I was confronted with the worst thing imaginable, yesterday. Worse than The Calamities. Worse than another Yankee loss in the Playoffs. Even worse than–yes–my hair finally turning gray.

A now former, well-thought of friend sent a picture of my new born family from over 50 years ago. It was not asked for, not deserved, and not accepted with the grace and humility you’d expect from the mature me. It’s very existence threatened my contentment and fostered ill—

Who am I kidding…it was really cool to see a snapshot of what life was like 5 decades ago, before smart phones, before the internet, when a car could still be repaired with pliers and a crescent wrench, two adjustable tools with the power to screw or unscrew the world! (“Screw the world” was a slogan from the the radical 60s, a fact unrelated to the featured, fantastically flexible tools.)

The feigned umbrage was the first immediate response to viewing the pic when the mind was shocked into asking “Who in this whole, wide, wonderfully alliterative world wants to add to its suffering by reminding me of the time when the bulk of life was in the visor of my Easy Rider motorcycle helmet, not in the rear view mirror of those cars I used to be able to fix. What was this dubious friend’s endgame, the destruction of my carefully crafted contentment? (Apologies for show-off alliteration?)

It only took moments, however, for the swing of the mind, the arc of reason, to return to how grateful I was to make it through those younger years without major health, romantic, intellectual, and sexual disasters. It was dumb luck kept me free from DWIs, unwanted pregnancies, severe financial losses, and voting Republican. Any one of those catastrophes might have changed the upward line of my life to a flatter delineation, even pointing down, to where–if I remember correctly–some old girlfriends strongly and stridently suggested I go.

The reader can see I’m drifting. Lost the point of today. A successfully, albeit, accidentally, navigated past life is one to be savored, and one should sit back in The Chair and thank a great and all powerful God (of any denomination) for first, giving the gift of life, and second, not taking it away, prematurely. There were deaths in the past of those who did not deserve it, and were often too young to make sense of, but it was never me. I made it.

From that declaration, it’s an easy stroll to the idea of who helped, who made a difference, who cared…and maybe why? An English teacher’s casual remark to an 8th grader. A coaches push to do something different. An ex-girlfriend;s unintended, but hurtful comment. A young doctor willing to take a chance on an out-of-the box reconstruction of damaged body parts. An interesting best friend at the best time. A traffic cop willing to obey the rules of fraternity instead of the law.

I should stop, now and get to The Chair. No telling what else will bubble up, thanks to The Picture…

Yes, thanks.

I am of an advanced age and pretty much remember lots of stuff. Whether the memory is true or not, might never be able to proven. But those memories help a lot.

One of the things we all deal with is the occasional lack of focus, followed by the “Now what do I do?” question. Young people often use the old chestnut “I’m bored.” As thinking human beings, we then add activity to give us meaning or keep us from getting the old chestnut. Once, I spent an entire summer in a small, empty college town for the solitude. Ugh. There was a bar…

So where is the blessing from the title?

In 2023 I was afflicted with what I’ve come to call “The Calamities”. After a vigorous, active life free from major health issues, my apparent lifetime ration of health problems arrived all at once after age 71, as if they had been stored someplace waiting for the right time. The Calamities upended everything and even caused an immigration from the too-warm South to the hopefully not-too-cold North. Hey, just found a blessing: I moved in the spring and was here for the glorious, northern summer. Bad me, I sent many a pic back to friends when the southern heat topped 100 degrees. Bad me.

But the biggest blessing of all is the lack of down time for my brain. Since February of 2022 there have been tests, treatments, follow up tests, follow up treatments, and more follow up tests (for three afflictions), and financial issues to navigate. Even when I sit and recharge in The Chair, my mind never wonders what to do next, or what do I need to accomplish. No boring, wondering, empty time. Every second is spent on survival, including what happens if the treatments work and what happens if they don’t. And how much will it cost me. And where will I get the money. And…and..and…

When first arrived, I asked a friend where to volunteer. He asked me what could I do, what could I tolerate. We soon realized volunteering would have to wait for a better body and mind.

But I still did not suffer from lack of purpose or a lost way.

Plus, drum roll, there is a very big hope for the future…and that chance to volunteer.

How blessed is that?

Sorry about yesterday, but it illustrates, again, how life is–strange. I was sad.

Now, today, I’m not. There have been crises (Yes, that is correct) my entire life, as with most of us. For some reason, though, it’s hard to remember they will pass, life will go on, and often times better than before. If I wrote it on my hand it would wash off, so we’ll see how long it takes to forget if I write it here, because more crises are on the way. That’s life in our older days.

The two obvious differences between a young person crisis and an old person crisis is, one, the potential for a crisis is baked into old age as body parts fail, memory lapses, and young people get noisier. And, two, the time to recover. Much like investing, there is a time when you might not have enough time left make up what you lost. Youth is wasted on the young…

And there’s always the final crisis, the last trip to the hospital. When I worked with an aged population, they knew what going into a hospital meant: You didn’t always come out upright.

A lot of love has been lost in my life, and each time it was not as long as one might think before a new love took the old one’s place. But the recovery was helped by youthful vigor and activity, a “get right back on the horse” mentality. Besides not being able to mount anything now, there aren’t many horses my age around these parts, pardner.

Well, this turned into a complaint about old age, despite how hard I steered the other way. It isn’t wasted time, though, because we remember things better when we write them down. (Proof: See how often I remember that phrase?)

I’ll never, again, succumb to sadness during a crisis.

None, of you should, either.

Yeah. Right. Life, have at us.