that we could be together and the day she arrived, my life changed once again.
For the next few years, our life revolved around getting to know each other, spending time with friends and tackling a major home remodel project. Although the house we had purchased was small and in really poor condition, we saw the potential it had and for us, it represented the beginning of our life together.
The house was a diamond in the rough on its best day, but project by project we completely restored the Ruby Street house and it became the source of a lot of great memories that we treasure to this day. At the time, we thought we had it pretty rough, but looking back we realize that although we had next to nothing, we were every bit as happy then as we have been since and both of us have said numerous times that we wouldn’t trade the experiences we had back in those days for anything.
After we had been on Ruby Street for a few months, I started shopping for a ring and eventually I proposed. I was pretty proud of myself for having picked out her ring by myself; a reckless move as I look back today. In fact, not only did I present her with a beautiful solitaire diamond ring, I did it on the cheap, in that I found a coin dealer that sold loose stones and when it was all said and done, I had an engagement ring that was worth three times what I had paid for it.
Once I had the ring taken care of, it was time to plan the proposal. We lived in a relatively small town, so the venues were limited. However, I picked her up after work one day, told her I was taking her out to dinner and then proceeded to drive down the hill to “old-town” Sacramento for dinner and drinks at an outdoor Italian restaurant. Looking back, my proposal was lacking for sure, but she said she would marry me regardless, so I guess it was at least effective.
The minute we were engaged, the activity shifted into high gear. Dawn wanted to get married in her hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, so she called her mother and very soon thereafter her mother and grandmother were in California picking out wedding dresses and putting plans together.
By December, all of the plans had been made and we were on our way to the airport and eventually, Iowa. We couldn’t have been happier.
Chapter 9: The Early Years of Marriage
With the wedding, I once again found myself in Iowa in the winter, this time in December, which is often colder than in January. However, even though it was twenty degrees below zero (actual temperature, not the wind chill) the night we got married, the weather in Iowa was no longer a factor for me. For the entire week we were there, we were surrounded by friends and family from the west coast, the east coast, the south and the Midwest. That week probably represented the most fun I had ever had in a seven-day period.
From Iowa, we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon, which meant our temperature shift was about one-hundred degrees from our last day in Iowa to our first day in Maui. That warm sun felt very good and seemed to represent the new sense of peace and happiness I had been able to achieve. For the first time since my mom had died, my life now felt complete and secure and I was no longer lonely. Dawn and I were great as a couple and we established a wonderfully meaningful life together.
In those days, I hardly ever thought of my mother. She had become a distant memory and I was on to other things. I was through college, I had a good job and I was in a committed relationship with somebody I truly loved. At twenty-five, I had moved into a new chapter of my life and I was finally “normal” again. Sure, I was without a mother, but I was a married adult and someday we would have a family and we’d be just like everybody else; something I sorely missed.
The house on Ruby Street kept us quite occupied for a good couple of years. We literally repaired or replaced just about everything in, on and around that house. From new walls, to new cabinets, to a new roof, to a new yard, we did it all, which gave me an opportunity to expand my “handyman” skills way beyond where they had been before. In fact, I learned to frame, roof, paint, lay tile, plumb, wire and landscape, among other things. This all provided me with a great sense of accomplishment and it kept my mind thinking about all the possibilities the future could bring.
Things were fine for several years, but at the point when Dawn approached the age my mother was when she died (thirty-three), I found myself overwhelmed with emotions that I couldn’t explain. I was definitely living a fulfilling life, but there was an area of sadness and an area of concern that I now had to contend with.
The sadness came from a feeling that I just couldn’t seem to shake. Somewhere along the line it sank in that as happy as I was, my new wife would never know my mom, which I considered to be a huge part of who I was at that point in my life. The sadness wasn’t severe, but it was persistent, slowly becoming an increasingly dominant force within my psyche.
