Category Archives: Aging

There It Stood

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“Past, present, future, all appeared
In harmony united…” (“Yarrow Revisited”)

—William Wordsworth (1770–1850). English Romantic poet who saw profound meaning in ordinary life, memory, nature, and place.

There it stood, heavy with decades of growth. Ten feet or so tall, even when arching gracefully under its own weight. Five feet or so wide, triumphant on the forest edge. Fargesia Jiuzhaigou. A shade-loving, cold-hardy bamboo that could manage ten below zero.

There it stood, sentinel over the koi—swimming the depths of the little pond—whose mirror-surface broke over and over again as water cascaded down the fall’s mossy stones.

There it stood, softening the massive sandstone rocks that gave the waterfall its heft and that teased the dwarfed hand-hewn, lattice-windowed granite lantern at the top.

There it stood, blocking the view from where we sometimes sat on the little patio facing the pond and everything that stood beyond where it stood on the other side.

There it stood, hugging the flagstone pathway beside it, and bringing into question the path itself and any destiny to which it might lead.

It had not always stood thus.

I remember when it arrived, black-bucketed, six scrawny canes spanning six inches.

I remember when I troweled out a hole beside the koi pond and planted it in the hope that over time its greenness would tower and soften the stone-edged waterfall, the bank down from the forest floor, and even the pathway leading to uncertainty.

I remember when it stood there, dwarfed by Quan Yin—the goddess of compassion, mercy, healing, and peace—standing tall on the ledge jutting over the water’s edge.

I remember when it stood there, intimidated by the jade chīshǒu—a Chinese dragon-head–spouting its melody against the pond’s splashings.

I remember it through all the seasons, through all the glorious and trembling growth spurts and even through all my timid prunings.

And I remember it exactly as it stood on the morning of the very day I came to know it could stand there no more.

“Gary, it’s got to go.”

“What?”

“The bamboo standing there.”

He looked at it, then at me, understandably as reluctant to nod agreement as I was hesitant to undo what had been there for so long.

Gary and I both knew what stood beyond the bamboo and beyond the pathway whose inward curve lay hidden by the outward arching clump.

He and I had spent weeks landscaping all that was unseen on the other side of the bamboo. We extended the dry-stacked rock wall. We pruned the rhododendrons. We mulched the sloping bank beneath and the ground behind, curving the edge and weedwhacking all the way to the woods behind.

We knew exactly how all those changes looked–once we walked our way past the bamboo. And we loved its open spaciousness.

But sitting there on the little patio by the koi pond where we sometimes sat, the bamboo seemed to wrap us—cocoon us—in the protective cloak of a well-established past.

What would it feel like, sitting there without the bamboo?

What would it look like sitting there, without the bamboo but with all that lay behind it and beyond it, exposed and in full view?

“Maybe just prune it back a little?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see once I get started.”

My mind was made up, I thought, and early morning proved it. I set about the task with fierce resolve. Before long, my legs could not be seen beneath the cut canes that surrounded me.

Each time I carried a load to the Gladiator, the bamboo lowered itself closer and closer to the ground. Lower. Less. Nothing.

And in the moment of my final return to where it once stood, the landscape opened before me alive with unexpected potential.

I could see the first stone wall I built there, toppled in part from time and winter’s heavings but still secure in its footing.

I could see the pond’s block foundation stretched over with liner.

I could see tubing snaking its way up out of the pond, up the bank, behind boulders, and into the base of the waterfall.

I could see all the inner workings of a past that had served well but that had, at the same time, outgrown the landscape it was built to enhance.

I could see what needed to be done.

I kept what remained strong. The footing. The block foundation. The boulders too massive to yield to whim. I pulled away what had failed, reset what had shifted, and rebuilt the old wall stone by stone.

The work moved quickly now. Four long slabs of flagstone reached out over the pond, parallel to one another but each at its own height. The exposed tubing disappeared behind stone. Two copper cranes stepped onto the lower ledges. Quan Yin and the granite lantern, no longer dwarfed, took their places in the open landscape.

Then the water ran again. It slipped over mossy stones, fell into the pond, and broke the mirror surface just as it always had. The waterfall was not new, but now I could see its sound.

More than that, I could see where a rich and aged past met a shiny and reimagined present.

I was confident that time’s inevitable patina would marry both.

Standing near where the bamboo once stood, Gary and I could see through the garden now, through it all. All the way through. Clearly.

There it stood.

Always an After

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No “after” has ever failed to come.
—Brent L. Kendrick

And did they know that darkness would fall upon the land and that stars and moon would shine and day would break come morrow?

And did they know that day would become darkness again?

And did they know that clouds would one day cover the sun and rain would fall and the sun would shine again?

And did they know cold and drawing together for warmth?

And did they know hunger, that first emptiness within?

