Tag: writing

Part 2 of 2: Life is a Journey

I’m sure we have all taken time to ponder the question, “Why am I here?” Considering the meaning of life goes back at least as far as the ancient philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and has remained a favorite topic of philosophers through the centuries.

Entire religions are built upon the need to provide purpose for our human existence. I have read a description of Christianity as defining the purpose of life is to seek salvation for a promise of eternal life. A great speaker once told me that the purpose of religion was “to make people feel better about death.”

Discounting all of the religious variations, I think most of us fall into one of three camps:
a) ‘we are born, we live, we die, that’s it’
b) ‘we are born, we live to meet the goals set out by our religion, we die, then spend eternity based on how well we met our religious obligations’
c) ‘we come from pure positive energy, we experience duality and conflict, we return to pure positive energy.’
As for me, when I’m asked what I believe, I usually just say that I’m hopeful.

As a youth, my family attended an active Southern Baptist Church. It was what most Southern people did in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Every Sunday morning, you would get dressed in your “Sunday finest” clothes and go to your church of choice. Most of us also attended a Wednesday service, as well. I remember one Sunday morning when I was around five or six years old, my father was quite vocal on the drive home from church saying it was the last time we were going to that church, that they spent more time preaching about money than they did scripture. It was the last time we attended church as a family for many years, and it also taught me, as a young child, that church was not to be trusted. I felt a bit like an outcast because ‘everyone’ in our neighborhood attended church on Sunday morning except our family and the family of the town drunk that lived a couple of houses up across the street.

Fast forward almost a decade and I found myself in a new school, 8th grade at the newly constructed high school. My other elementary classmates matriculated to the old high school but our family had moved to a neighboring school district. I met my new best friend, John, on that first day of school. Though he was a year older than me and a year ahead of me, we had several classes together, including chorus. Oh, how I loved to sing. I had first discovered my joy for singing in our weekly music class in elementary school. I can still remember my third-grade classmates groaning when I asked if we could sing “Home on the Range” almost weekly. Just a couple of weeks into the new school year, John asked me if I would consider visiting his church, the local Presbyterian Church, and invited me to attend the choir rehearsal that Wednesday evening. I was all in, choir practice every Wednesday evening, church service every Sunday morning, and often special services on Sunday evenings. I was there so much that my parents and two younger brothers even started attending.

However, there was always a disconnect for me. I would spend the morning in Sunday school listening to how loving and caring God is, then move up to the main sanctuary to be told how judgmental, spiteful, and vindictive God is. Another covenant I had problems wrapping my head around was the declaration we had to proclaim every Sunday morning: “I believe that the Bible is the word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” Fifty-five years later and that phrase is still in my head. I never truly accepted the Bible as a literal expression of God’s word, much less that the red letter scriptures were actual quotes from Jesus. I stayed at that church for the balance of high school, not for the message every Sunday, but for the chance to sing regularly.

One of the more recent philosophies was made popular in the 1980’s by author Wayne Dyer and has been attributed to the 20th century philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I’m sure you are familiar with “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” 1980 is also the same year my wife and I were married. She was a strong proponent of spirituality separate from religious dogma. These thoughts were very much in line with the philosophies of Wayne Dyer and, in the early 1990’s, another author she followed, Abraham Hicks and the “Law of Attraction.” I was not ready to hear those messages, and I called them no more than “woo-woo philosophy.” She was persistent and consistent in how she presented that “new thought” paradigm to me. Most importantly, she demonstrated those ideas through her actions, not just her words. It took until the late 1990’s for the light bulb to finally turn on in my brain.

By this time we had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and I was committed to my life on the hamster wheel. Always chasing more, always searching for happiness ‘out there’, and never finding contentment. Ten years with the same small high-tech company had brought me industry notoriety, a comfortable paycheck, and a feeling that I still wasn’t contributing to the common good. The owner of the company, along with the VP of Finance, attended a long weekend experiential ‘self-help’ seminar and wanted all of their top-tier managers to attend. I was to be the guinea pig for the rest of the organization. I showed up on Thursday evening not even knowing what the seminar was about.

