You always think you’ll have more time…and then you don’t.

I saw him on Tuesday. They gave him the diagnosis on Friday. A week later, he was gone.

Our last phone call was too short, too laden with news and shock and grief. We were due for another conversation, in person, to share memories and dissolve the bleakness for just a few minutes. I was going to tell him about the stories I’ll share, the lessons I learned, the gift of six decades of friendship. I was going to assure him of his life’s value, his contributions, his legacy. I was going to…woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Another conversation never came.

You think you’ll have a way to organize it, to prepare, to make it truly meaningful in your last moments together. Instead, it suddenly turns out that your last dinner was your last dinner. Your last phone call was your last phone call. Your last visit was your last visit. Now, and from now on, there is silence.

I should know better by now. I’ve been through it too many times with too many friends. My cousin, Carl, calls it the conveyor belt. We all move forward, along with our friends and family, but we’re all on different belts and none of us can see whose will end first. We almost never know which of us it will be, but our own odds increase with each moment. All the conveyor belts end with a plunge and there is no going back, no way to pick anyone up and put them back on for a slightly longer journey.

Alan, Jeff, David, Tom, and, now, John; every one of the fallen was more than “merely” a four-decade friend. They were all witnesses to my own life, the people who could attest to the accuracy of my recollections or, all too often, correct my failing memory. In a way, they made my own existence more real, less ephemeral. As those connections disappear, part of me disappears with them.

Grief is, perversely, one precious reward for a long life. The longer you live, the more friendships you cultivate, the more you’ll experience grief. Grief is the validation, the measure of what we’ve lost. The more it hurts, the more we had to lose. If it doesn’t hurt, we didn’t have it.

They say we’re supposed to think of each interaction with friends and family as if it might be our last. We’re supposed to tell people how much we appreciate them while they are around to hear it. We’re supposed to avoid words we cannot take back if the door should close suddenly. Life doesn’t work that way, of course. We’re human and we say things we will regret, forget to say something we intended to mention, and assume we have more time, even though we don’t.

Meanwhile, we make more of the “last time” than we probably should. We build a relationship over years, with all the ups and downs that come with our seasons. If we’re good friends, if we’re good people, we build up a balance of good will that can’t be depleted by the wrong word or a bad day. It’s extremely rare that any last words can be painful enough to negate a lifetime of camaraderie.

All of this might sound maudlin, and it is, sorta, but it’s also a gift. If you’re lucky, your ride on the conveyor belt continues. To live is to have the opportunity to try anew, to discover, to experience one last dinner, one last visit, one last call of your own. To live is to have the opportunity to share stories and lessons from your friends and, in a very small way, keep them alive.

Cherish the memories. Tell the stories. Exhale, Inhale. Move forward. Try anew.
 
 
 
 

I was playing a trivia game when I learned that there wasn’t a single working telephone in the United States during Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral. As a sign of respect to Bell’s memory, they suspended phone service across the country for one full minute…60 glorious seconds.

They did the same thing in Canada, which used to be an ally before we started loading 800% tariffs on every single thing they send us and they retaliated by dumping a gazillion tons of forest-fire smoke across the border.

Bell’s honor was nothing compared to Will Rogers, whose death resulted in America’s radio networks suspending all broadcasts for half an hour in 1935. People had lives then, so it wasn’t as big a deal, but imagine that much serenity today.

Clearly, they were a lot smarter back then than we are now. Moments of silence, especially moments that last an hour or more, would do us a lot of good. We’d all be so much better off if major events led us to shut down social media traffic or if cable news shows went dark, even if only for a few minutes.

We can have minutes/hours of silence to mark a major death, of course, but why not expand the concept to honor achievements of the living? We could, for example, observe an hour of silence every time:

• Donald Trump ends a war.
• Liberals announce another word we’re not allowed to use anymore.
• The Justice Department delays release of the Epstein files.
• Politicians respond to devastation with thoughts and prayers.
• Taco Bell is linked to a disease outbreak.
• Republicans refuse to admit Trump lost in 2020.
• Democrats sabotage their chances of winning elections.
• AI investments fail to pay off.
• Florida gets hit by this year’s 400th “Storm of the Century.”
• Downed power lines spark deadly fires in California.
• Elon’s cars/rockets/robots explode.
• RFK Jr. eats something disgusting.
• A politician admits to having an affair. Or two. Or three.
  

Really, the list of possibilities is endless. It’s almost the same as a drinking game, but with less liver damage.

The more I think about it, the more I’m liking this idea. If we work at it, we could end up with enough “moments” of silence that we can enjoy hours of peace every single day. We could reject every unwanted comment or pointless meme with a single message: “I’m sorry I cannot respond during this moment of silence.” It’s so much more polite than STFU, and probably just as effective.