And did they know the first fullness that followed?

And did they know thirst and the sweetness of water?

And did they know weariness and sleep and waking?

And did they know pain?

And did they know fear?

And did they know safety?

And did they know loneliness before they moaned its name?

And did they know the comfort of another body near?

And did they know the wonder of touch?

And did they know desire before they knew what it wanted?

And did they know the heat of flesh against flesh, the urgency of bodies discovering what bodies could do?

And did they know afterward the quiet of lying together?

And did they know love?

And did they know that love would make one human being need another?

And did they know anger and the turning away?

And did they know the silence between them?

And did they know the reaching back?

And did they know laughter?

And did they know tears?

And did they know joy?

And did they know sorrow?

And did they know the swelling of a belly and the waiting?

And did they know the first cry of new life?

And did they know the astonishment of seeing themselves somehow continued in another?

And did they know youth?

And did they know age?

And did they know health and illness and the watching through the long night?

And did they know that sometimes morning would bring healing?

And did they know that sometimes it would not?

And did they know death?

That first stillness.

That first body that would not awaken.

That first calling of a name that brought no answer.

And did they know what to do with the body?

And did they know what to do with themselves?

And did they know that darkness would fall upon the land that night just as it had fallen before?

And did they know that stars and moon would shine?

And did they know that day would break come morrow?

And did they awaken hungry?

And did they eat?

And did they walk again upon the earth?

And did they ever believe–even once–in all their knowings, that there would always be an after.

Flip the Narrative

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“The facts may remain the same. The narrative doesn’t have to.”
—Brent L. Kendrick (b. 1947).

I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again.

Flip the narrative.

You read it right. But I want you to read it again.

Flip the narrative.

When the daily news overwhelms you, flip the narrative.

When technology frightens you, flip the narrative.

When society disappoints you, flip the narrative.

When family and friends let you down, flip the narrative.

When your body reminds you that you’re getting older, flip the narrative.

When life seems to be shrinking, flip the narrative.

When hope begins to flicker, flip the narrative.

And if you think you know what I’m going to say next, I’m making my point.

Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because the daily news is not the whole story. Headlines are paid to interrupt your breakfast, not to nourish your soul. They shine spotlights on what is broken, while millions of quiet acts of kindness slip by unnoticed every single day. If all you read is the news, you will eventually believe darkness has won. It hasn’t. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because technology is neither angel nor devil. It is a tool, and tools have no conscience of their own. We lend them ours. Every generation has feared the next invention, certain it would be the one to finally replace the human heart. It never has. The hands change. The fear stays the same. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because society is more than its loudest voices. Every day, strangers hold doors, volunteers serve meals, neighbors check on neighbors, teachers stay late, and someone somewhere chooses grace over anger. Those stories rarely make the evening news, but they make the world worth living in. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because the people who love us are gloriously, frustratingly human. They disappoint us. We disappoint them. If we measure every relationship by its failures, we will eventually stand alone. Better to count forgiveness as often as we count offenses. Better to remember that imperfect love is still love. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because every birthday steals something and gives something back. Your knees may protest. Your memory may hesitate. Your hair may surrender. But wisdom quietly takes a seat beside you. Perspective grows stronger. Small things become precious. You stop trying to impress everyone and start noticing what truly matters. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because a life that seems to be shrinking is often becoming more focused. Doors close. Dreams change. The horizon may draw nearer. Yet, somehow, the heart discovers that depth can be every bit as magnificent as distance. Sometimes life doesn’t become smaller. It becomes richer. Flip the narrative.

Flip the narrative because hope is not pretending everything is fine. Hope looks reality squarely in the eye and refuses to let despair have the final word. Hope has outlived kingdoms, survived wars, buried loved ones, endured heartbreak, and still gets up the next morning expecting light.

Flip the narrative.

Mallet. Ball. Wicket.

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“There is always one more shot worth believing in.”
—Brent L. Kendrick (b. 1947)

My feet were planted firmly and deliberately on the ground, slightly wider than shoulder width. My body, relaxed and balanced. One hand rested at waist level atop the mallet handle while the other settled lower, wherever comfort and habit had taught it to belong. The mallet hung naturally between my legs, its head poised just behind the ball. I lowered my eyes and followed an invisible line from the center of the ball toward my target. Everything aligned—the ball, the mallet, the distant wicket.

I knew exactly what would come next. With a smooth pendulum swing, I would send the mallet forward, hopefully striking the exact middle of the ball with the center of the mallet head. Just a clean, controlled stroke followed by an easy, unforced follow-through.

Before the mallet could complete its journey, my eyes wandered across the court. It sloped. It dipped. It rose unexpectedly. Grass gave way to patches of dirt. Dirt surrendered to weeds. A ball aimed carefully at a wicket might obey the player—or it might obey the slope. Every shot demanded adjustment. Every turn required patience. Success depended as much on adaptation as skill.

