Most of you know I’m a big reader. I’ve mentioned books in my blog often. One of the things I like most about reading is great writing. When you stumble onto a passage that stops you in your tracks and you read it again and again. Something that speaks directly to you in a way you didn’t think possible. Those who don’t love books may not get this. Those who do, certainly will.

This happened to me last night. I’m reading “The Winners” by Fredrik Backman. (More on him at the end of this post.) The quote is “One day you will be one of the people who lived long ago”. Wow! He’s right. The march of time. This probably hit me as hard as it did because since I turned seventy, I’ve been struggling with the thought of aging. What will my legacy be, when I am one of those people who lived long ago?

In my own life, I think of my grandparents as people that lived long ago. three of them died before I was six. My paternal grandmother passed when I was 13. I visited their grave with my daughter, Emma, and she was amazed that they were born in the nineteenth century. Long ago. But they had lives long ago. Busy lives. Important lives to them. They laughed and they cried. They set goals. They bought houses and took vacations. They dreamed of their futures. And now they are just people who lived long ago, remembered by a dwindling handful of people, like me.

We all have our time. Our time to shine and our time to rest. We all have our moments in the sun, our fifteen minutes of fame. We all have our time to share with our family and friends. But in the end, we will all be people who lived a long time ago. The lesson I am learning, almost daily, is to make that time the best that it can be. It all goes so fast.

I hope that wasn’t too depressing! Let me end this post by telling you about my favorite living author, Fredrik Backman. He is from Sweden and became famous with his first novel, A Man Called Ove. I am reading “The Winners”, the final book in his Beartown Trilogy. I am basically living in Beartown this rainy weekend. I never read an author who understands people the way he does. The characters he creates live in your mind and in your heart. If you want to read something from this amazing writer, I recommend starting with “A Man Called Ove”. After you have finished that, you will most likely join me in Beartown. Wear warm clothes.

When my daughter was in Hahnemann University Hospital in Philly, I would take walks around the downtown when she napped. Amidst all of the skyscrapers, along a very busy street, I came across the grave of Benjamin Franklin. His grave is right along the sidewalk. You could reach out and touch it. Arguably one of the greatest Americans to ever live, lying under a slab of marble amidst the soot and dirt and grime of center city Philadelphia. Not my expectation!

Since I’ve started my seventies, I’ve been struggling a bit with expectations. I mean the expectations that I place on myself. At seventy, shouldn’t I be retired? I’m not. At seventy, shouldn’t I be celebrating a fiftieth wedding anniversary with my wife? I’m not. At seventy, shouldn’t I be selling my home at record profits and downsizing to something smaller? I’m not.

I would sometimes get down on myself for where I am at seventy. I’ve been working on that. I have it better than at least ninety percent of the people on Earth. I’m mostly content and happy. My Buddhist beliefs tell me that desire is the cause of all suffering. But do I really desire those things I think I am missing? Maybe a little.

But I have a job that I love, except for case notes and maybe a few, not much fun, clients. I’m mostly happy being single. I can come and go as I please and have to compromise with no one. As for making record profits with the sale of my home. Yeah, it’s hard to put a positive spin on that one!

The lesson I am learning is that I am living my life, and no one else’s. My life is the consequences of the choices I have made. They were my choices and no one else’s. Every life is unique. Not just mine.

I am choosing to celebrate the uniqueness of my life. Celebration over consternation. Bring on eighty! Well, not so fast. Bring on seventy-one!

Not the song by Coldplay! But I do like Coldplay. “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you. And they were all yellow.” I know that is not Clocks, but Yellow. I also know that I have digressed too far. Back to the subject at hand. Clocks.

I was watching a Penn State game the other night and it was a very close, back and forth game. Toward the end, the clock became very important. Would Penn State have the time to mount a come from behind drive? If they do, will Purdue have the time to come right back with one of their own.

Sometimes you will have an appointment and traffic slows and you are not sure if you will be on time. You are driving and keeping an eye on the dashboard clock. You are trying to remain chill and patient, but what if this appointment was an interview. Keep watching that clock, as if that will make it slow down. Most of you readers know that I am a baby boomer and realize that younger generations will not understand this paragraph at all. Not that they don’t have job interviews, but that an 8:00 appointment means anywhere between 7:50 and 8:20. Prove me wrong!

Another vital clock is a woman’s biological clock. That urge to have a child is built into most women. Life only gives each of them so many childbearing years. And even within those years, the later ones are riskier for having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Being a man, I can only imagine what that biological clock is like. Being a counselor, I have been privy to many tales of that incessant natural clock. Having become a father at the age of fifty, I realize I will never fully understand.

