Tag: hope

purpose

I need to find something gratifying to do with my life.

Despite some recent emotional ups and downs I must concede that my life is going fairly well right now. My health is excellent, which is paramount to all else. My numbers are perfect, my Doctors are nothing less than thrilled with the performance of the new kidney.
I have been working hard all summer. This is satisfying on more than one level; I am pleased that my body had risen to the task of long days and physical exertion. 3 years ago I was nowhere near able to do what I have been doing this year. I really feel great.
Additionally, I have really built up my savings. While I am nowhere near financially secure, I was destitute not terribly long ago.
Because of my financial improvement, I am about to get a very large monkey off of my back. I am moving out of mom’s house. This is bittersweet because I really like it here. It is a nice place. I’m surrounded by beautiful country, the people are nice, and my mother and I really get along well. Still, I have yet to embrace the notion of a man my age living with his mother. It’s something I can’t get past.

I am moving in with a friend next month. He’s a good friend. He welcomed me into his home when it all fell apart in 2016. I had to move when I got real sick but he has welcomed me to return. He is being very fair with the rent as a favor to me. He is looking forward to the company as well. We are doing a podcast together as well as tossing around some other ventures and getting in the same room should yield some positive results. The biggest bonus, the driving force behind my wanting to move is that I will be closer to my children, friends and my Masonic community.

Yes, all is going well. I have put the desire for a companion on the back burner for now and it feels like the right decision. I have only one thing left to feel semi-complete. I need to find something that is gratifying to the soul. When I promised the Universe that I would give back as often and as generously as I could in exchange for the gift of another chance I meant it. When I was working with addiction clients I was living up to it. Unfortunately, I had to stop that. Now I need to find something else. Either as a part-time position or as a volunteer.

I am only happy when I feel I am living a life of purpose.

Driving myself

*this post is a continuation of a story. It will stand alone in many ways but for missing context please go back a few…*

I was home 4 days after my transplant surgery. Everything went well and the efforts that I made to keep my weight down and stay in shape paid dividends in my recovery. I have always bounced back fast from the myriad of health obstacles that I have encountered but this time I was in a lot of pain. Being released on the condition that I come back for bi-weekly appointments, I was disappointed that on my first visit I was unable to walk from the door to the transplant wing. I actually needed a wheelchair. The pain would continue to be severe for several weeks but my recovery was nothing less than stellar.

For the first week, I wasn’t permitted to drive myself. I was so relieved to not have to burden family with the long ride to the hospital twice a week so I took the long way to get to the highway. The first place I passed was the rundown convenience store that Vinny had bought. As luck would have it Vinny was outside surveying the property. I stopped, rolled the window down and said hi. He seemed very happy to see me.

We talked for a while as I brought him up to speed on all of the amazing events that led up to my surgery. I thanked him for reaching out to me. He told me that he was so happy for me, what a great story it was and how it affirmed his belief in God. It wasn’t long before he asked me if I thought that I would recover well enough and in time to come to work for him when he opened. I asked him what his time frame was for opening. He estimated 6-8 months, putting us at between March and May. I told him no promises, but I should be. He wasn’t holding me to anything, he said. He wanted me to take care of myself and we’d see where it went. He made a tentative offer of employment. No discussion of pay, hours, etc., he just wanted to gauge my interest level. I told him we’d talk soon. That was good enough for both of us. I drove off, I was on the verge of being late.

6-8 months, I thought, just the motivation I needed to make a (another) kick-ass recovery. As they say, it was on.