The course occupied a small clearing below the house, tucked among towering trees and surrounded by gardens that had spent decades settling into the mountain. From some spots, the Shenandoah Valley peeked through the foliage below. From others, the trees enclosed the court in a world of their own. Sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead, scattering patches of light and shadow across the grass. No two shots looked quite the same.

A croquet purist would likely find fault with nearly everything about it. The ground wasn’t level. The grass wasn’t uniform. Roots lurked beneath the surface. Gravity inserted itself into nearly every decision. Yet the court possessed a certain stubborn charm. It was not the court one might design from scratch. It was the court the mountain allowed. It was the court that Gary designed, determined to play here on the mountain.

My body remembered this. It had known this posture longer than the mountain had known this court.

To reach that court, I had to climb up a steep flight of concrete steps and walk through a loosely hinged metal gate that opened onto a long expanse of turf, cut close and tight. The starting point was a little way ahead, not far from the double clothesline stretched tight between two iron T’s. It was a narrow yard behind a white, clapboard colonial house across the road where I lived. Looking uphill beyond the fence, I could just barely see the roofline of a small cottage midway up the mountain. Looking to the end of the yard, the grass seemed to end where a fence had once been and where a grove of white pines towered over their needled floor, shading the two-story brick house in their midst.

The court began at the start of the clothesline, continued across the grass, and double-diamonded its way through an expansive and steep pine-needled slope behind the neighboring brick house, where the air turned cool and sharp with the smell of pine. On that court, too, a ball aimed carefully at a wicket might obey the player—or it might obey the slope. Every shot demanded adjustment. Every turn invited improvisation. Success depended as much on imagination as skill.

“You’re taking too long,” Gary called.

The mallet met the ball with a satisfying crack. My burgundy ball started confidently toward the waiting white wicket before surrendering, inch by inch, to the quiet persuasion of gravity.

Gary, shaded beneath his floppy blue sun hat, watched it drift off course and laughed. Beneath the broad brim of my straw hat, I laughed too. There we stood, two old men peering from beneath oversized brims, smelling of sunscreen and freshly cut grass, both convinced that the next shot would surely behave itself.

It didn’t.

Our next shots were even worse. Both balls gathered speed, raced gleefully downhill, crossed the boundary, and disappeared into the weeds. We looked at one another for a moment, then burst into laughter—the kind born of disbelief, optimism, and the certainty that we’d simply climb the hill and try again.

We retrieved our balls, walked back uphill, and tried again.

The older boys—home from college for the summer—were already waiting, mallets in hand. Impossibly slim in their side-tabbed trousers and white T-shirts, bronzed and unworried by the sun, they stood with the easy confidence of boys who belonged to the game. The air around them carried the faint, exotic drift of Jade East. Word traveled fast in a small town. They knew. Before I had even reached the gate, the squabbling began—whose team I would join, whose side would have me. I stepped into my place among them, planted my feet, lowered my eyes to the ball, and looked toward the waiting wicket.

That summer lived inside those arguments over me. I was one of them—not the youngest tag-along, not the kid from across the road, but a player worth having. Damned good, if the squabbling meant anything. The laughter came easily there, too. Cheers rose when a ball slipped cleanly through a wicket. Groans turned into laughter when it didn’t. Before the echoes faded, someone was already settling over the next shot, convinced this one would be different.

The wicket waited.

So did the slope.

So did the laughter.

Hands settled comfortably on well-worn mallets.

Feet found familiar ground.

Eyes followed an invisible line toward a distant wicket.

Everything aligned.

The mallet. The ball. The wicket.

And for one suspended moment, before the swing began, there was only belief that the ball would find its line.

What We Tend

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Dedicated to Gary — I see without looking.

The rake lay across the heart, as if it were Cupid’s arrow. Beads of water gathered on the thermos, upright on the nearby stone bench, right beside St. Francis of Assisi. Leather gloves and pruning shears bore witness to a gardener. Gary.

I couldn’t see him, but I knew he couldn’t be far away because his seafoam, floppy hat was not on the bench with his other things.

I knew what he was up to.

The time had come for him to do what I had done down through the years since I built the garden, filling it in with tons of tan pea gravel and surrounding it with a hedge of Little Missy boxwood.

Early on, the labor of weeding was easy. The pea gravel kept unwanted growth under control and beneath the surface. But over time the Angelina Sedum, filling the two circles in the heart’s upper lobes and surrounding the Magnolia in the lower cusp’s circle, died out but not before leaping over the rings that held them. Small chartreuse-yellow clusters softened the heart but lessened its definition.