Lastly, The dreaded clock of life. We only get so many days. The Moody Blues say 22,000. That countdown clock begins ticking the minute we are born. We don’t really think about that ticking when we are young, because a lifetime is forever. When we hit forty, the thought sneaks in that the ticking is getting louder. I turned seventy in May. Some days I don’t hear the birds singing, nor the brook babbling, nor breezes rustling through the trees. Instead, all I hear is that damn life clock going tick tock, tick tock, TICK TOCK! Luckily most days aren’t like that. My life is devoted right now to keeping those ticks and tocks as quiet as possible. But even on the best day ever, in the background there is always that incessant click, click, click of seconds passing by.

I’ll end this post with another Coldplay reference. Viva la Vida. I used to rule the world!

When your child dies, you become a member of an exclusive club that no one wants to join. You are a lifetime member of that club, because the pain never goes away. The motto of that club could be “what could have been”. That’s what I have been thinking about today. Today is dark anniversary day. On this day, 33 years ago, my first child, Amy, took her last breaths in a Houston hospital where she was receiving experimental chemotherapy. She died as the dawn was breaking on another hot and humid Texas day. She came back home in the cargo hold of an airplane, most likely not the one we flew home on. The sad ending of a long hard-fought battle.

I had a business class in college where we learned about opportunity cost. It’s when you make a business decision and have to give up other things. An example with my counseling practice is deciding to work evenings to get more clients. The opportunity cost is all the fun I could be having on those weeknights if I wasn’t working. Regarding Amy, the opportunity costs were forced upon me.

I lost the opportunity to see her in cap and gown at her high school graduation. I missed seeing her fall in love and date. I missed walking her down the aisle at her wedding. I missed seeing her become a new mother. But it’s not just the milestones. I missed the everyday life stuff too. I missed seeing her relationship with her brother grow as they matured together into adulthood. I missed seeing her interact with her sister, Emma, 31 years her junior. Amy would be 50 years old if she were still alive. She would have loved social media!! We could have talked about music, she never convincing me that Guns n Roses was better than the Beatles. We would have had lots of fun.

The word missed was used a lot in that last paragraph. But it doesn’t even begin to represent how much I truly miss her, even thirty-three years after she left us. As I get older, it seems that her absence is even more pronounced. I’m not sure what that means! Just thinking about mortality, I guess.

On this dark anniversary I will, of course think of her more. I will pull out a scrapbook I made of her life and reflect on what was and what might have been. I encourage all of you to use August 21 as the day you begin to truly cherish those in your life and tell them often, in your own way, how much you love them. You will never regret it.

I read the obits. A few days ago, I saw the death of a Pfizer Slatington co-worker, Paul Stetz. We worked there in the 1970s. My immediate thought was that I have to tell my brother, Gary. He worked there as well. But my brother Gary died last October. The shared memories my brother and I had of working with Paul can’t be shared. They become my memories alone.

That happens a lot in life. Whether it is caused by death, divorce, or just changing life circumstances, we have special memories that we share with others. When that relationship ends that shared memory can no longer be shared with that person. A lot gets lost.

I recently went through old photos. There were a lot there of me and my ex-wife. In our years together we had a lot of memorable experiences. We don’t get to share in reminiscing about those good times. I think of them from time to time. I wonder if she does too. But the pleasure of sharing those memories with her is lost.

I had a friend for many years. I once tried explaining the expression “cutting off your nose to spite your face” to her. My muddled explanation made her think I was saying that if she cut off her nose, she would still be ugly. We laughed about this for years. Now, whenever I hear that expression, I want to reach out and laugh with her again. But she is no longer in my life due to changing life circumstances. Another shared memory, that I have to savor on my own.

Most of you know that my daughter, Amy, died in 1989. She and I spent countless hours, just the two of us, in her room in a Philly hospital. We watched a lot of TV. One day we were watching Wheel of Fortune. The category was Beatles songs, right up my alley. They posted a three-letter word followed by a one letter word and a four-letter word and a three-letter word. With no letters showing I guessed “And I Love Her”. I was right and Amy was amazed. She told every doctor and nurse what I just did. She couldn’t believe it! I would love to share that memory with her right now, but it remains my memory alone.

Interestingly, for those nostalgic among us, and for those of us who treasure relationships, there is some hope. In Croatia, there is a Museum of Broken Relationships. If you have something from a broken relationship, that you think is worth preserving, you can send it to this museum, and they will keep that shared memory forever. I guess I’m not the only nostalgic one out there!

No. I’m not talking about romantic trysts with a beautiful Parisian. Let me try again, foreign relations. Wait, that doesn’t sound much better! I’m talking about my life experiences with people who do not live in the good old USA. Most of those experiences came from a job I had in the 90s that allowed me to travel the world. I got to know real people in real towns, not just tourist resorts. My life has been enriched immensely by that experience.