Glimmers of hope

My daughter is doing a little better. Although I think her mother would disagree with me on that. The big picture is that she has been struggling emotionally. Mostly with body issues and self-image. While I have not seen an official Diagnosis, we believe she has Anorexia. Which terrifies the living shit out of me. Her mother is terribly worried about her, as am I of course. But her mother chooses to lash out and dwell on her behavior as it affects her, while I choose to offer a kind ear, an open heart, and advice when solicited. We’ve had many discussions and we are clearly not on the same page about our youngest. I believe my ex-wife is quick to fatalism and slow to open herself up to the possibility that maybe she needs to suck it up a bit and tolerate the “acting out” and not make it about herself. That’s just her. A black and white type person who sees all of the bad.
Me, the Pollyanna ex-husband, I see glimpses of her improving and I choose to focus on that. While once dreadfully thin and refusing to eat, she is now eating. Not necessarily enough and it takes weed to give her an appetite, but for now she’s eating. As for her depression, she had the motivation to make changes in her life recently and with my experience in depression, any effort to improve one’s life is an improvement and a very good sign. With my support and that of her girlfriend (I guarantee that I just violated some law of pronouns, but Sar will forgive me because she knows that I like her a lot and mean well) she is doing well enough for me to see glimmers of hope. I have to see hope and authenticate it because my daughter means the Universe to me, and I will do absolutely anything for her to get better. One glimmer of hope, she got a new job.
Change is good.

I was pleasantly thrilled when she sent me a copy of her Indeed resume. She wanted my input. I liked it. For a person with a limited background (she’s 20 and all she has done so far is babysitting and retail) she described herself well. Soon after, she had an interview at a car dealership. The job description sounded like a “greeter” position but it turned out to be sales. I was pleased that she was not deterred by that. She saw the earning potential and knew that she had the personality for sales. Her mother thought it sounded awful, I don’t see the harm. Let her try it; worst case scenario she hates it and then knows what she doesn’t want to do with her life. Best case scenario she crushes it and learns to believe in herself. With a base salary plus commissions it is certainly worth a try. An additional bonus is that it is the type of dealership that the managers will do anything to help their associates so if she gets a customer interested they will make it happen for her. At least until she finds her way.
Sales is tough.
But she has an ace in the hole. Her Dad is a former legend in the business and I’m going to help train her.
She’s in orientation today, her first day and she likes it. Once she learns the company itself, the real training will begin.

I couldn’t be happier for her as she embarks on this new journey, and I hope that I can take it with her.

Trees

Sometime in the near future NASA is going to reveal that they have found the center of the Universe.

A lot of people are going to be crushed to find that it’s not them.

I am growing so incredibly frustrated with the materialistic, self-centered, selfie society we are becoming. Rampant consumerism has a firm choke hold on the throat of moderation.
Savings have dwindled, debts have soared, and landfills are heaping with the scraps of our throwaway mentality.
Self-obsession and promotion has become the new normal. We’d rather film a person beating beat up then stop to help them.
We are becoming too power obsessed, fighting for our little scraps and destroying everything in our path in the process. I fear that we are losing our humanity.

While I always tried to avoid participating in such a life, I was forced to live along side it. Fortunately, in the downsizing of my existence I was able to walk away from it completely. Once free from the pursuit of a larger everything I have embraced normalcy. I have welcomed my average. I celebrate, and surround myself with the regular. And I have never been happier.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Great Outdoors, starringJohn Candy and Dan Aykroyd. They are in Canada on vacation, sitting on a deck overlooking a lake. Dan Aykroyd, a materialistic businessman, goes off on a tear about what he sees when he looks out over the water. He describes a vision of future Industrialization, urban sprawl, forestry, and medical waste dumps. John Candy’s character is a simple man, and when asked what he sees, replies
“I just see trees.”
He is then summarily insulted for being short-sighted and simple. Sorry to say, but that’s me, I just see trees.

In order to appreciate the world we have to take our eyes off of the screens and look up and around. We need to appreciate the power and beauty of nature. The beauty is everywhere, the power rearing its mighty head unpredictably. Both manifest in subtle sights and awe-inspiring displays. The flight of the bird, starlit nights and sunsets, the reflection of foliage on the still waters of a pond on a late fall afternoon. Such sights fill me with wonder and give me cause me to question my place in the world and to seek a spiritual connection to the Universe.