Gary, my partner—the man who now shares this mountain life me—was doing more than weeding. He had already restored the flagstone pathway leading from heart to home and back again. Now he was planting healing Ajuga that will settle in and stay within the upper rings, eventually sending up purple spikes. Now he was cleaning, making everything as pristine as the day I finished my handiwork. I sat down on the bench, surveyed the slope, and sighed,

“Well done.”

I never had any intention of building the heart garden. My late partner Allen and I had tamed our mountaintop wilderness with so many paradisiacal garden beds that we had declared a moratorium:

“No more.”

But when Allen died and I reflected on where I would scatter his ashes, as mutually agreed upon, I could not for the life of me decide upon the right spot.

We had talked about resting places on our mountaintop, usually settling on the peony garden. Once, even, Allen suggested the Koi Pond would be perfect, but amid laughter, we both exclaimed:

“Oh, no! What happens when the pond filters get cleaned.”

Then, a few months after his death, he came to me in a dream, his voice carrying into my awakening and lingering there:

“Build my heart.”

I knew where. Near the house, at road’s edge—an untamed area we thought about gardening if we ever gave our moratorium a reprieve.

I had no idea how, but I figured a little math and lots of heart would make it happen.

And it did. I marked off an area twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, sketched a heart with a black water hose, freed the earth of weeds, and blanketed it with pea gravel running deep. For Allen’s celebration of life, I surrounded the heart with SunPatiens, alternating red and white with tears and rain. I bought a wooden Zen rake, perfect for committing Allen’s ashes to the gravel, leaving tracings that mirrored the heart’s design, growing smaller and smaller as the center neared. Later, I planted the boxwood hedge.

Thus, the heart’s beginning.

Time has been kind. But still, the heart needs Gary’s loving care and tenderness. It rests within the landscape, its presence a part of forever.

The morning after Gary finished, we decided to amble down the path, pristinely cleaned and gently curved, with the heart in clear view.

“You go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”

“No. I’ll wait. For you.”

It was peaceful and inviting.

We talked a little less than usual, as the morning chill quickened us and a Northern Cardinal in the treetops above whistled out its own litany of little questions.

“I want your ashes to be happy here.”

They will.

And when Gary’s time comes, I’ll board the train, his weight on my lap, my hands on the box, making his final journey to Minnesota where his story began.

What Goes Unseen

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). American essayist, naturalist, and philosopher whose Walden made him a foundational voice in the tradition of contemplative attention to the natural world.

Not long ago—on a warm spring Saturday morning, I stopped weedwhacking just long enough to rewind the twine so that I could have at it again. While I was at it, I decided to clean the underside of the guard.

That’s when I saw it.

A small, flat blade, tucked along the inner rim of the guard. It was so unassuming it might as well have been part of the plastic. Rectangular. Steel. Fixed in place with a single screw, its edge squared off and purposeful. Not sharp in the dramatic sense, not gleaming, not new—but worn to a quiet efficiency.

It didn’t move. It didn’t need to.

Set at just the right angle, it waited where the spinning line would meet it—again and again—shearing it back to proper length with each pass. No noise of its own. No flourish. Just a precise cut, a limit imposed, a boundary kept.

What struck me wasn’t what it did, but that I had never noticed it doing it.

All that time—decades of weedwhacking—this little blade had been there, keeping things in check. Silently. Reliably. Without ever asking to be seen.

But as I sat there seeing it for the first time, I was drawn—in a moment that seemed mysteriously magical—to a rhododendron in full bloom, its entire orb covered with flowers.

A burst of color rising from the green—full, rounded, almost extravagant—each cluster pressing outward as if the whole shrub could hardly contain what it was doing.
Then a single flower—open and inviting, its petals soft and flared, a quiet architecture of color and form, drawing the eye inward without insisting.

Then a blossom—closer now—where the curves deepen, the colors gather, and something more intricate begins to reveal itself.

And then—at the center—the pistil and stamen. Slender. Reaching. Dusted and deliberate.
It’s the latter I had never quite seen before—stamens bearing pollen, a pistil poised to receive it—the quiet exchange that makes the next bloom possible.

And as I sat there, momentarily mesmerized, I heard the sonorous buzzing of a bee—
thick-bodied and deliberate, its wings a blur against the stillness, its black-and-gold frame pressing into the bloom as if it belonged there, as if it knew exactly where to go and what to do.

It moved without hesitation—dipping, turning, pushing past petal and filament—gathering as it went, brushing against what needed to be brushed, carrying what needed to be carried.
Not for beauty. Not for show. But for the work.

And there, along its legs, dusted and clinging—
pollen.

A thing so small, yet so bold as to carry the world to its foretold future.

How many other things go unseen in life that keep the engines running—

The tightening at the corners of the eyes—subtle at first, almost imperceptible, until something gathers there, waiting.