As with most things I get involved in, I went in with an open mind and participated fully. It was very much all of the “woo-woo” stuff my wife had been telling, but this time it was presented in a way that I could understand. I couldn’t wait to share my newfound discoveries with her and all she would say is, “Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been telling you for the last twenty years.

I started volunteering with the seminar organization, eventually attending an advanced weeklong class that dug deeper into our decision making, then becoming a leader both in the basic seminar as well as the advanced seminar. One of the most insightful messages I received about myself was that I spent so much time striving to be “Right” even at the expense of “Being Happy.” Yes, words Dr. Phil also often used. Communication between my wife and I actually flourished. Shortly after 9/11 in 2001, my wife and I decided it was time to pursue happiness and we returned to the Atlanta area.

Upon moving back to metropolitan Atlanta, we decided to go into business together. We worked side by side seven days a week and were basically together 24 hours a day. We would never have survived that ritual before finding common ground spiritually. As mentioned in Part 1, our world came crashing down in 2018 when our youngest child took their own life. We not only lost one of the joys of our life, we lost our joy for life.

In the summer of 2018, as my wife was searching for spiritual comfort, she decided to attend a service at our local Unity Church. This was something I was not familiar with, but she did find comfort there and encouraged me to attend. The core principles of Unity aligned with my belief system, and I was comforted by a spiritual group that used meditation to seek alignment instead of a religious group that used prayer to ask for favors. Unity uses the Bible as its basic textbook, not an “infallible truth”. Unity acknowledges the divinity of Jesus but also asserts that the same divinity lies in each and every one of us. In our local Unity Church, Jesus is our master teacher and model. Just as importantly, Unity states that EVERYONE is a unique expression of God and together we are One.

In Part 1, I commented that we, collectively, seem to be more disjointed in our belief system than ever before. How do I respond to this? As the title of this post implies, how do I navigate this journey of life? How do I reconcile that family and other people I know have such diametrically opposed views on religion, politics, diversity within the human race? For me, the inspiration is simple while the application is often quite difficult. If I truly believe that “we all are one”, that “we each have the divinity of God within us”, that “our thoughts manifest reality,” I say to you:

“The divinity within me honors the divinity within you.”

Unity teaches me that the spirit of God lives within/around/as each person; therefore, all people are inherently good. It is not for me to judge.

I was going to close this post with a single word – NAMASTE, for those of you not familiar with the word, it is pronounced: nah-mah-stay. I also found these short definitions, maybe I should have just started this post with these:

“I bow to you”: A literal translation meaning “salutations to you” or “hello/goodbye” in Sanskrit. 

Gratitude: A way to thank the teacher for sharing knowledge and students for their presence and energy. 

Oneness: A gesture promoting unity and acknowledging that beneath differences, we are the same. 

Spiritual Connection: Helps connect energies and close the practice with a sense of peace and reverence. 

“The divine in me bows to the divine in you”: A common interpretation, recognizing shared spirit. Hmmm, sound familiar?

However, I will do it anyway.

Namaste

Part 1 of 2: Perception is Reality

It is February, 2026 and public perception of reality has never seemed more disjointed. It is my contention that there is no such thing as “reality” and even if there is, there is no value in it. The only thing that has value, the only thing that truly matters is our perception of what reality is. So how did this disjointed perception get created? That answer lies in the varied life experiences of every single one of us. On top of our unique life experiences, add the infinite spectrum of priorities in each of our daily lives as well as the goals we hope to achieve and witness, not only in our personal lives but in the world around us, it’s no wonder that it’s hard to agree on what reality is.