The looming mountaintop, the endless horizon seen from the beach, the mighty Oak, the rushing river, wind tearing through trees, waves crashing and receding with a massive riptide serve another purpose entirely. They remind me of how small I really am in the grand scheme of things. Instead of being intimidated, I embrace my smallness. I recognize my relative size and overall significance. No man is a match for the tide, despite his wealth, power and amount of Instagram followers. Man is only a force in, not of, Nature when he embraces his fellow man. But instead of coming together as an advanced society we have drifted apart and we are regressing. Our humanity is what makes us great, the increasing lack of it is destroying us.

This is a call for humility,
A wake-up call to recognize and embrace our smallness.
A damper of ego and hubris.
For less stuff and more quality.
Less interaction and more connection.

To just see Trees…

the dynamics of hope

“Have you ever thought of harming yourself?”
My favorite question of the Hospital admitting process by far. In the many times that I have been asked this, especially lately, I have answered with a knee-jerk and resounding “no”. Thursday, before I could stop myself I said yes.
My first reaction was to try to backpedal, but then I said Fuck it and went with it. Let’s face it, as little interest I had in talking to a hospital therapist or clergy, I hated the thoughts I had been having more.
The Social Worker entered my glass enclosed room mere moments after I said it and began asking me a million questions. I was guarded and tentative at first about answering. I wasn’t raised in a “talk about your feelings” type of household. I could better describe it as a “suck it up Buttercup” environment. Courtesy prevailed, however, and I endured. Apparently, my answers failed to raise any major red flags with her and after a declined offer of clergy or further discussion she left without incident. I closed my eyes and braced for the next shoe to drop.
“Hopeless”, the nurse exclaimed.
I opened my eyes. “What?”
“Sorry”, he said. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”
“I’m listening”, I said.
“You don’t want to end your life, you are just failing to find things that make you want to keep going.”
Wow, holy crap and WTF. He nailed it. We talked about it until he had to move on to his next patient.

I have NEVER been a suicide-minded person. I have also never considered myself a “happy” person I have perpetually danced on the edge of happiness and what I lack in joy I make up for in positivity and perseverance. I have never hated life and I have a huge problem with the selfish nature of suicide. I believe that if somebody doesn’t want to go on they don’t have to, but I also believe that it doesn’t end the pain, it only passes it on to the living.
But those dark thoughts have been creeping closer lately. The days are shorter. The sunlight is being coy. It’s cold. I’ve been in constant pain and sick more frequently. I live in a touristy area and it is the wrong season. I’ve spent many 3 AM’s sitting on the side of my bed, head in hands, looking for reasons to go on.
I’ve been in a bad place and couldn’t get out of my own head. I’d forgotten about hope.

I need to figure out how that happened and make sure it never does again. Did I just forget that I have children who love me? Friends that want me around? The good times yet to be had? The amazing and beautiful woman that has come into my life when I believed I would be alone forever? The gorgeous sceneries yet beheld behind the bars of my new Harley? Most important, have I forgotten that even if I’m not needed as badly as I, and all fathers I suppose, once was does it mean that I am not wanted around? All of these things are contingent on looking forward to tomorrow with a fresh and hopeful outlook.

I don’t know what happened to all of these things but I’m going to spend this current visit working on that list of things that await me when I get home.

I have NEVER projected hopelessness before and I don’t plan on doing it again. Hope springs eternal, pain is temporary, life is precious and death is permanent. I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to refresh my outlook before it was too late.

Suck it up, Buttercup. You’re better than this.


Touching the moon

“Closer”, the father said to the boy.
The boy dutifully moved to his father’s instruction. “Better?”
“Yes, now stand on your toes and reach as high as you can.”
Again, the boy obeyed his father. “Am I touching it?”
“Yes, son. You are.”
There was a audible click as the camera snapped the photo of his index finger touching the full moon that he and his family had been admiring at the end of a wonderful family day on the beach.

For a short, magical time the boy actually believed that he had touched the moon. After all, there was a picture in the family album of it. But eventually he realized that it was only an illusion.

