Day 5

I drove to her rent-controlled apartment yesterday. She was waiting at the security door, White hair pulled back in a wispy bun, lips pursed more from habit than emotion.

“This has been on my mind for ages, and now I’m going to do it!”

Her apartment was sparse and tidy, and I sat the card table that was her dining room. “I’m getting rid of stuff!” she looked at me like I was going to object. “I’ve had it for years, and it’s time to sell it, give it away or throw it out!” I nodded. Makes sense to me.

“And another thing. It’s time I changed my funeral…no one’s coming anyway.”

This is usually an exaggeration. I asked about friends (dead! All dead!), children (never married, no kids) relatives (All my nieces and nephews moved away!) and neighbors (Pah!)

I’m no expert, but I figured her for about 50 at the funeral. Some would come to comfort her niece in town, the rest would be friends. Funerals are very compelling to the elderly, a chance to visit friends you haven’t seen, eat a little sandwich that you didn’t have to buy or prepare yourself, a little bit of company in an empty social calendar.

Money was not the issue for her or for me. She had a modest amount of money set aside with our firm, and considering her circumstances, her desire to not have a ceremony at all would probably be the best for us.

But it’s the hidden motives that always interest me.

“I don’t to have my family to have to travel all this way..it’s a waste of money and why burden my friends?”

Her eyes belied her fear that her family wouldn’t want to come and that her friends might not care to go.

It’s a big conundrum I see among the very old. No one wants to die and no one wants to be forgotten—sort of like hanging around the break room at the old job site…people are polite but they wonder what you’re still doing there.

There are advantages to dying young: a ton of people come to the funeral, and you get a big write-up in the paper. Conversely- if you live too long, people only come for the sandwiches, and you have to buy your write-up in the obit section.

I don’t know if there is any wisdom here.

Maybe this: If you want to go out with a big funeral, quit sandbagging, stay active, meet and mentor younger people, try to be that kind and wise old guy and not the whiny crotchety guy you’d rather be.

And since you don’t know the day you’ll die, you better start today

Day 4

It’s a battle.

And it’s a Marathon.

It’s never easy, it’s can’t be done like magic, it won’t take one easy step, or 2 weeks, or 50 dollars down with no financing.

It is hard, and it hurts, and it’s depressing, and it’s a long climb, but nothing worth attaining is easy, and everything worth keeping is hard.

And here’s a bonus piece of wisdom: Everyone is in the same fight, and it’s hard for them too.

The smiling girl at the checkout, the rich and famous celebrities (especially them), the perfect couple, your boss, the young and beautiful, the old and wise, the rich power brokers, and of course the poor, starving, abused and addicted.

They may have the money, but not the security.

Maybe they have the health, but the 3 maxed out credit cards.

Maybe they have kids and are tearing their hair out.

Maybe they wish they had kids -and are tearing their hair out.

The truth is life is tough – for everybody. Show me a person who has it made, and I’ll find the things that keep them up at night.

I took a job with a great company, and left the one I worked at for 15 years. The great company turned out to have just as many jerks as the old one did, and the headaches were there waiting for me—just different kinds.

I’m glad I took the job, but realized that even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence- you still have to eat it.

So now that you know what the score is, you can stop focusing on the guy in the faster checkout lane, and can start focusing on the blessings (and challenges) God gave you today—and start eating.

Day 4

It’s a battle.

And it’s a Marathon.

It’s never easy, it’s can’t be done like magic, it won’t take one easy step, or 2 weeks, or 50 dollars down with no financing.

It is hard, and it hurts, and it’s depressing, and it’s a long climb, but nothing worth attaining is easy, and everything worth keeping is hard.

And here’s a bonus piece of wisdom: Everyone is in the same fight, and it’s hard for them too.

The smiling girl at the checkout, the rich and famous celebrities (especially them), the perfect couple, your boss, the young and beautiful, the old and wise, the rich power brokers, and of course the poor, starving, abused and addicted.

They may have the money, but not the security.

Maybe they have the health, but the 3 maxed out credit cards.

Maybe they have kids and are tearing their hair out.

Maybe they wish they had kids -and are tearing their hair out.

The truth is life is tough – for everybody. Show me a person who has it made, and I’ll find the things that keep them up at night.

I took a job with a great company, and left the one I worked at for 15 years. The great company turned out to have just as many jerks as the old one did, and the headaches were there waiting for me—just different kinds.

I’m glad I took the job, but realized that even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence- you still have to eat it.

So now that you know what the score is, you can stop focusing on the guy in the faster checkout lane, and can start focusing on the blessings (and challenges) God gave you today—and start eating.

Day 3

It’s good to know who your enemies are.

I’ll name a few of mine:

TV

Cheese Danish

Pride

Your list may be different, but if you’re smart, it will be long and detailed, and you damn well better be hard-nosed about it.

Take TV and me:

I thought TV was my buddy for years: from Saturday morning cartoons, to Letterman at night, to infomercials at 2pm on Saturday. My friends will tell you, if there’s a TV on in the room, there is nothing else going on worthwhile.

One night while I was watching Mindless shows, followed by Mindless Commercials followed by trailers for Mindless Slice-and-dice Serial-killer shows. My 5 year old daughter asked what rape was, and I said “shhh- never mind”- because I was caught up in the plot and want to see which victim would get slaughtered before the next commercial break.

At that moment (well, not then, later when the show was over) I realized I was putting TV over my family, and my ol’ electronic pal was more important then a conversation with my 5 year old, or her education, or really anything about her.

So then and there TV became my enemy.