The concern, much like the sadness, was not severe, but it too was persistent. Specifically, I worried about what would happen to my “perfect” life if the cycle I had lived through during my childhood, were to repeat itself in my adult life. I think these thoughts may have worked themselves out as my wife got older, but as it turned out, my wife became pregnant with our first son while I was having these concerning thoughts, which gave me something completely new to worry about.
As with most new parents, we became completely overwhelmed and preoccupied with the fact that we were going to be responsible for a young life in the very near term. We went to parenting classes, CPR classes, breast-feeding classes, Lamaze classes and just about anything else we could find that would reassure us that we were fit for the task of raising children.
Classes and the anticipation of having a baby kept both of us busy for the nine months my wife was pregnant, which of course was followed by busyness and sleep deprivation we couldn’t have imagined, once our son was actually born. Between getting up in the middle of the night (several times each night), changing diapers and loading and unloading the car with enough supplies to keep an army alive for a month (every time we went anywhere), I didn’t have much time to focus on anything but the task at hand.
About the time we felt we had things under control, which was about two years later, we learned that my wife was again expecting. Although we were a little bit calmer the second time around, my wife had problems with her second pregnancy, which once again gave me something to focus on, other than the persistent sadness I felt from the childhood loss of my mother.
Our second son was born and once again we were faced with sleepless nights, the needs of a newborn and just trying to keep it all in balance. As the boys got older, they became less reliant on every moment of our time, which gave me the time and capacity to begin to reflect once again. This time however, it meant nothing less than a full-blown crisis.
Chapter 10: My Crisis
At about the point when my youngest son turned four, I entered what some would describe as my mid-life crisis, but what I would instead characterize as my “whole life” crisis. I was in the midlife range (at thirty-eight), but for the most part I was happy with what I had achieved, I was proud of my career and I had a family any man would be grateful for.
For me, losing my mother at an early age had changed me in ways that were now starting to impact my ability to function as a happy and healthy person. Although I didn’t understand why at the time, I became wound extremely tight, which led to a less than “happy-go-lucky” demeanor. Although I tried hard to hide it, I’m sure that at least to some extent it was becoming obvious to those around me that I was struggling.
At that point, I took action and began seeing a counselor. He helped me realize that happiness is something we all have to work at. For me anyway, I can’t truly be happy unless I’m happy at home and at work. If either one is out of whack, I’m going to be unhappy. Perhaps more important however, the counselor helped me to realize that trying to achieve a “Leave it to Beaver” life is impossible. Nobody lives like that, really. Yes, many try to project the image of their life being that perfect, but I’ve talked to enough friends and family to know that while being a parent is very fulfilling, it can also be frustrating and stressful.
In my sessions with the counselor, I began to realize that my image of what life was supposed to be like was largely based on select memories of my early childhood and what I had grown up watching on television. In other words, all my life experiences after age ten weren’t factoring into my expectations of how my life should be, since I had discounted everything that occurred after my mom died, because I viewed it as the exact opposite of the perfect life.
I began to realize that a perfect life should be defined as having a happy relationship with my wife and being able to raise our sons to be happy, healthy, productive members of society. Said another way, “perfect” was different for everybody, but happy, healthy and productive were characteristics of anybody’s life dreams.
Somewhere along the line I also realized that some things in my life were in my control, but many things in my life were not. You see up until recently, I’ve put forth enormous energy trying to control my life, when in reality, the best I can ever hope for is to “influence” it. You’d think that with the death of my mother at an early age, I would have figured this out long ago, but in fact it’s only been recently that I really have.
Once I really understood that I can only control what I can control, my life somehow started to become more peaceful. I was no less driven to accomplish and produce, but suddenly I wasn’t so anxious about trying to keep all the balls up in air at the same time. Maybe it was my age, but by thirty-nine or so, I had achieved the balance I’d been talking about for so many years. I was no longer working eighty (or even sixty) hours a week, but instead put my forty to fifty hours a week in and then was enjoying time with my family and friends or pursuing my hobbies, which by the way turned out to be the hobbies I enjoyed as a kid (e.g., woodworking, home improvement projects, etc.).