Many years have passed. Now an adult, he sat on the wall of the beach at low tide and looked longingly at the sky. It was his favorite spot, it made him think of his father who was long since deceased. He dwelt on the notion of happiness, in particular the distinct lack of it in his life. This spot represented the best time of his life. He stopped short at actually saying happiest, he had always believed that he had never achieved “happy” in its truest form.

Especially lately. The young, spirited and curious young boy that had grown into a bright, artistic if not aimless young man had married a woman that he thought he loved, but their life together was tumultuous and ended badly. He emerged from the marriage broken and disillusioned man. What his marriage hadn’t robbed him of was consumed by his illness. But he had one trick up his sleeve, his only one, his ability to put on a “happy”(there’s that word again) face and along with his already perfected “optimistic” face and his proven “I’m fine” face, his gallery of feigned emotions served him well for a very long time.

Until now. Although he could never recall being happy, he knew what it was and knew he didn’t have it. He had come close to it several times as he enjoyed the wonderment of his young children. Other than that, he felt that he was a stranger witnessing his life through a looking glass. Close enough to be there but just out of reach. It would have been bad enough to feel like a stranger in his own world, but it had metastasized. He was now a truly joyless creature.

He reflected on his new existence, courtesy of the recent events of his life bestowed upon him by his now life-consuming chronic illness. He wondered when the social extrovert he was notorious as became more comfortable being alone. When did his body become so weak that it immediately dismissed his (still) sharp mind’s desire to do things? When did he become the guy who stopped making plans because he knew he would probably cancel at the last minute? He wondered why he goes to bed early to rest up for nothing, to then get up early to get ready to go nowhere? When did he stop hoping that the next day would bring better things, a miracle of sorts to end the nearly endless cycle of clinic sessions and Medical appointments? Short of stopping to pat the head of a stranger’s dog, he rarely even smiled anymore.

He was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Tired of being strong for everyone and draining his precious remaining energy in the process. Most of all, he was exhausted from making a fake smile and telling those that loved him that he was ok and that things would get better. Only one person was being strong for him. And she was so far away. As far away as the moon.

He hadn’t noticed that the sun had set. He had brooded throughout the very sunset that he went to witness. In the sun’s place stood a magnificent full moon. A moon so bright that it boldly stole the sky for its own glory.

He recognized a metaphor in his musings and the beautiful coincidence of a full moon just like the one his beloved father had photographed of him at this very spot when he was a boy. The moon was just like happiness. He could see it, feel it, admire its beauty. He could even reach with outstretched hands and appear to touch it. But in reality, the cruel harsh mistress that she was, both were in fact light years away and the appearance of touching either was just an illusion.

Rest well, my Brother

“The roll of the workmen has been called, and one worker has failed to report”.

I dutifully hung my head as the familiar dialogue of a Masonic Funeral was read. I’d been in many Masonic funerals in my years as a Freemason. It is a beautiful ceremony, the same one performed for George Washington, and a show of respect for the fallen brother and a glimpse for the family into the ways of the fraternity the brother’s family never saw. They always make me sad, but this one really hurt.

This brother was also a very close friend whose loss I know I will feel for a very long time.

I first saw Adam from across the room at a meeting. The first thing I noticed about him was the absurdly round face. I observed that he was heavy, but his face was bloated beyond that. When he stood up I could see that he was in pain. This man had a story to tell.

As the room cleared at the end of the meeting I saw the small crowd gathered around him. Handshakes, hugs and greetings abounded, it was obvious that he was a beloved member of the lodge. I made a goal of getting to know him.

During cocktail hour I walked across the room and introduced myself. Never one afraid to approach a stranger, I stuck out my hand.

“Greetings, Brother. My name is Bill”. He stuck his hand out, “Adam.”
And thus began a beautiful friendship.

Adam had joined Freemasonry at the suggestion of his father. It was suggested that he would make friends, enjoy the fraternal bond, if nothing else to have something to do to get his mind off of his problems. He had many, chief among them being a Cancer survivor.