A glance held a fraction longer than needed—just beyond the ordinary exchange, between two people.

The tug to say less—a quiet restraint, felt rather than reasoned, that keeps a word from tipping.

The faint sense of standing there before—a recognition unannounced.

The deep inhale that comes—slowly, almost deliberately, as if the body knows.

To Mend or Not to Mend, that Is the Question | Poor Brentford Has His Notions

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“Some things serve us best by finishing well.”
— Poor Brentford Lee (b. 1947. Advisor on matters requiring both thread and judgment. Maintains that things well used are best released with gratitude.)

Poor thing. It was just hanging there in the closet.

My favorite purple linen shirt. It was freshly ironed, as it always is, because Gary cares and continues faithfully to press it into presentability even though we both know the collar has grown thin, the threads worn nearly bare, the fabric softened beyond persuasion by years of loyal service at the neckline.

It hangs. Right beside the better ones, right beside the best ones. It still looks handsome at a distance. The color holds its dignity. The linen remembers its authority.

But up close, the collar tells the truth.

There I stood, looking at it, wondering whether I might wear it out in public one more time.

“Dare I?”

I suspected not.

Still, the idea would not entirely leave me. Gary has shown more than once that he knows his way around a needle. I have seen evidence of his skill. A careful stitch here, a thoughtful repair there. Nothing dramatic. Simply competent and reliable.

I couldn’t help but wonder:

“Could Gary save my collar? Could he perform one more act of restoration that would allow me to parade around in public in my old faithful shirt?”

I stood there longer than any sensible person should reasonably devote to a worn piece of linen, quietly debating whether dignity required retirement or reinforcement.

And that was when Poor Brentford arrived.

He did not offer advice immediately. Poor Brentford rarely rushes. He prefers to ask me questions that seem innocent until I attempt to answer them.

“Are you quite certain,” he asked mildly, “that this is a path you wish to explore?”

I did not answer because I knew what direction he was about to take.

Poor Brentford’s memory is longer than I care to admit, even when it comes to fabric.

“Don’t you recall other occasions,” he continued, “when well-intended mending produced unintended outcomes?”

He did not need to specify.

I knew. But I chose to give him that blank stare that always works for me when I feign innocence.

“Remember your sister’s dress?”

Of course, I did. Judy needed something special for an important high school occasion. She had a lovely white dress–a hand-me-down from an older sister. Elegant, well made, perfectly respectable. But what teenage lady wants to wear a dress that has made its public debut already?

“Surely you remember the persuasive talk your resourceful mother gave her?”

“‘Judy,’ she whimpered with soft confidence, “I can transform that dress into something so stunning it will look brand new. A packet of Rit dye is all I need. Pink will be breathtaking on you.'”

Poor Brentford need not have refreshed my memory further. I remembered all.

My mother prepared the dye, immersed the dress, and waited the appointed time.

Judy and I walked out into the back yard with my mother as she hung the dress on the clothesline.

“Oh, Judy. It’s stunning!”

Judy looked, not terribly convinced, even less so when she walked around to inspect the back of the dress.

“Mama! Look! The back doesn’t match. It’s a much deeper pink.”

She was right. The front embraced a gentle pink, while the back pursued a darker vision of the same dream.

Judy was crying. I was laughing. And Poor Brentford? He had the nerve to offer encouragement.

“Listen here, girl. Two shades of pink simply mean twice the fashion. People admire originality.”

They did not. But Poor Brentford was not to be undone. To this day I can still hear him applauding my mother’s sincerity all the while admitting that a new dress was what the day—and Judy’s event—needed.

“Stop pining away over your purple shirt,” he ordered as I continued to stand and stare. “Sometimes, some things are best left alone. Have you forgotten Audrey’s sewing machine?”

How could I not remember. My sister had talked about it often.

As a newlywed, she was proud of her sewing skills but lacked the mechanical companion she believed her talents deserved. Rather than come right out and ask for a sewing machine, she mentioned casually that if she had one, she could mend his tattered garments while frugally extending their wearability.

Poor Brentford understood her plight and reminded her:

“A sewing machine is never an extravagance. It is an investment in continuity.”

And so it was. Repairs followed. Patches appeared. Shirts and trousers acquired energetic embellishments that coworkers described—not entirely unfairly—as reminiscent of a coat of many colors.

But the decisive test came when a funeral required that Audrey shorten Bobby’s dress pants. She took careful measurements and made her sewing machine sing. She was certain that she had completed the alteration with seamstress precision. When her husband tried on the trousers, one side was several inches shorter than the other.

Poor Brentford, never inclined toward alarm, regarded the matter calmly.

“Length,” he observed, “is sometimes a matter of perspective.”

