A Day in the Life of Chaos

  As you age everyday is a mystery.  In the morning you wake up and like a computer booting up do a systems check.  Knee working, back not hurting, headache nope feel fresh, urinary system functioning, the list goes on… everything okay… check… it’s going to be a good day.  Then the morning routine kicks in.  A handful of pills and a cup of coffee.   Salvador Dali At some point there is a certain realization that nothing will ever get better.  When you have a car you can at least buy a new set of tires.  There is a good chance that they will work as good as the original ones if not better.  Every time I have to replace some part of my house I always ask the service man how this new version of whatever I had will make my life better.  Typically they will shrug and give me a look that says, “Just wait for the bill.”  Sometimes, not to be defeated, I will pore over the service manual or promotional material and relish the smallest detail.  I definitely did this when I had to spend 13,00

The other day I looked at death.   Not my own thankfully but in the declining health of a dear friend.   Life constantly prepares us for death in many ways.   As we age the percentage of those we know who die increases proportionately with the years.   If you own a pet, death is a regular part of our life.   Animals unfortunately have lifespans far shorter than our own and we are always reminded of death when we lose a close four legged companion.   We all approach death differently.  Some of us turn away because it is simply too painful.  Some of us never let go.  We carry the weight of loss daily with us often perhaps hastening our own demise. Death is a heavy part of life and an unfortunate constant.  There is no life without death.   Last week I flew to Tampa to visit a man who has been a part of my life for 28 years.  He has been mentioned many times in the course of this blog.  He is one of those people who for one reason or another became a part of me.  A very odd man, he is

Karen Goerler I think a lot about aging.  I think it is because I am aging.  Well in truth we all are.  It is an inescapable reality of life.  I wrote a blog called “Today is the Youngest I Will Ever Be.”  I think as you grow older this phrase becomes increasingly apropos.  Like a computer we constantly run a systems diagnostic on our body and each pain, creak, or scatterbrained moment becomes a source of questions.  Is this a sign?  Is it the beginning of something or only momentary discomfort?  Did I do something I shouldn’t have or is this the moment of inevitable decline?   As we grow older our lives and physical well-being are impacted by the lives of those we have grown old with.  Like soldiers in a battle when one falls the others look around and wonder if they will get the next bullet.  Recently a high school classmate of mine passed away.  She was only 50.  She was a good person who lived a good life.  There was no simplistic explanation of why cancer should have ta

Every so often something happens that reminds us what a thin line we balance on between life and death. As you age these reminders become more apparent as declining health speaks like an owl in the night reminding you that your body is fragile.  That life is only for a short time and that eventually it will all come to an end. The call can come at any moment.  I dread hearing the telephone ring in the middle of the night, it can never be good.  When I answer it I know something has happened and in a half dream like state I confront the news.  Recently the call came but it wasn't the middle of the night.  It happened during a simple moment when I was out with my son practicing driving.  I left my phone at home as the battery was dying.  It was only going to be a few minutes away from home anyway.   We passed by the grocery and picked up a sandwich  for dinner.  As we pulled my son's Karmann Ghia into the garage my wife was there to great us.  I thought she just wanted to he

There are two distinct forms of people in this world, the faithful and the skeptics.  Then there are a vast number that exists somewhere in-between.  I suppose I fall into this group yet my mind constantly tortures me. It asks me to ask questions, it asks me to doubt.  Relying on faith alone would be so much easier yet something deep inside of me reminds me that to do so would be to deny the very existence of my brain. Not far from my office in downtown Columbia, South Carolina there is a cemetery.  It is a mix of old and new graves that covers a large plot of land.  Often at lunch as a way of exercising I take a brisk 60 minute walk that often leads me to the winding paths, some mercifully shaded by tall trees.  For the most part I tune out the world as I walk by the graves with my iphone in hand and my ear buds in.  My eyes dance from one stone to the next reading the names and dates followed by a mental calculation of how long they lived.  Some names are so exotic, I wonder how th

