Category: Life Lessons

I’ve written a lot about losing Ruth and the grief her passing caused.  There’s no way to measure it and there was certainly no way to prepare for it. She was here one moment and gone the next. My dad’s health failed over a number of years, and he was in hospital rooms and care …

I get flashbacks through social media almost every day. Many are blog posts from prior years. If there’s a method to the madness it must be the calendar. I wrote the following three years ago. I posted the blue story the night that Ruth died. I had already written it and followed through with the …

I posted a blog called Three Toasts in April of 2020.  It was about the three toasts that I offered when each of my three children were married: David in August of 2004, Mike in October of 2009 and Elizabeth in April of 2010.  I’m a crier and I cried through each toast.  When I …

I met Holly at Clara Barton Junior High. We didn’t hang out together. I thought she was too pretty for me. That thought continued throughout high school during our four years at George A. Dondero. In addition to being beautiful, she was cool. I didn’t find my own cool until halfway through my sophomore year …

I read this online a couple of days ago. The person I was before you took your last breath and the person I am now are two very different people.  I died with you that day only I kept breathing and you didn’t. I think the point is you can’t go back to where and …

Synchronicity is a term coined by psychotherapist Carl Jung to describe the simultaneous occurrence of events that are meaningfully related but lack a clear causal connection. It refers to the sensation that coincidences are more than just chance. I’ve been reading about the word in the Artists’ Way by Julia Cameron, and once I understood …

I posted a story about a week after Ruth died about the things I had experienced the night of her accident.  If you want to look it up, it’s called Something More. Near the end of the story, I wrote this. I don’t believe in heaven, or hell, but honor the beliefs of those who …

I took a journalism class in high school.  I don’t recall anything about it but this: who, what, when, where, why and how.  We called this the “five w’s and the h”.  Google says this. Who? – asking about a person What? – asking about an object When? – asking about a time Where? – asking about …

If you’ve been around long enough, you have a lot of things.  With two places to live, I have a ton.  Most of it was acquired during my fifty-one years of marriage although I do still have a few items from my college days.  A fraternity paddle, a couple of mugs and my Lambda Chi …

I played poker with my Jackson crew last week.  Tom hosted.  It’s the first time I’ve seen him this summer.  When Covid hit we didn’t play for several months.  When we did begin, we cut way back on snacks and drinks.  We went from elaborate meals to individual bags of chips and drinks. We’ve gradually …