These life experiences are shaped by variables, some as basic as the time period and the location where you were born and raised. These differences can be as broad as what country you were born in and as specific as the neighborhood and even family dynamics. Being born in the mid-1950’s and raised in the south, the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to be a bit more precise, only moving once as a child 3-1/2 miles from one house to the other, and attending only two schools from first through eleventh grades, my exposure to different cultural aspects were limited. The elementary school I attended was 100% white and the high school I attended, one of the largest and newest schools in the state at the time, had a single black family.

On the topic of family, that was one of the most important aspects of my youth. I spent extended time at each set of grandparents during the summer, one in the heartland of south central Georgia, the other in a rural setting north of Atlanta. The extended family gathered for holidays and both families had an annual reunion attended by a hundred or more kin. My father was the oldest child in his family and my mom was the oldest in her’s and I was the oldest grandchild on both sides of the family. One thing that was instilled in me from an early age was that I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. This coming from one set of grandparents living in a house that had electricity and a bathroom installed well after the house was built. The bathroom was a toilet and a sink. If you wanted to take a bath, the shower was in the hall surrounded by curtains. My other grandparent’s house had electricity and running water, that running water was the cold water from the well that fed the kitchen sink via an electric pump. The bathroom was an outhouse back behind the house against the barn (to help reduce drafts from the wind). Baths were taken in the middle of the kitchen, standing in a large round washtub with warm water heated on the stove. If you had to pee during the night, there was a pee can on the back porch you could use as long as you took it up and emptied it in the outhouse in the morning.

My grandparents to the south, lived on a farm and my grandfather farmed the land in both their county and the county next door, growing crops such as peanuts and cotton along with the pecan grove on their property. I remember my grandmother taking me to the zoo about 30 miles away. It was something we did every summer when I visited. I loved seeing the “wild animals” and getting a crushed ice cone with syrup. Several years in, when I was probably 5 or 6, I noticed something. Outside of the cages holding the animals, there were iron railings to keep the children from getting too close. Standing there taking in the sights (and smells) of these beasts just a few feet away, I turned to my sides to see the other children, but there were none there. I know I had seen children all through the park and wondered why they weren’t interested in the animals. I turned and looked behind me and there they were, 20 feet or so back, behind a barrier made up of some crude poles with rusted iron chains strung between them. When I asked my grandmother what was going on, the answer was a simple “You can watch from here but THOSE children have to stand back there. It was that same trip that I noticed I was the only one drinking out of the sparkling clean porcelain sink while the OTHER kids were lined up to drink out of what was basically a faucet on a pole.

Conversations about black folks in the community often went along the lines of “Negro Jim and Negra Jill did so and so.” There was talk about the negros doing this or the negros doing that. When I got a little older, around 10 or so, my grandmother hired a black maid to help out around the house during the summer. Our family ate three meals every day, at the dining room table. Shug (pronounced just like the first syllable of sugar) would prepare the meals, serve the meals, clean up after the meal, then sit alone at the kitchen table to eat her meal. One afternoon I feigned disinterest in having lunch that day. The rest of the family ate while I played outside. After they were done and the dishes cleared, I came back in the house and shared a sandwich with Shug at the kitchen table. My grandmother came in and scolded me, “We don’t do THAT in THIS house!” It was a lesson that she made sure I understood.

My other grandparents and extended family weren’t that nice when it came to black people and they were amongst them every day. They casually used “the N word” as if they were calling a red headed boy Rusty. In their book, a black person had every opportunity to advance as a white person but they were just too lazy. I could be mistaken but I don’t remember any interaction within that family with any black person.

Within my own family, I remember when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed. I was 12 years old. My dad left no doubt that he was glad, that MLK was nothing more than an agitator and a troublemaker. I keenly remembered hearing those sentiments this past year when I read reactions when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. Again, highlighting that perception is more meaningful than reality.

I share my backstory as a basis of where I was mentally and emotionally as I went off to college. Though I had attended Georgia Tech my senior year of high school, I was still immersed within ‘what I already knew.’ I went to college at what is now Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. At the time, it was General Motors Institute, the only privately owned accredited 4 year college in the country. I was being fast-tracked for management at the General Motors Doraville assembly plant.