About the time things were really clicking along nicely, I woke up to a middle-of-the-night telephone call, which as everyone knows, is never a good thing.
Chapter 11: The Death of My Father
At about 1:00AM on my 40th birthday, my dad’s wife called me from Canada, saying that my dad had suffered from a stroke. It was tough to gauge the seriousness of his condition over the telephone, but it became very apparent as the hours passed, that I needed to get there as soon as I was able to do so.
My dad was just sixty-two and had recently retired. He and his wife were about 1,500 miles off the east coast of the United States and on their way to Europe for a well-deserved post-retirement vacation. During dinner on the plane, the right side of my dad’s face lost its expression, causing quite a bit of alarm on his wife’s part. As it turned out, there was a doctor sitting right in front of him, but because they were so far from any kind of a suitable medical facility, it was four hours before they were able to get him any real help. They turned the plane around and flew to Canada’s easternmost city, but by the time they landed, too much time had passed for any treatment to prove effective.
My brother and I drove from Minneapolis up to Winnipeg and then flew into St. Johns. I’ll be forever grateful that we made it there in time to talk to my father, but the reality was that the right side of his brain had been severely damaged, leaving his left side paralyzed. We talked to him that night and a little the next day, but then the swelling began to put pressure on his brain stem, causing him to slip into a coma and sadly, he died just a few days later.
My dad was only sixty-two, but he wasn’t exactly a doctor’s best patient. He had been to see a doctor about five years earlier, but he was stubborn and didn’t listen to the doctor’s warnings. What I found out after the fact was that he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol and that he had decided not to take the recommended medications, instead deciding he could deal with both conditions through better eating and more rigorous exercise. Unfortunately, as is the case with many people in similar situations, the life-changes never happened to the extent needed and the ailments ultimately got him.
He left behind a wife, two adult sons and three grandchildren, one of which (my brother’s daughter) he had just met. He also left behind two older siblings and many friends, new and old. But perhaps most important, he left behind a legacy. Yes, he had started several successful businesses, one of which is alive and well today, but other than a few employees and customers who remember him, that’s not his legacy. His legacy is his family, primarily my brother, my niece, my two sons and me. To us, he will always be known as the guy who stood up during a tragedy and led my brother and me to a happier place; a place filled with hope, opportunity and a focus on the great things that could happen in the future.
My mother died in 1978 and in those days it was rare for a father to raise kids alone. In fact, my father later told me that my mom’s brother and his wife had offered to take my brother and me; and that he cautiously declined. He told me in later years that he felt he was in uncharted waters in raising two sons alone and that he was very concerned that somebody was going to try to take us away; and I can remember him holding on tight, with the exception of letting us spend significant time with our maternal grandparents.
My maternal grandparents are another important part of my dad’s legacy, in that he formed a bond with them that was like no other “in-law” bond I have seen since. He could have opted to distance himself from them at the point of my mom dying, but instead he pulled them in closer. Aside from the weekends my brother and I spent with them, my dad would often camp with my grandfather, my brother and me; and the four of us took several road trips together.
When we moved to northern California, my grandparents would drive the 450 miles or so to visit us and they’d often stay for a week to ten days. And after my paternal grandfather died, my paternal grandmother started to join my maternal grandparents on the trips.
As my grandparents started to age and need more help with doctor appointments, keeping track of medications, paying bills, etc., my dad moved all three of them north so that they could be close to us, enabling all of us to take care of them in their older years, creating some pretty memorable stories for the family as a whole.
By this point all three of them were in their 80s and they were starting to lose some of their discretions. Well actually, my grandfather was a farm kid from Iowa, so “proper” wasn’t really ever his top priority. But my grandmothers were very proper, especially my maternal grandmother.