Adam was diagnosed at the age of 30 with Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a highly aggressive cancer with a very low survival rate. Newly married, with a flourishing career and a young son, his life came crashing down. He survived, thanks to the wonderful gift of a bone-marrow transplant from his brother. It was an agonizing, extremely painful surgery for both, but his family continued to make every sacrifice they could for him.

A year later, Adam was living with his parents, sleeping in his childhood bedroom, a mountain of prescription bottles at his bedside. Divorced and friendless because his wife couldn’t handle his illness and his friends stopped calling him. Seeing his son every other weekend was the only glimmer of hope for him, he would tell me one day, keeping him from taking his own life.

I learned part of his story from mutual friends before he and I actually spoke of his travails. As our friendship blossomed he gladly told me the rest. Over lunches, cocktail hours at the lodge (his lodge, that I joined to spend more time with him) and hanging at his house he would tell me the stories about the events that led him to this point.

He was grateful for his new friends and humbled by the support of his new brethren. His father had been correct. His father was a 50 year Mason when Adam entered the fraternity and his father was enormously proud. His mother proudly beamed at the results his new circle had created for him. I vowed to be one of the best friends he would have.

Adam didn’t just take friendship, he gave it back. When he learned of my health issues he became one of my biggest advocates. He spent time at home on his computer researching possible treatments being developed, texting me his findings and always checking in to see if I was eating right, taking my meds, or just to see how I was doing. It isn’t lost on me to this day how someone who felt like garbage almost every day could manage to check up on me, and all of his friends for that matter, to see how we are. He was a special friend.

In the course of our friendship Adam had a rollercoaster of health challenges. On a flight to St. Louis he contracted a virus that caused him to spend 7 weeks in the hospital. He almost died, but he pulled out of it. He had two knee replacements, a hip replacement, a pacemaker and was hit by two more staph infections, one that required removal of both knee replacments. At the end of all of it, there he sat with his absurdly swollen face, a result of a massive amount of steroids and other medications. He was a fighter like no other I have never met. As his Facebook announced another setback, myself and all of his friends had faith that the tough sonofabitch would bounce back and smile that huge smile again.

This past December, Adam met a foe he couldn’t overcome. Another staph infection that the Doctors, despite their Herculean efforts, could not pull him out of. He was forced into a medically induced Coma at the end of January.

I found out too late, for some reason his father’s FB wasn’t showing on my newsfeed and by the time I knew it was too late to visit him. Had I been sitting next to him he wouldn’t know I was there. All of my prayers from afar wouldn’t change it. His parents thanked me for my friendship and support, I knew in their voices they had given up this time.

He died a few days ago.

I miss my friend. I regret not being able to thank him for his unwavering friendship and his eternal optimism. His selflessness in the face of adversity that would cause so many to wallow in a pool of self-pity. He was an amazing human being.

As I stood silently in a moment of prayer, I was flanked by dozens of brothers who knew Adam as I did. We all knew his family. We all knew the efforts he made for our lodge as he took different assignments to keep himself productive, a concept that meant the world to him. We all knew what a loss we had experienced.

I waited patiently as the procession slowly entered the funeral parlor, each waiting our turn to place a sprig of evergreen, a masonic symbol of the eternity of life, on his simple coffin. A rare tear fell onto my cheek, one of many that would fall that evening.

He is resting now, his pain is gone. The irony of it is that the cure for his disease killed him. If he were here right now he would laugh at that line, we shared a morbid sense of humor. Sharing the burden of Chronic Illness, we knew that laughter is the best medicine. I want to laugh at the funny exchanges we had over the years. I can still see his big, round face that initially caught my attention. The smile that shone through some tremendous sadness, the face of a truly great person.

Rest well my friend, I hope to see you again someday in the Celestial Lodge above that we, as mere mortals hope to achieve at the end of our journey.