Flint, Michigan could have been a different planet. Yes, I had traveled the country with my family on vacations, but always from the confine of our travel trailer. Now, I was immersed in, what my families called, “Yankee.” It was obvious that I was just as alien to them as they were to me. I came from family, treasured togetherness, hugged my neighbor, ate fresh food, often right from the garden. They didn’t like eye contact, threatened to punch you if you tried to give a hug, and thought peanuts grew on trees. Above all else, I was just another person in that school trying to make a name for myself, no different from the girl sitting behind me or the black person sitting on either side. We were all truly equal. It was the first time that I had to acknowledge how strong the prejudice was in the South. I also realized that Southern Hospitality is actually a thing and the north was mostly devoid of that. To my fellow northern classmates, the civil rights movement was something on the TV news, similar to watching the action from the Vietnam War. It wasn’t anything they could really identify with.

College was undeniably the first set of Life Lessons that challenged the foundation that guided me. I no longer saw the black person as being “less than”, in fact some of my strongest competition were black, both men and women. The next Life Lessons were started not too long after college – getting married and having children. Though I met my wife in the south, she was born in New York State and had only moved to Georgia in her teens. As my extended family was quick to remind her that she was the first Yankee in the family, she would roll her eyes at some of the “Johnson-isms” when we visited, and we would have a good laugh when we got home.

Until we had children. The “N word” was still freely brandished around my extended family’s homes. My wife made it quite clear to my parents that she would not tolerate that word being used when our children were present, the alternative being their grandchildren would no longer visit. She demonstrated that it was not only possible, but imperative to set boundaries with your family, even your own parents. She showed me the most sure way to get something was to ask for it, and she didn’t have to ask a second time.

Having children exposed me to another whole set of responsibilities I had never rightly considered before. It was much easier when I was single to consider the ramifications of my choices, the only one that was going to be primarily affected by those decisions was me. Marriage complicated those decisions by a factor of at least three. Now I had to consider how did those decisions affect me individually, my spouse individually, and the two of us collectively. Having two children within two years of each other compounded those decisions many fold. The payoff for that increased responsibility is I learned so many life lessons from my children. Our first born, a son, arrived in 1983, a fairly fresh millennial. His basis for happiness and life priorities have always been quite different from mine and while they don’t necessarily mesh with what I had planned for him, his laid back attitude and desire for minimalism over abundance is one that I often admire him for. Our second child, a daughter, came to us in 1985 and truly continues to be a blessing for me and, I’m sure, my wife. Being only 22 months younger than her brother, she was usually forced to tag along to watch her brother in his endeavors. I think she found motivation from that to attempt anything he did and worked to excel at them. While he was mostly quiet and reserved, she was loud and outgoing. Loud, not in a vocal sense, but everything else.

We moved to metropolitan Cincinnati in 1990. They developed independently from each other with their own set of friends and my wife and I noticed early on that there was something ‘different’ about her style and her choice of friends. At 17, she came out to us as gay. It was something she had struggled with, not knowing how we would react and likely fearing the worst. Our reply was a collective “Yeah, so?” I had only known one gay person in high school, the oldest brother of my best friend. I only saw him with his partner at my friend’s family home, which is where I spent a lot of time. They were fun to be around and their relationship had zero bearing on my life. But now that I had a gay child that was out, I noticed the inequities that the LGBTQ+ community faced every day and those were really not that much different than what I saw within the black community of my youth.

My wife and I returned to metro Atlanta with our daughter, who was starting her senior year in high school, in 2001. Our son stayed in Ohio to attend college there. Ultimately, our daughter found her perfect match and they were married in 2010. Together, with the aid of a sperm donor, they had our first grandchild in 2012. As you could imagine, our daughter and her spouse, now living in metropolitan Saint Louis, were both active in the LGBTQ+ community there. About three years later, our daughter simultaneously posted to Facebook and called us to discuss the post. She explained that even after coming out in 2001, something still didn’t “feel” right. Through her work within the community, she had discovered a term for what she was feeling. She informed us that she was nonbinary, a term to describe someone that didn’t identify as either a female or a male because she felt parts of both the masculine and the feminine. At the same time she advised us to use non gender specific pronouns (they, them and their’s) when we addressed them and talked about them. This was unknown territory for both my wife and me, be we still supported them in every way we could.