Audrey made every effort to restore balance. She even added fabric at the bottom, but she could not hide the seam that was required to extend the length. Her husband never made it to the funeral, but he never forgot the trousers that he never wore.

By resurrecting these two historical family moments, I knew what Poor Brentford was doing. He was reminding me of the disappointment I would face if I insisted on saving what time had already altered.

“Well-intended mending,” he whispered gently, “does not always restore what we hope it will restore.”

We stood there together, looking at the collar Gary had pressed with such quiet care.

“Surely you’re not thinking that the collar could be reversed?”

It was as if he had read my mind.

“Don’t even go there,” he continued. “Allow the shirt to go down dignified.”

Poor Brentford has always understood something I am still learning. Mending is not always accomplished with needle and thread. The dress was altered beyond harmony. The trousers were improved beyond wearability. The collar had been laundered into truth, its edge now softened to the point of surrender.

“Some things serve us best by finishing well.”

Poor Brentford said nothing more. He did not need to. He has always known that mending takes many forms.

We mend by stitching.
We mend by adapting.
We mend by honoring.
We mend by remembering.

But, sometimes, we mend best by releasing.

Poor Brentford Gives a Knuckle Rap. A Guest Column.

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“Never mistake the undone for the unworthy.
The desk may be cluttered.
The life is not.”

—Poor Brentford Lee (b. 1947. Altar ego—with an alter ego, too, of course. He ministers and he meddles. Life coach without credentials. Available for lectures, upbraidings, and unsolicited reminders of everything you’ve already accomplished.)

Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. Maybe, all times. I know I am.

It doesn’t matter how much I get done, it’s always the undone that grabs hold of me in my waking hours and throws me into a tiff.

Just the other day—just as dawn was breaking—I sprang up in bed, asking myself:

“Where did it go? Where did it all go?”

Not my life, mind you. That’s still very much in progress.

I meant January and February—two months that often keep me snowed in on my mountaintop here in the Shenandoah Valley. And this year—once and for all—they were supposed to be the two perfect months to bring order to chaos. To organize my office.

Boxes. Amazon boxes, to be precise—a small mountain of them, stacked near the woodstove like a cardboard monument to every good intention I’ve ever had. Some are open. Some are not. All of them smile at me. That relentless Amazon smile, curved and cheerful and absolutely unbothered by my shame. I have begun to suspect they are multiplying when I’m not looking.

Desk and worktable. Buried. Buried under manila envelopes, unopened mail, a box of highlighters, a coffee mug that may or may not still contain coffee, and enough paper to reforest a modest hillside. The lamp burns bravely through the chaos like a lighthouse in a nor’easter.

Even the plants have opinions. Two magnificent specimens—sprawling dramatically across their ornate iron stands—have taken matters into their own fronds. One has sent a long, accusatory leaf directly toward my leather chair. As if pointing.

Pointing. Yes, pointing. The same way the ghost of my gray-haired grade school history teacher would point and declare with the wrath of an angry God:

“A cluttered desk is the devil’s workshop.”

And between Mrs. Snyder’s admonitions and my lament—”Where did it go? Where did it all go?”—Poor Brentford appeared as if in a vision rising up from nowhere in particular and everywhere at once.

“Where did it all go, you ask? Where did it all go? I’ll tell you exactly where it went. Pull up a chair if you can find one in that brain of yours, all cluttered now with nonsense.”

I thought I knew for sure where his harangue was headed. But for once he surprised. He did not stoop so low as to rap knuckles with any of the cliches from his repertoire of wisdom.

Not once did I hear,

“Time and tide wait for no one.”

Not once did I hear,

“Make hay while the sun shines.”

I didn’t even hear the one I was certain he would speak with calm certainty,

“Lost time is never found again.”

He didn’t recite any of those things.

Instead, he cleared his throat with great ceremony and delivered his first knuckle rap with the precision of a surgeon and the satisfaction of a man who has been waiting a very long time.

“Only handle it once.”

He let it hang there. Just those four words. Floating in the air above the Amazon boxes and the buried desk and the manila envelopes and the coffee mug of uncertain vintage.

“Your words. Well, Grace Reed’s words, if we’re being precise. Your Copyright Office colleague. The woman whose office was lean, mean, and sparse. The woman whose wisdom you borrowed, researched, published, celebrated, and then—apparently—left to ride around in the Jeep with the junk mail.”

He fixed me with a look that left no room for argument.

“Don’t bemoan where it all went. You know fully well. And you know exactly what to do.”

Then Poor Brentford’s voice softened. Just slightly. Just enough.

“Do you remember what you wrote on January 15th, 2024? You raised your Bunnahabhain to all the tarriers, the delayers, and the occasional shelver. You said, and I quote, ‘Here’s to the to-morrowers, the champions of It can wait until tomorrow, because sometimes tomorrow is just a delay away from today.'”