Just jot it Jan # 24–Zoomie

Zoomie – #JusJoJan 2019 Jot #24

Your prompt for JusJoJan 2019, January 24th is brought to you by Bee! Click here to find her last post and say hi while you’re there! Bee’s word for our prompt today is “zoomie.” Interpret it any way you’d like, and use it anywhere in your post or make it the theme of your post. Have fun!

I’ve been away from the blogging world for a few days. That old “life” thing is getting in the way. But I took on this challenge to ensure that I write something every day so I’m going to make up each day that I missed.

Right now I find myself in the dead of winter. It’s cold, very cold. Everything is frozen. There is not a lot to do where I live and on top of everything, despite my beloved Patriots being in the Super Bowl I am dreading the month of February. It will be a long, snowy, cold and football-less month.

But…this is a big But (I love big buts…sorry had to), I look forward to Spring. With chronic illness being a daily obstacle and a recent near-death experience in my rear-view mirror I have begun to set manageable future goals to give me something to, well not trying to be morbid here, something to live for.

One thing I plan on doing is riding my new Motorcycle. I bought it in the fall to have something to look forward to in the Spring. The anticipation of riding it has carried me thus far through the winter. It gives me hope of enjoyment, of freedom, of reveling in nature’s wonders with the wind in my face and bugs in my teeth.

I am going to attack life when Spring hit with such a vigor that it won’t be just fast…it will be damn zoomie.

3,2,1…Hope

I have again been invited to participate in a quote challenge. My participation in such challenges is spotty at best but I want to introduce you to Lisa @ All About Life. She has a great blog. She’s very positive in her posts, interesting, a loyal follower, great commenter and a all-around cool chick. If you read her, you will want to follow her. Thank you Lisa for the challenge.

Today’s topic is Hope. A perfect topic for me to discuss. My entire life centers around it. I walk this earth with the belief that things are one way or the other. I have been called “Black and White” many times in my life and it wasn’t a compliment. I never backed down from it. I believe in absolutes, especially in matters of attitude. One thing that has always sustained me, that has drawn the respect and admiration of my peers, is my optimism.

When you are chronically ill you really have only 2 choices in how you approach life. Negative or positive. You either dwell on your situation and ask “why me”? or you deal with it by getting through the hard days, rejoicing in the good days and always, always look forward to the time when you will feel better every day. Even if that day never comes…live life as if it will.

I can think of no better way to discuss hope than to showcase my favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption. If you haven’t seen it, the nuts and bolts of it is a innocent man sentenced to life in a brutal prison. Can you imagine being innocent, jailed for life and screaming with all of your being that you don’t belong there? How long must a day be, what motivates you to get up and live with that crushing weight on you?

To start things off, the best quote of the movie is
Quote # 1

Andy Dufesne

Doesn’t this say it all? While it doesn’t explicitly have the word hope in it, it is the true essence of hope itself. This is my philosophy in a nutshell. Negative vs positive, backwards vs forward. Optimism, hope itself is a choice. The choice you make will determine your path and how others perceive you. I choose to get busy living because, even if I was in prison, I would always believe that I would be vindicated eventually. The truth always reveals itself and I would want to be there when it does. I choose to get busy living.

“Red”


This is the flip side of hope. When you look at your situation and determine that it is indeed going to define you and therefore hope is fruitless. In this case Red has resigned himself to being institutionalized for life. The walls he used to challenge had begun to give him security. The idea of a life outside of those walls became a fantasy, one that became dangerous. It challenged his reality. My only challenge to this, and again I have never been faced with such circumstances, is that one never knows the future. If you aren’t open to the possibility that tomorrow may hold a surprise then you reduce the likelihood of it happening. In this case, Red was paroled and he was suddenly faced with a whole new set of “hopes”. Ones that were once impossibilities became his new reality.

“Hope springs eternal” is a popular saying. There is a caveat…you need to be open to it. Choose hope. Don’t complain. Noone needs to hear it, it accomplishes nothing, and at the end of the day that may be how you are remembered. 

You don’t want that.

I’m not going to nominate anyone, but feel free to play along. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Why me? Why NOT me?