There was a bit of a mourning as we navigated losing our “daughter” to only refer to them as “our youngest child.” I personally struggled with the difference between sex, sexual orientation, and gender. I read as much as I could find on the internet. I had long phone conversations with our youngest child where I could ask questions. They were patient with me as I stumbled my way through this new reality.

Since their family group was in St. Louis and my wife and I were in Atlanta, the transition for us was often difficult. We had to be constantly reminded to use them instead of her and I tried my best to answer questions from my friends and family when the subject of what it means to be nonbinary came up. To my youngest child’s credit, they weren’t content with just changing their label. They continued therapy. They had chest reconstruction surgery to remove their breasts. They began hormone treatment. They performed outreach at MTUG – Metro[politan] Trans[exual] Umbrella Group, a support network for people of both sexes considering and healing from gender reassignment surgery. They went to work for Diversity Awareness Partnership and became a sought-after speaker and advocate to activate and support communities to advance equity and justice.

But still they struggled. On June 9th, 2018, my wife received a call from their spouse. Our youngest child had taken their life. Their funeral service was probably THE defining day of my life. This beacon of hope was gone at only 33 years of age. But people came to pay their respects and remember them. I was told the line to get into the funeral home stretched to as much as a 2 hour wait. The funeral was in St. Louis but they came, anyway – from Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, California, Washington, Germany and many more. Some folks had know them most of their life, others shared that they had only met them one time but felt drawn to come and pay their respects.

The one thing I heard over and over again was, “They always treated me like I was the only person in the room. I always got their undivided attention.” That, above all else, is what I have decided that the majority of us want, people want to feel like they are being heard. Our child’s voice had been silenced, their ears had been taken away, but my voice was still active and I became a much better listener. This became my new priority in my life’s journey.

One more observation before I bring this note to a close. My wife and I, along with our son, spent the one-year anniversary of our youngest child’s death in Acadia National Park. The year before, my son and I were on our way to Acadia when we got ‘the phone call’ from my wife while visiting in Washington DC. On our way home from the funeral, my wife and I spent several days visiting the monuments and museums in Washington DC, ourselves. The most gut-wrenching visit was to the Native American Museum. Four floors of documentation and reminders of how our forefathers had treated the indigenous people that were here centuries before being settled by the Europeans. The reminders were clear: first the native Americans, then the black people, were the people within the LGBTQ+ community going to be the next minority group to be targeted?

The Path

It was Tuesday and I knew I had to escape, even temporarily, the drudge I had dug for myself. My life had evolved into a seemingly endless array of projects, deadlines and unrealistic expectations.As I drove toward the mountains, with their trails through the woods, I couldn’t help but think that this break would only add to my existing stress rather than to help relieve it.

I found the parking area, not much more than a wide spot down an old dirt road. It had been miles since I last saw any real signs of civilization, either past or current. I got out of the car and started walking around, searching for the trail-head that would lead me into the forest. I found nothing more than an opening less grown over than the area on either side. I started in.

It only took a couple of dozen strides before I was keenly aware of what nature had put around me. The silent breeze felt relaxing on my arms and face. The squirrels and chipmunks surprised me as they scurried around, probably just as startled to see me. The songbirds were serenading each other, their chatter bringing an ambiance of elevator music around me. And though I couldn’t see it or hear it, the smell of over-saturated soil and the pungent aroma of ferns and succulents confirmed there had to be a stream nearby.