So one day Dawn walked in to check on my maternal grandparents and was surprised to see my grandmother sitting in her wheelchair, without a stitch of clothing, facing the large picture window with a big smile on her face and a group of construction workers right across the street. When she asked my grandfather what was going on, he replied, “I’m sick and Grandma had an accident in the bed.” Well, those weren’t his exact words, but you get the point.
That night, Dawn, my brother and I decided we needed to spend the night to help my grandfather with our grandmother, since he was sick. So we brought over our sleeping bags, laid them out on the family room floor for the night and settled in, or at least we did so to the extent possible; they kept the house at a cozy 85 degrees. A few minutes later, while my grandfather was wheeling my grandmother down the hall to the bathroom, I got up to check on them and overheard them talking about the temperature in the house. My grandfather was tall and thin, while my grandmother was short and stout. As he got older, my grandfather wanted the house increasingly warmer; my grandmother did not. So down the hall they went, arguing about the temperature. “It’s hot in here,” she said. “No it’s not,” he argued. To our great surprise, there was also explicative language used, but out of great respect for all involved, I’ve left some of those details to your imagination.
What made these such funny memories is that we would have never seen or heard anything like this in their earlier years, but as I said, they were losing some of their properness and they were beyond caring about it anymore.
So for me, my dad’s legacy was that he raised a loving, caring family; a family who would take care of each other when help was needed. My dad never gave up on life and he did everything in his power to help those around him; family and friends included. I have tried to live my life the same way, by helping those in need of help and giving back to the community as a whole. I’ve also tried to instill these values into the lives of my two sons and I am proud to say that they’ve both been involved with several charity events and organizations.
One-hundred years after I die, it’s very unlikely that anybody left on the planet will have known me. Unless you’re the president, a movie star, or you started a very successful, persevering business, it’s unlikely that anybody will remember who you were either. Nobody dies with the amount of their net worth etched on their gravestone and in fact most opt for something along the lines of “A beloved husband, father, brother, son, uncle and friend who helped who he could help and dedicated his life to making the world a little better.” This was my father’s legacy and it’s the same legacy I’m trying to establish for myself, with the hope that my sons will do the same.
Chapter 12: Getting it All Figured Out
After many years of looking introspectively at myself, I believe I finally have things figured out. When my mother died, I felt as if my life as I knew it was over and that I was suddenly different from everything and everyone I had previously known. My friends all still had a mom and a dad and when Mother’s Day rolled around and the kids at school were working on a gift, I worked on two, one for each of my grandmothers. Because my dad was often working late, I sometimes had the responsibility of getting my brother and myself fed and that usually meant warmed up T.V. dinners; my friends had “Taco Tuesday,” “Soup Sundays,” etc. While my friends went to church with their families on Sundays, my brother and I often went with my grandfather, since my dad was not a believer in organized religion, especially after the death of my mom.
Although I wanted so badly to be like everyone else, my reality was that I wasn’t. A glimmer of hope however, was the future, because in the future I could get married and have a family of my own, at which point I would be in the “normal” category once again. This is perhaps the most important point of my story, because as it turned out, that desire to be normal again has been the driving force in my life.
Beginning in high school, this force really started to kick in. It drove my desire to do well in school, because I knew that education was the key to financial success and in my mind anyway, doing well financially would enable the “perfect” life I had envisioned, an opinion that had now been formed by television shows like Father Knows Best and Happy Days. So when I got to my junior year of high school, the guidance counselor called me into her office one day and said that I had overachieved by so much, I could graduate at the end of that school year if I wanted to.
Although my girlfriend at the time was a year older than me, my decision to graduate early was only somewhat based on that. More importantly, the decision resulted from the desire to get to college and on with my life as quickly as I could. So I turned seventeen in May of 1984 and graduated in June; and off to college I went in the fall. My grades were good that first year of college, but as I look back and think about how young I really was, I realize my desire to get to a normal life was driving irrational decision-making about important things.