I don’t travel anymore, much past Pennsylvania, but I get my dose of foreign connections through Facebook. Yes, that evil social media does provide great learning experiences. I have four Facebook “friends” from foreign countries. Three of them I am in contact with regularly. The first is Ana Maria, from Toluca, Mexico. She was our exchange student in 1991-92. She spent her senior year at William Allen High School. She hated it. Three decades later, I still get to learn about her life as a wife and mother in her beloved Toluca.

Next is Vadim, currently living in France. I first met him when he was doing a post doctorate fellowship at Lehigh. He is a physicist and one of the smartest, and funniest, people I know. He grew up in communist Russia. He likes to challenge my thinking every time I show my democratic socialist leanings with a Facebook post. I think we have a good exchange of ideas. That alone makes life more interesting. I treasure our connection.

Alison lives in Melbourne, Australia. We met by playing Words with Friends. I am learning so much about her country through our chats. She is delightful to talk to as we compare the similarities and differences, in politics, culture, geography, and family life, between our two countries. Did you know that you can go for a walk, in her area of Australia, and see kangaroos much like we see whitetail deer here? I didn’t either! I now know what a bogan is. We have them here, but we call them rednecks.

Lastly, and the one I have lost touch with, is Thembo from Uganda. I met him through a friend of mine who did some Doctors Without Borders volunteering in Uganda. I believe he is now living in Canada. He did a lot of work trying to improve the lives of his fellow Ugandans.

Any time we have the opportunity to learn more about other countries, we should take it. It’s a big, wide wonderful world out there. Explore it any way you can!

As most of you know, I hike a lot in Trexler Nature Preserve. Many of my hikes take me past the elk area of the preserve. Indeed, while steep, the Elk Watching Trail is one of my favorite trails there. There are always five elk in the many acred, hilly, grassy enclosure. I’ve come to know them quite well. That is a bit of an exaggeration because I can’t even tell them apart. But I know they like the highest point of the enclosure best and that on hot sunny days they will likely be found in the valley next to the stream that goes through their home. I rarely see them on the move, though in winter I can see their tracks in the snow all over the enclosure. I have been known to talk to the elk on occasion, wishing them a lovely day or warning them about the afternoon’s predicted oppressive heat. Yes, at times, I am a bit of a Dr. Doolittle. As of yet, the elk have not talked back.

I mentioned there are always five elk. Two days ago, something was amiss. And then there were four. A missing elk. I searched high and low within the enclosure, thinking it may be sick and avoiding infecting the others. But she was nowhere to be found. The five were always together, and now there are four.

I’ve tried to think positively about the situation. Perhaps she is sick, or pregnant, and she is being kept in isolation. Perhaps she was sold to another zoo. Maybe she is on the road as the zoo sometimes takes animals to parties and classrooms. It’s been a few days now and she has not returned. Perhaps, sadly, she has died.

This is another example of the things you think will always be the same, can change or disappear in an instant. Surely there will always be Plymouths and Oldsmobiles. Surely baseball will always be America’s number one sport. Surely there will always be Sears and Kmart. I know, I know, I should stop calling you Shirley!

It’s also a reminder to appreciate what you have. The places around you, the things you own, and, most importantly, the people in your life. I wonder if the remaining elk miss their missing friend, as much as I miss people that I thought would always be in my life. Maybe the real Dr. Doolittle could answer that question. Unfortunately, it will remain a mystery to me.

Fourth grade. Mrs. Morgan, one of my favorite teachers ever. The Lincoln Building. A chilly morning. But I wasn’t shaking because of being cold. Today was my day to read in front of the class. I was an introvert way back then too. I hated to do anything in front of my fellow students. But, as much as I hated it, it was my turn. My turn came up about every five weeks. Every school morning it was someone else’s turn. Yes, it was my turn to read the Bible. Anyone under the age of 60, most likely never had to do this in school. Unless, of course, you went to Catholic school.

Of course, I read it without question. It’s what we did. I’m a rule follower. Plus, this was Slatington in 1962. White Slatington. Christian Slatington. Republican Slatington. We all knew the only two Jewish people in the entire town. They owned Kramer’s Shoe Store. Pretty sure no Muslims, Hindus, nor Buddhists. Then, just like that, we get to fifth grade, and we no longer read the Bible in school. The Supreme Court said that forcing kids to read the Bible in public school crossed the boundary between church and state. It was replaced with a moment of silence.

Back then I thought nothing of it. Like I said, I’m a rule follower. Oh, so this is what we do now? Okay, I’ll do this then. But my junior high years and high school years that followed were a time of great change in our country. We were all questioning everything. It was then that I started to care about what was going on in the world and what was going on in our government. It was then that I gained my liberal views that I have kept until this day. I finally realized how important that wall between church and state is. Since I am a non-Christian, it becomes even more important.