As my feet fell into a rhythmic beat, I trudged further down the path into the spring greenery. My mind was still racing ahead, reminding me that all of the unfinished projects and looming deadlines were still waiting for me and getting more urgent each moment I spent ignoring them. No matter how much I tried to shut out the inner voices, all I could think about was my to-do list, each item calling to me to make it my priority as the whole list would feel much easier to tackle if I could just get that one item crossed off. No matter how hard I mentally prioritized my list, it still felt like I had pages of highest priority items.

And then it hit me – or, rather, and then I hit it, whatever “it” was. A huge mirror? Blocking the path? Though I could still see the path meandering straight ahead? Then it registered. Backing away and looking around, the path turned off to the right. The mirror had been placed at such an angle that the forest seemed continuous and the trail just followed along in the same general direction. I couldn’t see my reflection in it until I was right up on it, having already passed the “point of no return”.

What should I do? The easy solution would be to turn around and back-track my steps all the way to the car waiting for me in the parking area. Or, I could turn to the right, following the remnants of the trail deeper into the north Georgia woods. As soon as I took my first step onward I heard the birds again, noticed the wind brushing against my cheeks, smelled all that Mother Nature had left for me to take in. My steps got a little lighter and a little quicker. My mind slowed down as I ignored the tremendous urge to flee back to the apparent safety of chaos.

Just as I was comfortable within my cocoon of new experiences, BAM! Another mirror? This one, just as imposing yet undetectable as the first, loomed above me. This one was angled to the left. It was decision time once again. I could easily take this as a sign to abandon my current path and turn back or I could just treat it as a detour, letting me know I was headed in the wrong direction and to continue toward my goal, that I needed to change course to move forward. Since I was striving to do something different from what I was used to doing in hopes of changing the direction of my life, I chose to continue on and not reverse course back to where I had just come.

Though confident in the moment I had made the right decision, doubt crept in as I continued on my journey. Was it wise to ignore my years of experience to continue on this whim of an idea that I might find something different? Or was I just wasting time, postponing the workload and ignoring the deadlines that waited for me back home, thus worsening the situation I would face when I returned? Someone once told me the greatest distance on earth is the 11″ between a man’s brain and his heart. In my internal battle, my brain was telling me to turn around and flee back to safety. My heart was telling me to continue on, enjoy the moment, relish the experience for what it is and nothing more. I found it difficult to allow my heart to take control over my brain, but continue on, I did.

As I walked on I encountered more mirrors. Some faced left, others faced right. Some with slight angles, many with large angles. I continued down the path, now just as intrigued to know where I was headed as I was to escape the mundane existence of everyday life. And then it happened. I reached a point where I was completely surrounded by mirrors. They were positioned in a way that all I could see was the reflection of everything around me, the trees, the paths, everything except me. I couldn’t find how I got in and couldn’t find a way out. I crumpled to the ground, defeated and deflated.

I laid there, curled up in a fetal position, both comforting myself and admonishing myself for making such a bad decision to keep going though all the signs said to turn back. I wished I were home. I slowly sat up, my knees bent and my feet flat on the ground. I leaned back, supporting my weight with my hands and arms behind me, much like the times sitting on the beach soaking in the rays of the sun and the sounds of the surf. I closed my eyes and pictured myself on that beach. There were no worries. Work was waiting for me when I got back but that’s what it would have to do – wait. The time at the beach was for me. A time to recharge my batteries so I could better handle all that life threw at me when I got back home. Why was it acceptable to leave life’s worries behind to go on vacation to the beach for a week, but not okay to escape for a couple of hours during the work week? Maybe this was what I was searching for, a week’s worth of vacation crammed into a 2 hour time span.

I slowly opened my eyes, squinting from the dappled sunlight streaking through the trees. I sat there comforted in the surroundings just as I had been at the beach, both in reality and just now in my mind. I looked around from my seated position expecting to find the obvious way out that I was too frantic to see during my earlier panic. What I found was everything was just as I left it, surrounded by mirrors, life reflected all around and I was caught in the middle.