Once in college and comfortable, all I cared about was getting done and graduating. Sure I had moments of the college experience, but for the most part I was so focused on getting done so that I could get to work and start moving toward the perfect life, I didn’t really enjoy college as much as I could have. At twenty-one, I graduated with a degree in marketing and promptly went to work for Maytag (as mentioned earlier), where I was the youngest ever recruit into their sales and marketing program.
My relationships with the girls I dated were very much influenced by this drive to normalcy as well. As I look back, I was forever wanting to be more serious than I should have been at that age. In fact, I remember evaluating each relationship to determine whether or not the person I was with could eventually become my wife. If I didn’t think they could, I would break up with them pretty early in the relationship. If on the other hand I believed they could be, I would typically drive those girls away, because at that age most of them had no interest in thinking about a relationship that was so serious. This cycle continued throughout my teens and early twenties, until the point I met my wife, when she too was ready to settle into a serious relationship; one that would eventually lead to marriage and a family.
The house on Ruby Street was also motivated by this desire for normalcy, in that although it was really not much more than a shack, it was what we could afford at the time and I saw the potential. I worked on that house day and night for a couple of years, driven to progress toward that perfect life, the kind of life illustrated by a Norman Rockwell painting for example, including the picket fence.
My career aspirations were much the same, in that they were driven by a desire to enable the things I viewed as being part of the perfect life, including a traditional house (we live in a traditional brick colonial with black shutters), great educational opportunities for my sons and memorable vacations. The manifestation of this from a career perspective has played out such that I’ve continually advanced with each new position and each new company. Perhaps it’s more a sign of the times, but since college I’ve worked for seven different companies, in a variety of roles, each with increasing responsibility and compensation.
While the drive to normalcy has led to good things in my life, it’s also caused a raised level of anxiety. You see, once I “made it,” I began to worry about losing what I had accomplished. In other words, my concern shifted from will I be able to get there and provide my family with the things I didn’t have, to now that I’m there, what if I lost everything? This has profoundly affected my spending habits and how I view the inherent risk of making investments, which has been positive for the most part, especially given The Great Recession and the resulting job market. But the reality is that I haven’t been without a job since I was sixteen years old and even before that I was able to make money by mowing lawns, pulling weeds, washing cars, delivering newspapers and doing various other odd jobs.
The other great worry in my life is what would happen if I died now and left my kids in the same situation my brother and I were in when we were kids. I’ve always been a worrier (and in fact come from a long line of worriers), but there have been times when my worrying has spun completely out of control. For example, while visiting the skin doctor for a cyst a number of years ago, she noticed a few moles that looked irregular. She biopsied them and as it turned out they were benign, but the process taught me about the dangers of melanoma and since that time I remain hypersensitive to the topic. I now have to visit the skin doctor every six months and almost without failure, she removes something, which renews my worries about dying early and leaving my kids without a father.
Chapter 13: Dealing with Religion
Although I completely understand the value people get out of religion, it’s been a tough pill for me to swallow. I’d love to be able to minimize my worries with the hope that a higher power will intervene and make everything alright, but from my perspective, I haven’t been able to count on that. I don’t wish to debate the existence of God, but for me, given my life experiences, religion has not been my answer.
When I was ten years old, I prayed every night that my mother would be healed and that I wouldn’t have to go through life without her. I couldn’t have prayed any harder than I did and I know lots of others were praying for her as well. My mother herself was very religious and she genuinely believed and told me that she would be healed and then serve as an example of the power of prayer.
Of course, I’m not the only one whose prayers have gone unanswered, but the part that bothers me is that nobody since that time has been able to give me a reasonable answer as to why. I’ve asked priests, nuns, ministers, reverends and religious friends and everybody gives me the same basic answer; “God must have determined that it was best that he take her.” To a ten-year-old kid, that makes little sense and as an adult, I must say that my feeling is pretty much the same as it was when I was ten.