I’m sorry about that little political rant in this non-political blog. But it’s important to me. Let me end by saying again how much I loved my elementary school years. The Lincoln Building. Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Kreiss, Mr. Dorward. Even our “specials teachers”, Mr. Garrity, Mrs. Oswald, and Ms. Kane. I even loved the little rituals like the bell to start classes, the handing in our lunch money and money for our school savings account. That moment of silence, and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. Uh oh. Don’t get me started on that last one!

As most of you know, seventy years ago I was born into an already long-established family of six. It was my mom, my dad, and four siblings, aged 12 to 18. I became sibling number five. Yes, I was unplanned. But, happily, here I am.

Being the baby of the family gave me many opportunities to learn from the failures and successes of my older siblings. From them I learned the importance of family, the unfettered love for your children, and that a sense of humor is a life force. I also learned from them that things don’t always go as planned, that life is full of ups and downs, and that aging changes you physically, if not emotionally.

Three of my older siblings are now gone. I learned some important life lessons from their deaths as well. My oldest brother Don, died 23 years ago at the age of 65. He died from metastatic prostate cancer. From his death I learned that preventive care is so important, and that male pride is a killer. He didn’t know he had prostate cancer because he was too embarrassed to get the dreaded digital exam from his doctor. From this I learned that living is more important than male pride. In fact, at 56 I developed prostate cancer myself. An early digital exam and PSA testing has me going strong, 14 years later.

My sister, Jan, died 21 years ago, also at the age of 65. She was, too, a victim of cancer. From her death I learned the importance of family and environment in making death a peaceful transition. When I went to say goodbye to my unconscious sister, I found her lying in her bed, windows open, a calming breeze blowing the curtains around, the sun streaming in. What a peaceful way to enter whatever comes next. Her children made sure this is how she died instead of being hooked up to machines in a hospital, miles from home.

My brother Gary died last fall at the age of 80. He died of complications from Type 1 diabetes. From his death I learned that things can change so quickly, that you can’t take any minute for granted. Even at 80, he was still a vital man. He still got out into the woods. He still took good care of his home. He still was an active member in the lives of his four children, many grandchildren and even a few great grandchildren. And yes, he still was madly in love with his wife, Nancy. Yet, that vitality changed, in an instant, into sadness and despair as he spent his last weeks in a nursing home, far from all the things he loved.

A bit of a depressing post today. But, not really. What do you do with all these lessons learned? You live as full a life as possible. You treasure every moment life gives you. You spread love and kindness far and wide. You tell the people you love that you love them. You go outside and feel the warmth of the sun, and the force of the wind, and the coolness of the rain. You explore all this world has to offer in great books, great art, great movies and TV, and great theater. And after doing all of these things, and feeling content and happy, sometimes it is good to take a nice afternoon nap. That’s my plan for later today. Whatever your plans are, I hope you enjoy them fully.

Last night I went to sleep as a man in my sixties. This morning I woke up as a man in my seventies. I know. I know. It’s just one day. But I am not a fan. I am somewhere between “70, that hulking milestone of mortality” and “seventy doesn’t say what I am, I say what seventy is”. Bruce Springsteen probably said it best “glory days, well they’ll pass you by, glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye”.

I have been doing some self-reflection on this milestone day. I’m going with, I say what seventy is. I say it is going to be smaller. I once had a job where I got to travel the country and the world. In my seventies, I want to explore Pennsylvania. I don’t care if I never fly again. I’m okay with that.

I most likely will never hike the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu (especially if I don’t fly!), but I did get to ride in a hot air balloon. How cool is that? I will never run another marathon, but I can proudly say that I did run one once. I’ll never be married again, but I’ve had my share of those! Like not flying, I’m okay with that too.

In my first seventy years (like there will be another seventy), I have been madly in love several times and I have had almost as many broken hearts. I have had the great pleasure of helping to raise three wonderful children and the sadness and despair of burying one of them. I have been all over the world, but the place and time that means the most to me is my American boyhood in Slatington.

By seventy, you should know yourself pretty well. I think I do. I know how I like to spend my time, reading and hiking and writing. Oh, and watching TikTok videos. I know who my friends are, and I know those who just used me. I know that I like people less and less as I get older. But I am happy with my own company most of the time. I know that kindness, empathy, and compassion are worth so much more than power, status, and wealth accumulation. I know that a passage of excellent writing excites me almost as much as the site of a naked woman did in my younger days. The key word there is almost!

I am in relatively good health and remain active. That leads people, when I say that I am turning seventy, to say “age is just a number”. I hate that phrase. Yes, it is a number, but it’s a frickin’ big number and the number we get is finite. 105 tops, and who makes it that far.

Let me end on a positive note. Won’t it be fun to compare this blogpost with the one I write at 80, and 90!? Happy Birthday to me, this man in his seventies! And to all of you, treasure every single day. They pass you by, in the wink of a young girl’s eye.