Last week, I asked if my back story was something people were interested in reading about.

The answer was a fairly overwhelming ‘yes’ so now I suppose I owe it to you to make good.

To be honest, I’ve struggled with this, so this may be a bumpy ride.

1/

To know me is to know my last ten years. More so than my career or work or life before, to know me is to know my last decade.

Ten years ago, I was boarding a plane in Cali. for a trip home when a text came through just as the cabin doors closed:

“John died last night.”

2/

John was a friend. A sweet man. A kind, kind man. He was the childhood best friend of one of my best friends. A special person.

He died of a heart attack in front of his wife and kids. He was 50 years old.

It devastated our group of friends.

3/

A week later, at his funeral, I stood in a cold January cemetery listening to the soft tinkle of spent shell casings hitting the pavement after his military salute.

As cars slowly dispersed, I lingered behind and gathered up the casings.

4/

The following summer, we buried them in Saratoga at our annual place. John’s presence was missed. It is still missed.

A few weeks after John’s death, my mother-in-law reached the end of a three-year battle with cancer.

She wasn’t like a mother to me. She was a mother to me.

5/

I spent her last days with her. I sat with her, as she lay dying. I held her arm and talked to her. I held her sister and mother and daughters in our collective grief.

I was with her when she learned she had cancer. I was with her when she passed away.

6/

After going into remission in her first year, her cancer had returned. Her recurrence crushed me. It gutted me.

It was the grief that comes with the knowledge that loss is inevitable.

7/

Three weeks after my mother-in-law passed away, I was on a plane to California somewhere over Arizona when my phone caught a cell tower and a single message came through:

“Your stepfather has been in an accident. He may not make it. Call home.”

8/

I sat helpless for the hour until we landed frantic for contact.

He had gone out for a bike ride. He was rehabbing two replaced knees and training for a charity ride as part of his recovery.

He took a hill too fast and hit a guardrail. Medivac’ed to a hospital.

9/

He didn’t make it.

Left behind were my widowed mother and five adopted siblings - all in high school.

It would be my third flight home to a funeral in three months.

10/

A week after his death, I was on his front lawn taking the pictures he should have been taking of his son and his prom date.

A week after that, it was the first of five graduations over the next couple years.

11/

A couple weeks after that, I rode his bike in the 50-mile charity ride he had been training for. I finished far behind the pack crying behind sunglasses.

And in the middle there somewhere, I had separated from my then-wife after having done all I could to save my marriage.

12/

I call that year my Year of the Phoenix.

In the space of a few short months, I had lost three people, my marriage, half my family (who never spoke to me again), and my income when a partner went under.

Everything burned down in one rippling year of awful.

13/

I didn’t have the luxury of falling down because everyone around me was devastated - and I had a two-year old.

So, I didn’t. I sat with my mother in church to make the pew a bit less empty. I slashed my work to be home with my son. I cut my social life and prioritized home.

14/

My parents divorced when I was seven. The result were weekdays with a healthy but working mother and weekends sequestered with a very unhealthy alcoholic father.

I had no weekend play dates. No sleepovers. No little league or activities.

15/

My father was not abusive; he was merely unhealthy and incapable of better.

He was a depressed man who loved his kids but was ill equipped to raise them.

We were collateral damage of an adult’s collateral damage.

16/

My son spending his earliest, most critical years in a similar situation was my worst nightmare.

So I reengineered my life around raising him. I made the conscious decision to shelve anything and everything but what he needed.

17/

I made the conscious decision to give him a softer loving energy than a typical father.

I potty trained him and taught him to read. I tucked him in and made up fantastic tales of Leo the Lion, the laziest lion on Long Island. And I loved every minute of it.

18/

We started a garden and grew tomatoes and cucumbers and blueberries. We raised an 100-pound pumpkin.

We baked together. And when I didn’t have a pie plate the first year, we used a brownie pan and called it Shoebox Pie.

19/

In the split screen, I cut my work and income. I drained savings and then my retirement.

I took time off whenever his life became chaotic and he needed more from me. Then I worked my ass off when it calmed again. I pulled all-nighter after all-nighter. I slept little.

20/

Still, cutting your income by as much as 75% some years does not go unpunished.

I cut expenses and then cut more. I shelved annual traditions. I went without insurance. I almost lost my house.

But I made every practice, every game, every pickup.

21/

I’ve paid for gas with quarters, skipped meals, sold things I own to survive.

It has been so oppressively hard there have been times when I have fallen into convulsions thinking about it. Dry heaves.

22/

On the other side of the split screen though, I’ve been blessed with a good son.

He’s a kid who boxed up his outgrown toys at Christmas so less fortunate kids could have a Christmas too.

He’s a kid who donated half his Halloween candy to troops overseas.

23/

And through all of this fire, through the impossibly hard weight of a life barely afforded, he and I have forged a relationship unbent by hardship.

As I’ve told him since he was little, “We’re like a mountain. Storms may blow in but nothing moves the mountain.”

24/

This past decade has been the hardest of my life. These past two years have been the hardest of the decade.

We survive though. We go on and push through and adapt and cope and continue on.

25/

To know me is to know these things about me.

While I would not wish a Year of the Phoenix on anyone, it has shaped me into who I am.

I know what matters in my life.

We are all just one phone call away from our life coming apart at the seams.

26/

When we succeed, it is not solely by skill or hard work. It is also with the blessing of luck and fortune and privilege and opportunity.

When we fail, it is seldom solely the fault of personal control used badly.

Life is not fair when great or cruel.

27/

To know me is to know these things.

I am a product of them.

I have boundless empathy for the suffering.

I have no patience for the selfish.

While alive, our kindness to the vulnerable is our greatest gift. Our love for our children, our greatest obligation.

28/

I could go on but I’m late to pick up my son and this is long and it’s a beautiful day and there are so many more important things to talk about than me.

This isn’t my whole backstory but it’ is the chapters that matter most.

Now you know.

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