He smiled. For the first time.

“And do you remember Scarlett?

“She understood something you sometimes forget. Tomorrow is not surrender. Tomorrow is strategy.”

Poor Brentford gestured grandly at the Amazon boxes.

“Your Tara is a little more cardboard than hers. But the principle holds.”

He straightened his jacket.

“The office will get cleaned. One day. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after. Or sometime before the Amazon boxes learn to walk.”

“Scarlett managed. So will you.”

But Poor Brentford wasn’t finished. He stood there, poised to deliver his final and most devastating knuckle rap. Quietly. Almost tenderly.

“Forget the cluttered office for now. I want you to remember something you wrote, something about a young professor who stopped you in a hallway and handed you an offprint with four words inscribed on the front.”

He paused.

“This is life everlasting.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“You asked whether he was suggesting that we live on forever through what we share with others: ideas immortalized in print. You answered your own question. Here you are, nearly fifty years later, speaking his name. Professor Myerson continues to live.”

He leaned in close.

“And so will you. Through every word you have ever written. Eight books. More than a million words. Scholarship and essays that will outlast every Amazon box in that corner.”

“THAT is your life everlastin’. Now act like it.”

Just when my chair started getting uncomfortable, Poor Brentford had the nerve to tell me to shout out:

“Get behind me, Satan.”

I sprang up at once because in that command I recognized my own mother’s voice. Over and over again I had heard her rebuke the Devil whenever she faced her own pole of proverbial chaos.

Only then did I realize what Poor Brentford had done.

He had serenaded me with snippets of my own advice—counsel I had been publishing right here in this column for years.

I could hardly be offended.

I looked again at the Amazon boxes. The buried desk. The pointing plant.

They were all still there.

But the panic was gone.

The office could wait.

After all, tomorrow is strategy.

What We Know. What We Believe.

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“Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Bengali poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate.

“Dead? She died?”

“Yesterday.”

“Well, she suffered a lot. Now maybe she’s with her mother and father and relatives.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I don’t really know. I don’t think we’ll recognize people the way we do here, now. But I don’t know.”

“I believe she understands the mysteries … of life and death. She knows all.”

The conversation was getting too heavy, so we drifted to other topics.

Somehow, though, it struck a nerve. How can you not know what you believe about death, especially as you get closer and closer to that unknown journey.

Afterward, I started thinking about how we come to know what we know. What we believe.

After all, we know some things with certainty. Right?

Some because the results never vary. Two plus two always equals four. The distance between two fixed points remains the same no matter when we measure it. Water boils at a predictable temperature. Gravity pulls downward. Cause produces effect with reassuring regularity.

These certainties are grounded in repeatable outcomes. Test them once or a thousand times—the answer holds. They do not depend on belief, mood, or memory. The world behaves, and we trust it to keep behaving.

Then there are the certainties born of lived experience. Morning follows night. Habits steady us. The familiar route gets us home. What worked yesterday will probably work again today. These truths may not be written as formulas, but repetition grants them authority. Experience becomes evidence. Pattern becomes trust.

Together, these forms of knowing shape our confidence in the world. Whether derived from calculation or habit, they rest on the same foundation: consistency. When outcomes repeat, doubt quiets. We stop testing. We accept and move on.

Other things we know but with less certainty.

The weather forecast offers likelihoods, not guarantees. A medication helps one person and fails another. A conversation unfolds as expected or veers off course for reasons we cannot quite name. We plant the same seeds in the same soil, and one season flourishes while the next disappoints.

Here, knowledge comes through probability rather than proof. We notice tendencies, not laws. We have seen enough to believe, but not enough to relax. Patterns appear, then break. This kind of knowing asks something different of us. Not trust, but attentiveness. Not certainty, but judgment. We proceed carefully, aware that what often happens is not the same as what must happen.

Now comes the third kind of knowing: knowing what we believe.

This one does not submit to proof or probability. It rises instead from lived moments that resist explanation. Experiences that arrive uninvited and linger long after analysis ends. The sense that someone who has died is still, somehow, present. The calm that sometimes settles in a room at the moment of death, unmistakable and unearned. The feeling that something matters even when nothing practical is at stake.

These are not conclusions we reach. They are recognitions we undergo.

Here, certainty takes a different form. Not the certainty of answers, but the certainty of encounter. We may disagree about what these moments mean, but we rarely deny that they occur. They are woven into our lives—in hospitals and bedrooms, at gravesides and kitchen tables, in silences that feel fuller than speech.

This is where death stands apart.

Death is neither a hypothesis nor a forecast or a probability curve. It is the one certainty that admits no exception, the one experience every one of us, without fail, will face. Whatever else we debate, revise, or relinquish, this much is fixed.

