On a whim…

Some days arrive uninvited. They just happen.

Bags are packed—sometimes decades earlier—then stowed away, waiting. Waiting for the uninvited day. When it comes, the bags tumble out of their hiding places, and the contents explode into life.

Yesterday was such a day.

I had an appointment at a medical office dealing with a disease no one wishes to face. It was, in itself, rather matter-of-fact: identify the disease, consider treatment options, make decisions, do my part as a credible member of the team seeking to eradicate the problem.

But then came the baggage.

The baggage carries the awareness of mortality—not so much my own, but of those I’ve loved. Sitting in the doctor’s office, I was reminded again of how many times my late wife must have had similar conversations. Her cycle of remission and relapse always included consultations like this: the tests, the scans, the waiting for results. I was there for much of it.

Those suitcases have been familiar companions for many years.

But yesterday I unpacked another one I didn’t expect: the one I now call Morbid Math.

Morbid Math began when the doctor alluded to my advanced age, as if age alone dictates outlook. Yes, the older we get, the more we must face our finitude. But as I told him, anyone—at any age—can drop dead in a moment. Statistics may predict probability, but statistics don’t govern individuality.

This is where the science of medicine must, if practiced well, meet the art of medicine. Options may narrow with age, but every life still deserves case-by-case care.

And that’s when the arithmetic began.

In just a few years, I will have lived twice as many years as my late wife. That realization stung. I could have done without it. But the uninvited day doesn’t ask permission to unpack what it brings.

Then came another calculation. I remarried thirty-one years ago this past August. Counting the years of our courtship, Beth and I were together twenty-two years—nineteen of them married. The sheer ratio of years makes comparisons absurd. Yet I know this: Beth and I grew up together, and Lucy and I are growing down together. Each love has its own trajectory.

The problem is that growing up was interrupted. And so, I’ve spent the years since trying, in some way, to complete the work Beth and I began. I got to watch our daughters grow up. She did not.

Thank you, Morbid Math, for that reminder.

Two lifetimes, divided unevenly, yet both defining who I am. Beth didn’t just influence me—she created part of me. But she never saw the whole. In that sense, the sum is zero.

She never saw me in my entirety. I robbed her of that.

I know, unequivocally, that she would have. We were on a trajectory toward that kind of honesty. We even talked about the changes we would make to become more fully ourselves—individually and together. But the equation ended before it could balance.

So yes, yesterday was the uninvited day.

One of the worst I’ve had since the day she died.

But even this arithmetic of loss holds its strange grace: that who I have finally become—the man willing to be raw and vulnerable—is the collaborative work of two women who loved me into wholeness.

Beth began the work. Lucy has helped me finish it.

*I cannot change the sums, but I can live them. And perhaps that, in the end, is