As the reality of my predicament settled in, I became more aware of how uncomfortable I was. My legs were cramping up from all of the walking and my arms were tired from helping support my body weight while I sat there. And what was this under my hand, hard and rough, so out of place in this idyllic setting I had put myself? A rock – about the size of a baseball. I had played ball from the time I was a young boy, playing with the other neighborhood children in the local park. I had won many ribbons on field day for being able to throw a softball further than anyone else in my grade. One thing I knew about baseballs is that I could throw one hard and fast.

Half without thinking and half out of rage of my current situation, I threw that rock straight ahead with every ounce of strength I could muster. I placed all my energy into that rock. For that instant in time I put my whole being into that rock. Nothing else mattered right then. Within the blinking of an eye, the rock struck the mirror that was directly in it’s path. The rock didn’t bounce off, it carried right through the mirror, shattering it into thousands of tiny shards that fell to the ground. In front of me was a path begging me to follow. In the distance was a sun drenched clearing… and my car, parked exactly where I had left it just a couple of hours before.

The Doctor Story

It was determined that I would be a doctor whether it was something I wanted to do or not. After all, both my Mom and Dad were doctors so they would have nothing of me pursuing any other career. As I do everything, I put my every effort into being the best doctor I could be.

I opened my own practice and hated the very essence of it. To say I had poor bedside manners was an understatement. I abhorred the never ending bureaucracy of the mountain of paperwork that took more time than my visits with patients. Due to my terrible reviews, the one and done nature of my patients, and the constant turnover of staff, I gladly closed my private practice 5 years after I opened it.

But, I was a good doctor and highly sought after by the hospitals. I bounced from one to the other, never staying in one location very long before the same complaints by the staff and patients would arise. About to finally give up on the medical profession, I finally found my place. A place where the patients looked forward to seeing me. A place where I had full reign on how I ran my operations. A place where not only were regulations overlooked, I was often encouraged to get around the system.

Today’s visit was to be like nothing I had experienced before. I knew coming in that it would be my responsibility, I never dwelled on how I would handle it when the time arose. Well, the time was now. I waited in an ante room as they brought him in, handcuffed and feet shackled. He was laid on a gurney and strapped in, his arms straight out from his sides as if on a horizontal cross. Once he was secure, I came in and deftly inserted the IV needle into his arm, just as I had done countless times in the past.

I waited for what seemed an eternity, just me and #4739862, waiting for the signal. The warden nodded to me and I matter-of-factly initiated the procedure. Less than 10 minutes later I listened with my stethoscope and pronounced him dead at 11:03 PM.

I went straight back to my office, a sterile room made of concrete, painted white. My report didn’t have to be filed for 3 days but I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. I wanted this event to be in my past. I thought it would be “just a job” but I came to realize this man was not just a number, he was a mother’s son and a little girl’s father. Just like me.

I finished my report, folded it up and put it in an envelope. Licking the flap and sealing it down was a figurative gesture of ending the ordeal. I would drop it off at the coroner tomorrow. As I drove home, the last few nights of restless sleep was catching up to me. It was all I could do to concentrate on the road as my mind kept drifting back to the events of just a few hours ago.

I didn’t see the red light. In fact, I didn’t even notice the intersection I had driven through most every night for the past couple of years. My eyelids had succumbed to the urge to rest. Just a short nap to clear my mind. Something jarred me awake a split instant before the accident. I saw the terrified look on her face, her eyes wide open and surely screaming at the top of her lungs as the night was filled with the sounds of screeching tires, shattered glass, and crunching metal.

It took a bit to understand what had happened, that it wasn’t a dream. The deflated airbag lay in my lap, the seatbelt and shoulder strap had done their job. I was alive. I grabbed my bag and staggered over to the other car. I pried open the passenger door and lifted the lifeless body of a little girl and layed her on the pavement. I used that same stethoscope from earlier to search for any signs of life from the woman behind the wheel. There were none to be found. I looked at my watch so I could record the time of death, 3:11 AM. Within the span of 4 hours I had ended the lives of 3 generations of the same family.