What matters is that we cannot face death—our own or another’s—without believing something. Belief, in this sense, is not doctrine. It is orientation. It is how we stand in the presence of loss, how we love without guarantees, how we make sense of endings that refuse to be tidy.

I have always lived in awe of what has come my way. I have bowed, again and again, to the belief that life is good and meaningful and mysterious. I see no reason to abandon that posture now. I am confident that death will be a continuation of that vision—for me.

Shaped by faith traditions throughout the world, by experience, and by nearly eighty years of living, I can say what I believe.

I may be wrong. Others will stand elsewhere, with different convictions or none at all. But belief, for me, is not certainty. It is the posture I choose in the presence of mystery.

I believe that death is not an ending but an unveiling, a beginning—a stepping into shared sacredness.

I believe that I will understand fully, see clearly, and grasp truth without distortion.

I believe that I will know others as completely as I have been known.

I believe that all confusion will clear and all mysteries resolve.

I believe that the questions of life and death, justice and suffering, will be answered.

I believe that I will be gathered into a collective consciousness—united with all who have gone before and present with all who have yet to go.

I believe that every life is known clearly, held equally, and belongs fully.

I believe that love stands unveiled—clear, complete, and free from all that once obscured it.

I believe that fear has no place in death, because the journey continues as it always has—guided by goodness, shaped by beauty, and sustained by love.

I believe that I will go on.

Death Watch

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“Life is in the transitions.”
—William James (1842–1910). American philosopher, psychologist, and father of American pragmatism.

I was seven, a skinny, average-height boy standing on the neighbor’s porch. The white clapboard house rose tall, its long windows draped in lace curtains. But at one window, the curtain had been pulled back and the green blind raised, as if inviting me to press my face against the glass. Inside, an open casket cradling an old woman. Her dress, light lavender with a large lace collar. Her waist, small. Her figure, tall and slender. Beyond the casket, the room dissolved into shadow.

I had seen a dead person before, so it wasn’t death that lured me across the road that afternoon. But I had never seen anyone laid out in a casket, all dressed up for a wake.

My mother had talked about wakes. People stayed up all night with the body, neighbors carried in food, and children fell asleep in corners. I never went to one. What I knew came from scraps I overheard—the rustle of women’s dresses, the scrape of chairs on pine floors, the low murmur of prayers. Where I grew up in southern West Virginia in the late 1940s and ’50s, a wake was as ordinary as rain.

I’ve thought about my neighbor’s wake now and then for seven decades. Each time, I return to my seven-year-old self, standing barefoot on the porch, looking in the window, mesmerized by death’s pale lilac gown.

All those years, that was as far as my reflections went until recently when I was listening to “Four Days Late.” Eight words grabbed hold of me:

“The death watch was over.
Buried four days.”

I know the Biblical story. Jesus waited four days before calling Lazarus’s name—long enough, it was believed, for the soul to depart and the body to begin its decay. What followed could only be proclaimed a miracle.

What grabbed me wasn’t the miracle. It was the emphatic statement:

“The death watch was over.”

With that line lodged in my mind, I began noticing how often the idea of a death watch appears, even when we don’t call it that.

In Judaism, the dead are not left alone. There is shemira—watching. Someone stays with the body, for hours or longer, reading psalms, keeping vigil. The tradition holds that the soul lingers nearby for a time, not yet ready to depart. What struck me was not the theology, but the instinct: don’t leave yet. Something is still happening.

In Islam, too, death unfolds rather than strikes. The community gathers quickly. The body is washed, prayers spoken, and the dead oriented toward Mecca. Nothing casual or rushed. The living tend to the dead carefully, attentively, as if aware that departure is not abrupt but gradual, and that presence is a form of respect.

Buddhist and Hindu traditions go further, understanding death as a process that may take hours or days, consciousness loosening its hold slowly. Those nearby are encouraged to remain calm and steady—not to cling or hurry, but to remain present while something completes itself.

Even in the folk practices my mother described, the same posture holds. People stayed. They watched. They waited. Death was not treated as an emergency to be cleared away, but as a threshold to be witnessed.

I wonder what, exactly, those watchers believed they were watching for.

Not for proof. Not for reversal. But for something to finish—or something to begin. Across cultures and centuries there is a shared intuition that death is not an erasure, but a passage. A crossing—something that unfolds just beyond our ability to see, but not beyond our need to attend.

So, we stay.

The seven-year-old boy I was could not have named that instinct. He only knew to stand barefoot on a porch and look through a window. He didn’t understand death or wakes or souls lingering nearby. But he understood—without words—that he was standing as witness at the edge of something mysterious.

Perhaps that is what a death watch has always been—not a refusal of death, but an act of faith in continuance: a willingness to be present at the threshold, to witness a crossing we cannot explain.

Maybe the watching is how we admit we don’t believe it’s over.