Shhhhhhhh.

People who work in retail have way too much time on their hands, or else they’re just drinking too much Red Bull on their breaks. How else do you explain it when you order a tube of toothpaste and you get a message like:

TIME TO GET EXCITED. YOUR ORDER IS IN THE WORKS!

Yes, I know there isn’t an actual human being typing those words. Still, somebody typed those words into the automated script, so all of us are now the victims of some strangely irrational exuberance.

The gushing confirmation of your order is just the start, of course, because you had to give them your phone number in order to complete the purchase and now you’ll get at least 27 texts to keep the party going.

Ping. Omigod we just packed your box.

Ping. Can you believe it? We just left your package for the delivery service.

Ping. We’re orgasmic over here, just thinking about you opening our box.

Ping. The mailman picked it up and there’s no stopping us now.

Ping. Oh, baby, oh, baby, our little package of love has arrived on your doorstep. We cannot wait for you to enjoy it fully.

Ping. WTF! We went to all the trouble to meet all your needs and you haven’t opened the package yet?

Ping. Playing hard to get, are we? Well, two can play at that game.

Ping. Who are we kidding? We are so hooked on you that nothing can stop our excitement, just thinking of you, ever so slowly, unwrapping our little package.

Ping. We tapped into your Nest camera and we see you’ve picked up the package and taken it inside. We’ll sync with Alexa now to hear what you think of it.

Ping. Please take this 497-question survey to let us know how much you love our (toothpaste). Please note that any scores below five stars will lead to mass firings and ritual suicide.

Ping. Isn’t this the best (toothpaste) you’ve ever had? Don’t you want to order more?

Ping. Don’t worry about ordering more (toothpaste). We’ve added it to your cart and checked you out. For your convenience, we charged your card on file.

Ping. TIME TO GET EXCITED. YOUR ORDER IS IN THE WORKS!

Like Estelle Reiner said, I’ll have what she’s having.

Fully 20% of summer is over already and I haven’t gone out to play yet.

Every morning is pretty much the same. I sit at the kitchen(ette) table and look out the window and think, “I want to go out and play.” And I’d do it, too, if I had any idea what that meant.

When I was a kid, my mom would use the term to get me out of the house and as far away from her as possible. She’d send me out the back door and down the stairs to spend a few hours wandering around the alley or walking to the park down the street.

Some days, I’d pick up pieces of broken beer bottles and toss them onto the concrete to watch them shatter. Sometimes, I’d find a stick I could use to pretend I was a swordsman or a baseball player or a conductor. I’m not sure if that was really “playing,” but mom never defined the term for me. “Play” meant out of the house and she didn’t focus on the details.

Every so often, she’d find some other mom who wanted to ditch her kids for the day and they’d put us together, but not in either one’s apartment. We couldn’t make our own plans, of course, because our phone plans included maybe three calls per month and only adults could use that privilege. We had to wait for two moms to get exasperated enough to come up with a scheme to get rid of two kids at once.

I don’t remember any stranger-danger speeches from when I was a kid. Maybe there weren’t as many ne’er-do-wells loitering around, or maybe we were just more expendable back then. Maybe the moms figured the cops would pay more attention if there were two missing kids instead of just one. Of course, that was before they started calling it “free-range parenting” instead of abandonment.

Fast-forward 60 years—and those decades disappeared faster than I could have imagined—and nothing has changed. Mom is gone, physically, but she’s still in the back of my head, hectoring me to go out and play on any sunny day that shows up outside my window. There are still plenty of broken beer bottles in the alley, and more than a few sticks, so a fun time is absolutely guaranteed.

I need to hurry, though. In ten weeks, I’ll have one more summer under my belt and one less to experience. Whatever it means to “go out and play,” the clock is ticking.

Tempus fugit.

Once again, it’s time to save a much-beleaguered minority group from the public shame and private regret that reduce their lives to ceaseless misery. We’ve already rescued lazy people and the absent-minded elderly and liars from the ignominy of their existence, and now we’re going to resurrect the reputations of hoarders.

Yes, hoarders, the people we mock for saving every National Geographic (Kids, ask your grandparents about this.) since 1942 and stashing their Nehru jackets (Kids, ask your grandparents about this.) in the back of the closet and cataloging their old printer cables (Kids…never mind.) in case the wi-fi goes out.

Disdained by the elites, these packrats are saving us all from disaster and getting damned little credit for their sacrifice. Those days are gone, though, as we bring packrattiness into the light and celebrate the true heroes of the world.