The other part of the experience that pushes me away from religion is that religion doesn’t seem very logical to me. I realize that those who are truly religious are taught to have faith, but when you go through what I’ve been through, you become a little more skeptical and for me anyway, it hones your ability to look at things analytically. While I recognize it’s likely my own protection mechanism, I don’t take much for granted and if something doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t allow myself to blindly have faith; to me, blind faith introduces a lot of risk and potentially bad outcomes.
My hope is that those with deep religious convictions won’t take this chapter as offensive; that was not at all my intention. Instead, it was important to me to explain the full impact my life experiences have had on me, including religion.
Chapter 14: Achieving Balance
For me, balance has always been somewhat elusive. It’s not for a lack of trying, but the drive I discussed earlier seems to always take precedence. I know I’m better when I’m plugged in at home, exercising regularly, spending time with friends and on a good career path, but I’ve found it difficult to achieve all of these things simultaneously. Instead, I go through periods when I’m burned out at work and I briefly shift my energy to the other areas of my life.
As I’m writing this chapter, I’m actually going through one of those periods. After having served several years as Vice President and General Manager of a healthcare software company, I decided the stress and pressure were taking too much out of me. It had gotten to the point where I was dedicating pretty close to 100% of my energy to the job; and with a wife, two active sons and two dogs, not having energy at home isn’t sustainable.
So after months of consideration, I walked into my boss’s office and told him that although I loved the company, the people, the culture, etc., I just couldn’t do that job anymore. I explained that I’d like to stay with the company, but that I would understand if that wasn’t possible. He asked me what I’d like to do and I listed the things I was interested in. He then told me he wanted me to stay and that there was another position open that he thought would be a good fit. After a couple of months of transitioning, I’m in that role now and almost immediately I felt a sense of relief and a newfound freedom.
The experience forced me to prioritize my life and look retrospectively at how I’ve spent the past several years. To be honest, I have some regrets. One of the requirements of the job was that we work through the holidays and up until the last order came in on New Year’s Eve. So for what turned out to be six holiday seasons, I was essentially checked out at home, starting when my sons were nine and six years old. I can’t get those years back and I know myself well enough to know that the decision I made to sacrifice the holidays in favor of work is one that I’ll regret forever.
To provide some solace, I’ve shared that lesson with my friends and coworkers who have younger families. I’ve asked them to think about my experience and the importance of not repeating it. I like to tell them that money and prestige have not affected who I am or my level of happiness one bit; and that as I look back, I realize I should have slowed down to enjoy the moment more than I did. Realizing everybody needs to focus to some extent on the future, it can’t be taken to an extreme that includes forgetting to enjoy the present, which is what I did too much of the time.
At this point I have precious few years left while my sons are at home and I intend to take full advantage of the time. I tell my sons that what I want for them is for them to be as well-educated as they can be, happy and healthy. To me, those three things pretty well sum it up, in that I can’t think of anything else that really matters. Fame and fortune may be nice for some, but if you’re truly happy without it, who cares?
Chapter 15: My Life’s Lessons
The experience of living my life, with its good times and bad, has given me a perspective that is perhaps more introspective than some. Regardless, here are some of the bigger themes:
When I was a kid, services to help children who’d lost a parent didn’t exist, at least as far as I was aware. But the reality is that these kids are young and they need professional help to work through their crisis. I had support, but not professional support, which in hindsight was what I needed. There are organizations in many areas that offer these services, so if you’re the surviving parent of a kid who needs help, please get it for him or her.
With professional help later in life, I eventually learned that “normal” doesn’t really exist in life. From a statistical perspective yes, it exists, but most of us don’t live our lives based on what the statistics tell us, because in the end, statistics give us the mathematical answer to what’s normal. But each person is an individual, with different interests, talents, motivations and circumstances. Everyone is dealt a blow from time to time. This doesn’t make you abnormal; it’s just part of life. Or said another way, nobody meets the definition of “normal” in every category; we’re all abnormal in one way or many. The key is how you deal with it. Do you let it define you, or do you take the experience on directly and learn from it, thus potentially enhancing your life in ways you hadn’t considered before tragedy struck?
