My latest manuscript, a life story, has been completed, excerpt below — with all confidential details omitted for client confidentiality.
Within my tale are the many truths I arrived at the hard way, by living the long years it takes to gain even some degree of insight. It’s a tale extolling the benefits of hard work as well as revealing the consequences of failure, about faith in one’s self and second chances when that faith proves to be not enough. Mostly, my life embodies the idea of life as a gift full of endless possibilities. The trick of it all, I like to say, is in the trying.
Granted, the story of this life isn’t of great importance to many, but for all that, it still has meaning to some. To my wife, to my children and hopefully to my current and future grandchildren, and to all the friends I hold dear.
The rest of the world think what it may, I hope these people see that this endeavor to record my memoirs is not an exercise in ego. In fact, I was burned and scarred by the battles of ego that took place throughout the story I share, and I attempt to stand today as a humble human, better than few and luckier than most. I hope instead to record those battles, as well as the triumphs and tragedies, the pain and the joy, the mistakes made and lessons learned so that this audience of people I love and admire can perhaps learn something, too.
Learn something about life? Perhaps, and if so, that would gladden my heart.
Learn something about this person (their friend or father or grandfather)? I hope so, because we all so often take the people we love for granted. It’s a well-known saying, but it becomes more painfully obvious as we age. So many of us think the people we know and love will always be in our lives — or we take them at face value, not delving beneath everyday interactions to look at the true heart of the person. Of this, I know that I am guilty.
As I was gathering my thoughts and planning this book, I remember a very specific day in February. I looked at the date and the thought struck me, “Dad was born almost 100 years ago just today.” My dad, my father, who has been gone for many years.
I think about him a lot now, perhaps more than I did when he was alive. Then, after all, he was just a phone call away. Thoughts of him resonate deeper with me now that no connection is possible.
I think that children miss their parents more after they pass away that they will ever experience while the parent was alive. The absence of physical distance is nothing compared to the vast canyon of metaphysical distance caused by death.
Personally, I have a sense of regret that I didn’t know Dad better. He told great stories and gave me wonderful advice in his time, but whenever we sat down to talk, I never thought about the important questions to which I still didn’t know the answers. Those questions only come up when the opportunity has passed, and I’ve always wished that there was some way to reconnect to the man, something left on Earth that could speak for him.
Me, my father before me and his father before him; my children and their children after them: In some ways, our lives will be inevitably similar. All people, we live our life in stages. In the first stage, we worry about ourselves. All of our thoughts and actions center upon what we need and desire and must do, and that’s only natural. Then we grow into the stage where we think about our families: our spouses and our children. We devote a good part of our lives to making their lives better instead of our own. Then, that focus shifts to your children’s children as the stages of life continue to change, but the shifting inevitably ends the same place, where you sense your own inescapable mortality and ask the question, “What has it all meant?”
The idea that gets us through these stages, in my opinion, is knowing that we at least left a little bit of legacy in our wake, a little something that will perhaps improve the lives of those that continue on. My father left many different legacies, but I still find myself craving his wisdom in the present. Therefore, I hope that this project to record my life can for my family alleviate that feeling of lost or wasted time I harbor for my father. Hopefully, the project will create this book to stay behind after I have gone.
A while ago, I was riding with my grandson REDACTED in the car, taking him to his basketball camp. He was almost nine and, as always, a source of pride for all the family, just like his sister. The car radio was on, and the song “Dust in the Wind” by the band Kansas.
“What does that mean to you?” I asked REDACTED. “What do you think that song means?”
He looked at me with calm, clear eyes and said, “It means that all people die, Grandpa.”
It was one of those moments where you are struck by the wisdom of children, by how much they already know about the world. I was surprised that he not only knew about death but took it all in stride in that way. Perhaps he can because it’s a far-off concept for him.
For me, the idea is not so distant.
I replied to REDACTED, “That’s right. That’s why we have to enjoy every day that we have and be happy.” And I hope he takes that to heart, in ways I didn’t fully when I was a younger man.