Yeah, the zeitgeist says we’re supposed to jettison anything that doesn’t bring us joy and less is more and minimalism is ultra-cool, but that’s just hipster blather. We all know better, and we’ve all experienced the blowback from even the most petty downsizing.

No matter what it is, no matter how long an old, useless, broken-down item (insert husband joke here) has been lying around the house (insert another husband joke here), we end up needing it desperately…one day after we throw it out. (Not husbands, but other stuff.) It doesn’t even matter if we know what the item is. If we toss it out, it becomes essential retroactively.

Last month, I finally dumped a bunch of old jars and lids that I was keeping in reserve, just in case I needed some old jars and lids for reasons I couldn’t imagine. After keeping the jars in a kitchen cabinet for three years, I finally lightened my burden. The next day, I needed something thin and metallic, much like the lids I had dumped, to keep some shelving from putting a dent in the floor.

The timing of dump/need is so precise, so uncanny, that I now believe my possessions are sentient beings who like where they live. When I send them to new surroundings, they almost cackle and say, “I will get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!” (Kids, you are clearly too young to be reading this.)

Just to be safe, I’m never throwing anything away in the future, and I hope everyone else avoids the deadly mistake of cleaning house. Millions of us still have a box or two of N95 masks from the height of Covid and we’ve thought about sending them to the landfill, but we absolutely cannot do that.

If we do, we’ll be hit with a pandemic the next day. Nobody knows if it will be Covid 47,  rampant Ebola, or maybe even New World Screwworm jumping from cattle to humans, but we do know the only thing stopping the next plague is hoarded N95 masks.

Clearly, hoarders understand the karma of preservation, the incredible balance between excess inventory and critical reserves, and we are somehow better off for their sacrifice. That recognition makes me much more enthusiastic about my own collection of important artifacts, spare parts, and chatchkes.

Suddenly, all of it is bringing me joy.

Once again, it’s time for me to be your hero and save you from a pernicious myth that can make life miserable, especially for those of us who want to pretend we’re still at middle age in our 70s.

After incredible research into the topic, we can now report with 128% certainty that short-term memory loss is a hoax, a myth, a canard, an evil plot designed to make older people less certain of our decisions and more willing to entrust our mother’s maiden name to the next bot that asks. It’s an excuse for Big Pharma and Big Doctors and Big Influencers to peddle all kinds of cures, and make $zillions, while “treating” a problem that doesn’t exist.

I must admit that I fell for this con more than once over the years, but those days are gone. Here's the straight skinny, for those of you who can handle the truth. Our memories don’t fail us at all. Rather, our brains make highly specific and strategic decisions about what’s worth keeping and what we can toss.

When we’re younger, we remember pretty much everything, and that’s easy when you’re in your 20s and your brain is still empty. Keeping track of useless crapola is no problem when your disk is only 32% full. By the time we hit 70…or as young as 50 if we’ve been paying attention…the disk is at 98% and almost any new bit of data has to replace some existing information in order to win a place on the server.

If there's one thing I've learned during my long career as a neurosurgeon, it's that our oldest memories have great survival skills. Old memories spend decades resisting new ideas, and they fight like Rambo to keep recent updates from replacing them. (BTW: Rambo’s full name was John James Rambo, which I know because I stored it in memory in 1982 and, did I mention, old memories know how to survive.)
 
When it comes to memories that never fade, the strongest survivalists are embarrassing moments, TV theme songs, and incredible achievements we remember with absolute detail, even though they never really happened. (For instance, I remember every moment of my long career as a neurosurgeon, even though I never went to med school.)  If you think the reason you walked into the kitchen is going to replace, “Meet George Jetson…” think again.

There’s a very practical benefit to the brain’s insistence on retaining ancient lore. I’m the only one who can remember what I was taking home from the Flip Side when I got hit by a truck, but anything that’s recent is available online. My brain is protecting the apocrypha, while fighting off the incursions of momentary fads.  

Lately, I’m presorting the memories without asking my subconscious to make a choice. Whenever someone tells me something, I instantly decide if it’s stuff I actually need to know or something I can nod my head about and pretend to remember later. This is such a time saver that I spend about 14 hours a day nodding my head and saying, “Uh, huh.” If it’s really worth remembering, they’ll remind me later. If not, we’ve both saved a ton of time and a megabyte or two.

Now that I’ve discovered the truth about so-called “short-term memory loss,” life is so much less stressful. When I can’t recall something simple, it’s a sign that my incredible brain is being very selective about what’s worth remembering. The less I remember, the smarter I am, and that’s a major comfort as I approach middle age.
 
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