When you don't see it coming

The battles in front of you, regardless of their outcome, extract a price far more merciful than the ones you never saw coming.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

I’m in my late 60s. As I have looked back on my life, it’s been impossible to ignore the tumult and turmoil that surrounded much of it. Yet the last thirteen years have been joyful. In most ways, I thought that the peace and happiness I’d found with my family in my later years was proof that karma is real and that the great wheel in the sky was settling the score by seeing to it that it all ended well.

I have been blessed to have been truly happy for so long, something not enjoyed by many. I would not trade this time for anything.

I thought that I knew the trajectory that my remaining years would take. I found out a month ago to this day that all was about to change when I walked out of my house on a beautiful June morning and encountered a stranger in my driveway who handed me a bundle of legal documents. It was literally a lightning bolt out of the clear blue sky. I’ll spare you the details, as I’m sure that you can put together the rest.

This, my friends, is how the world breaks you. It’s not the adversity in front of you that gets you; it’s the hardship that you don’t see coming. It’s when the hurt comes in searing fashion, with the heat of an atom bomb and the finality of an execution, from people you love and trust. It’s the knife in your heart that you don’t even notice going in because it’s so difficult to process what has happened. It’s the realization that trust isn’t always sacred.

Communication through legal documents is enough to crush anyone’s soul. Pages and pages of hammer blows that ring out the impersonal nature of dealing with a highly personal situation. The public airing of the most intimate details of one’s life all laid bare in copies of mind-numbing boilerplate embedded in documents that don’t ever appear to have been copied from an original properly aligned on the copier.

That’s my life right now, and it’s less than great.

To be clear, I don’t want to say anything bad about anyone. All I have is regret. This is a complex situation, and it involves three people I care about more than anything. I’m trying my best to navigate as best I can. Like everyone else, I’m mostly a confused soul wandering the face of the earth, trying to make sense of it all while I still can. This has been a blow. Hindsight, being 20/20, suggests a different course of action on my part for much of the past year. It would have just been nice to have had some sort of heads-up that the A-bomb was about to fall.

Mornings are the worst. There’s a brief period just as you awaken where you forget what’s up. Then it hits you like a ton of bricks—the bad dream that won’t end. Next comes the effort to will yourself into the reality of the day ahead that you cannot ignore. Cowboy up, Gumby. Sleep is the only respite, and it’s dearly earned each night.

The two Christmas trees story nearly did me in. That and the oddest thing: having to change the lock screen password on my cellphone. I’d have rather lost an arm.

Many of you have dealt with something like this at some point in your life. The number of friends and acquaintances who’ve reached out has been a blessing, many of whom have shared stories of their own travails. When it’s your time in the barrel, you really appreciate those who extend a hand in friendship. I’m still the luckiest person that I know, even if my prospects have diminished a bit over the past 30 days. If darkness ever comes to your door, find me. We’ll talk.

I’m going to be OK because I have to be. I’ll put my life back together as best I can and move forward with the pieces that are left. I don’t know what this is going to look like yet, but I’ll figure it out. Every day above ground is a good day. I still believe that, even though it’s harder than it was a month ago.

I will speak of this no more on this platform. I appreciate your indulgence this one time. When writers write, it’s often a form of catharsis.

That’s me, right now.