Last night in the last moments before sleep carried me away my son came to me.  He hugged me and had anguish in his voice.  It was a deep sadness and while I could not see his eyes I felt they were filled with tears. "I will never see Greg sitting in his living room again Pop."   I immediately knew what he was talking about.  Greg was the husband for one year of a woman who lives one house up the street.  He married the divorced mother of one of Noah's best friends and was the owner of his own landscaping company.  He was only in his early 50's and seemed to be filling a void in the lives of his three step children.  He must have brought stability to their house again.  The sense of permanence that children long for.  In the mornings I would see him preparing for the work day with a Mexican he employed.  In the afternoons he would be outside playing basketball or throwing a football with one of the boys.  Last May he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  When I h

Growing older is a stage in life.  It doesn't matter if you are young or old, the constant is always the progression of age.  Coupled with this, is the feeling of being left behind. It happens to us usually when we are associated with a group.  We seldom hearken back to a moment in time, rather a period of life when our minds and emotions were satisfied.  When we shared a commonality with others in an experience.  Youth provides fertile ground for this.  It is a unique stage of life when we are surrounded by a group experiencing exactly the same thing.  We see them day to day and often feel the same frustrations, the same pain.  It is a time when others share our age and we gaze out through the window of life from the same perspective.  I think for this reason when we age we often look back at our youthful years with nostalgia like none others.  They were a time of innocence when our lives were still largely unwritten.   Life presented few constraints over possibility. For this

Recently former and possibly future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a minster from Arkansas and darling of the conservative Christian community gave a speech about health care.  As a minister I anticipated words filled with compassion for the sick and care for the poor.  This was after all the message of Jesus.  Throw out the money changers in the temple and care for the down trodden.  Had I lived prior to 100 A.D. Jesus would have likely found me to be a great sympathizer.   Well Minister Huckabee spoke concerning the issue of the new health care reform, specifically the new law that now forbids insurance companies from not insuring a person with a preexisting condition.  No longer can an infant born with a condition be denied.  No more can a person with a medical problem be denied coverage and sentenced to either death or poverty in the face of medical bills they can't afford.  While I would think Minister Huckabee's Christian leanings would have caused him to laud

When I was a child I had a mentor.  Well not really, mentor is a word that conjurers up an image of an apprentice working with a powerful wizard.  In reality it was more like a person that feels special to you for an unknown reason.  There was just something about that person that seemed to sit right.  Maybe they listened, maybe they didn't.  Maybe it was just a person that even though I never asked anything from them, they made me feel secure.  They made me feel important or valued in some way.  In my case they were friends of my parents who in some way through my contact with them made me feel important in their eyes. Ken Piper Nearly as far back as I can remember I knew a wonderful man.  He seemed seven feet tall and had a body four feet wide.  His head was bald and he had a smile and a laugh as deep as a geyser billowing steam.  He used to give me books or records when I was small and as I grew older he would take me to school.  He lived with us for awhile while his life w

I have a scar on my right cheek, or is it my left?  I have to think about it for awhile before I remember.  I have had it since I was a little boy and when I look in a mirror it is invisible to me.  Others may see it but when something exists with you, like the color of your skin, in time you no longer see it.  I used to ask my mother if it was as small as a GI Joe scar yet?  "Close," she would tell me, "close."  When others would look at me the scar is what they would see first.  They would want to ask me the cause yet they would refrain, thinking it was an invasion of my privacy.  Eventually after a long time the topic would come up and they would sheepishly ask.  I would of course tell them that it was caused by some fantastical circumstance like a violent girlfriend, a shark or the slash of a sword.  In truth, I stumbled over some rocks when I was running and a particularly sharp one cut my face. In life everyone carries wounds with them.  They etch our emo

Last night I dreamed of my mother. Of course we all dream of our mothers yet mine has been dead now for eleven years. It was one of those dreams where she seemed so real. I could speak to her and for a few hours or maybe minutes, I felt like she was still alive. I wonder if dreams are a gift or a torture. Do they help us remember or resolve conflicts in our mind? When my mother passed away from cancer I had so many mixed feelings. So many unresolved issues that could never be resolved. Yet some how, in the face of loss, the issues didn't seem so important anymore. If I could give anyone advice that has a parent still living it would be to find a way to set aside the anger. Your chance to know a person you have taken for granted for most of your life is so fleeting, don't waste it. Don't let it escape your grasp. Unfortunately we are all likely to repeat the same mistakes. It seems that so often the qualities that we love and admire about a person are not