Calling it what it is helps me draw the line and frame the debate:

Do I send time with my enemy or exercising?

Do I build space for my enemy in the living room or make him stay in the kitchen?

Do I want a big screen HD enemy, or a weak 12” enemy?

Do I want an enemy with 3 channels or 500?

Playing with my kids or watching my enemy get in their heads?

Like I said, most likely your list of enemies is probably different, but the struggle for who is going to control your life is the same:

Write down their names and start figuring out how you’re going to get them.

Before they get you.

Day 2

Today’s my wife’s birthday.

Like a freight train, I have seen and felt it coming, not at 60 miles an hour, so a guy can be seized with panic and start moving, this birthday has been dallying up to me at 5 miles an hour while I have stared at it, mesmerized with the possibilities…a trip!

Jewelry!

Something hand-made!

Each option petering out as the day gets closer and the funds dwindle lower until now, today, I’m left with a card from a grocery store, dinner and a movie, and something practical like a crock pot.

This wisdom I give you each day comes more from my foolishness then from any other source:

Love your mate.

The thought that Love is an emotion is crap. True, love sometimes starts that way, but if left to its own devices, that emotion soon dies away and that is the reason that people start hopping on the 4 year divorce cycle. Real love absolutely requires actions or it is doomed.

Love is patient. Love is Kind. Love does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.

If this looks vaguely familiar, it’s because there’s an excellent chance they read it at your wedding. I know they read it at mine; it’s the verse from the Bible the minister recommended when we couldn’t come up with one ourselves. Mind you I have no recollection of that scripture being read- I was sort of in a dazed, pressurized fog brought on the partly by the importance of the moment and mostly by the 103 degree temperature.

I remember being really, really hot, and watching the minister sway back and forth wondering if he was going to keel over. I also remember my feet hurting in the cheap plastic shoes that came with the tux I rented. Turns out he was also watching me rock back and forth, thinking I was going to keel over. Anyway we both made it, and we both forgot about it. He went back into retirement (brought out only for the moment) and I went out the door gliding on the wings of emotion.

So now I read the words again after 20 years of marriage and I see how hard love is. I see that love is an action statement. Read the sentence above and replace the words with your name:

______ is patient. (are you? When the bozo leaves the socks on the floor for the millionth time, or for crying out loud, how tough can it be to park the car in the garage the right way?)

_____ is kind. (when she asks “how do I look?” can you stop whatever you are doing, and really look, and say “I think that really brings out your eyes.” When he comes home with that end-of-the-day weariness, can you say “thanks for all you do?”)

As I work through the list I see how loving my wife means putting me aside, and putting her first. The more I do that, the more I love her. The more I love her, the happier she is. The happier she is, the happier I am, and then –wham!- I’m pulled back 20 years to those emotions that started the whole thing.

There is an ad campaign for a dating service that talks about “finding your soul mate.” This is dangerous, evil, claptrap designed to make you think that love is easy and effortless.

I’ve talked to divorced people. I’ve talked to widows and widowers. I’ve talked to a couple celebrating 60 years “of wedded bliss”.

And here is the wisdom they share:

1-Love is hard work.

2-Love is also the most rewarding work you will ever do.

Get to work.

Day 1

It is only fitting to start this year at the End.

Today I talked to a dead man.

I’ll call him Ronald. He was up on the 3^rd floor on the hospital in the Hospice wing. 75 years old, oxygen tube to his nose and a really wet, rolling cough. The kind that when I was 10, we’d hawk up and see how far we could spit it. Ronald wasn’t doing that today. He asked the nurse if he was going to die soon. She thought for a moment and said “Not today. I’ll let you know when you’re close.”

She was serious.

He was serious too.

I looked at them both, then got back to my job.

I work for Funeral Homes in South Dakota. I’m not a Funeral Director, in fact I avoid the back rooms of the funeral home and never ask the Directors what is new (they are far too prone to tell me).

Instead, I work in what is called the Pre-Need department. That means I help people plan their funerals far in advance. That fact that I am talking to Ronald today is an accident. The guys at the funeral home were busy (two other deaths) and they needed someone to take this guy’s seven hundred bucks before his girlfriend took it.

I have the trust papers in one hand, and a record guide in the other. The first set of papers makes sure that his seven hundred bucks only gets spent on his funeral. The other set of papers is the reason I’m telling you this:

Plan your End.

I really don’t think ol’ Ronald planned step out into the world and waste his life, his health, his money and his two marriages, on booze, cigarettes and gambling. But he did. The sparse facts I gather that will become part of his file show that he will probably die alone, and for the most part it’s his own damn fault.

The only person who might be at his funeral is his girlfriend, who breezed into the conference one hour late and who between his drowning coughs is asking:

1- How much he has in his checking account,

2- Where his Food Stamps are,

3- Where the title to his pick-up truck is,

4- And if he wants her to have the seven hundred bucks.

I sense a theme.

The only others gathered are the professionals. The nurse, the social worker, and me. Together we will, with the detached care and concern that professionals have, help this poor guy die. Then we will take our collective briefcases, portfolios and medical equipment over to the next guy, then the next, then the next.

Until we get to you.

At some time- some absolutely certain day and time- someone will write down the facts about your life. And the only person who has any real control over what will be written is you.

So today on Day 1, forget about what you’re going to watch on TV, forget about the upcoming weekend, forget about the vacation, the retirement, the marriage, the divorce, the whatever-it-is you’re looking forward to.

Look forward to your death. While you still have some options.

This little bit of wisdom is not mine. I learned it from Ronald.