Although motivation can be a good thing, it can also spin out of control and make you miserable. For too many years, I was so focused on the future, I couldn’t enjoy the present. As I look back, I was continuously trying to get to the next level; a higher level within the organization, more money, a higher net worth, etc. I thought it would make me happy, but the reality is that life is a journey and all parts of it should be enjoyed. I had a great job and was being paid well when I was twenty-one, twenty-six and thirty-one, so why was I so focused on getting to the top? In retrospect, I was on a great career trajectory and I was happy, so now I’m wondering what the hurry was all about. The point is, enjoy where you are in life and slow down enough to enjoy your accomplishments as they happen.
It’s an old cliché, but money does not make you happy. For me anyway, not having to worry about how I’ll pay the bills removes some anxiety, but it doesn’t make me happy. What makes me happy is being able to spend memorable times with family and friends, watching my children grow up to fulfill their own dreams and feeling like I’m doing my part to make the world a better place.
Aside from those who choose a path in life that negatively affects others, live and let live. Nobody is just like you and nobody will share your exact belief system. Everyone is coming from a different perspective and to my earlier point, all that really matters is that they’re happy. You may not approve of their hairstyle, the clothes they wear, or how they prioritize their time, but if they’re doing no harm and they’re living the way they want to live, why should others concern themselves with it? And by the way, this advice applies to friends and family, including your own children and siblings.
For those who are focused on leaving behind a legacy, don’t spend too much time thinking about that. Unless you wind up being written about in the history books, you’re going to be forgotten after just a couple generations. If we think about how much we know about our grandfather’s mother and father, most of us don’t come up with much. The point is that worrying about how people will remember you is largely a fruitless effort and one that serves the ego, but not much else. What matters is how you live your life and how you feel about it.
You and your spouse will either grow together or grow apart as you experience life; it’s important to ensure that you grow together. Friends will come and go during periods of your life. I have one friend from high school and only a couple friends from college that I keep in touch with (Facebook doesn’t count); my wife is largely the same. Since we got married in 1992, we’ve made new friends based on where we’ve lived, where our kids have gone to school, what activities we’ve been involved with and where we’ve worked. Although it’s often not intentional, friends come in and out of your life, based on the stage of life you’re in. However, my wife and I are always there for each other; we are making this journey through life together. So as things change and we evolve, we are together to live it as a couple, not as individuals.
Taking the time to stay physically fit and healthy has been a struggle for me. I’ve gone through cycles that have included being very fit and sometimes being unfit. As I often tell my wife, I’m not making excuses; I’m readily admitting that this is an area where I know I don’t consistently perform well. However, as opposed to trying to achieve perfection, I’ve learned that doing a reasonably good job in this area is what’s realistic and sustainable for me. So if I eat relatively well, do something physical every day, keep my weight in the range of where it needs to be and see my doctor (and follow her orders), I’m much happier and hopefully pretty healthy.
Spending time building memories is of the utmost importance to me; this is what we’re left with when we finally make it to the rocking chair on the front porch. But perhaps most important is building the memories you want your kids to have of their own childhood as they get older. Despite the death of my mother, I have a lot of fond memories of my childhood and I cherish those memories today. To his credit, my dad went out of his way to build fun memories, especially after my mom died; and for that I will be forever grateful.
As I write this closing paragraph, I’m forty-seven years old, which puts me squarely in the midlife range. There have been ups and downs, good decisions and poor ones and successes and failures, but through it all I’ve learned that these experiences build character and make us stronger. And guess what, everybody struggles in some way; that’s life. So count your blessings, hug your spouse and kids, spend time with your friends and be happy.
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