“Listen carefully, Billy”, my Grandfather said. He looked me straight in the eye.
“I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.”
“What does that mean Grandpa?”
“It means, Billy, that you should never complain because there is always someone who has it worse than you. Be happy with what you have.”

I was a young boy when he said that to me. I don’t remember what I was complaining about but after that exchange I learned that men, men like my Grandfather, don’t complain.

Have I complained since then? Of course, it happens. But my brain immediately flashes back to that quote. And shuts me down. It has served me well, in fact it was one of my greatest life lessons and shaped who I am today.

People often told me during the height of my Illness that my positive attitude, and crippling denial, inspired them. I wasn’t waking up with the intention of inspiring others, I was just listening to my Grandpa. I was keeping my kids from worrying about me. I didn’t want to burden anyone.

People tell me now that my jokes and overall positive attitude about my current situation helps them. How else am I supposed to be? Should I complain? It’s not my style. It’s not becoming of a man. And nobody wants to hear it.

Why?

Because someone always has it worse. I know it. I’ve seen it.
I have friends who have lost children at the toddler stage to cancer.
I’ve been to Children’s hospital in Boston and read books to children who would never leave that hospital.
There are families everywhere dealing with dead children, wounded Veterans, mental illness, MIA’s and POW’s, gun violence, terminal illness, no Health Insurance, pending bankruptcies, the list just goes on and on.
They all have it worse than I do.
Most of them wish they, or those that they lost, were only on dialysis.

I’m strapped to a dialysis machine 3 days a week. So what? I’m alive. It may kill me, and then again, I may get a donor. It could be always be worse. One thing I have learned in my 53 years of walking this green earth is that I’m not special, I’m just a cog in a great big wheel. I never say Why me?
Why not me?

I have always said that where I am is where I am suppose to be. That applied wherever I was. Why isn’t it feasible that I am right where I am supposed to be doing what I am supposed to do at this moment?

I was given a brutal reminder of this tonight when I got a call from my friend Steve. I met Steve when I lived in an apartment complex as my family tried to bounce back from the foreclosure. We were instant friends. We hung out often and had a lot in common, in particular crumbling marriages and the love of our children. When he got divorced and moved, we stayed in touch.

Steve became very ill after he moved. His diabetes, once under control, had destroyed his liver. He needed a transplant. When I had mine, he was the first friend to visit. He had questions of course, but he was there as a friend.

Flash forward a few years. Steve was deteriorating. It was affecting his job as a Teacher. He was missing work and couldn’t find a balance in his meds, the side effects were destroying him. Soon after, a group of Teachers that praised him to his face went on to stab him in the back. He was forced to defend his ability to enlighten young minds to a committee of people who wanted him gone. After suing the Teacher’s Union he claimed a meager, insulting settlement and he walked away with his dignity in his pocket. No accolades or thanks for his 20 years of service or retirement party.

Steve lost most of his friends. Or they lost him. He is now pending disability. He just sold his car because he can’t make payments. His ex-wife is taking him to court over child-support he can’t pay. She knows he’s trying without income but wants to punish him. He can barely talk, an hour after he takes his meds he loses control of his voice. He is on a list for a cadaver transplant, it’s his only hope. Unlike a kidney, a Liver cannot be given by the living.

Tonight, I asked if he would drive up and spend a couple of days with me. He can’t because he has to be nearby in case there is a fatal car accident that will produce a proper tissue match. Plus, he has court tomorrow because his ex-wife is not done ripping his testicles from his scrotum.

Steve would love to be me. Right now, I love being me. I have friends and family who support me. My wife acted with dignity and compassion in our divorce. My children love me and will never be a pawn in a big game. I won’t die if I don’t get an organ donation in the next few months.

I worry about Steve right now, he has been a good and loyal friend. I am not worried about me right now at all.
Why?
As sick as he is, he was the one to call me to see how I was doing. How about that?

Were you to ever utter the words “what else can go wrong?” the universe very well may take it as a challenge.