Surviving everything in life!

 What were the hardest things to survive for me?

My first Divorce

My second Divorce

My father's death 

My Mother's death

2 of the deaths of my best friends in 2006 and in 2011. One I met in church at age 6 and one I met when I gave him my newspaper route in 1958 when I was 10 who was a friend from Junior High through the beginning of college. He studied Jet engine maintenance so he could join the Air Force and not get drafted and sent to die on the front lines of Viet Nam. So, he went to Thailand in the Air Force during the Viet Nam War and worked on jet engines of Fighter Planes and B-52 Bombers. My other friend who I met in church sunday school at age 6 was a teacher with a master's degree who was a conscientious objector from the Viet Nam War and he taught High School even though he came from a rich family in Los Angeles sort of as a penance for not dying in Viet Nam with many of his friends.

The other deaths that were hard to live through were:

My wife's father's death

My wife's mother's death

My wife's stepfather's death

My male cousins death

My Female Cousins death from Pancreatic Cancer

You notice it was the deaths of family and friends that were the hardest.

When my high School Friend who went to Thailand during the viet Nam WAr in the Air Force died I couldn't speak the day of his Funeral and burial at a military burial Ground near Bakersfield where his sister lived. It's the first day of my life when I was so stunned I couldn't even speak that day. I was dumbfounded to lose my junior high and High school Friend then in 2011.

You notice my near death many times from 1998 to the present weren't what upset me the most.

It was family and friends dying.

When my father died I found I couldn't play or write music much after that or play music at all

This only got worse when my mother died in 2008. (my father died at age 69 from prostate cancer in 1985) when I was 37 years old.

So, other people's deaths affect me much more than my own near death experiences so far.

My life has always been more about others than myself. This is just how I am.

Surviving the deaths of others has always been harder for me than surviving my own near death experiences.

I suppose this is one reason why I am still alive because I tend to live on mostly for others like my wife and children and Grandchildren and I notice God wants me to write for all of you too.

So, God shares my wisdom and his wisdom through me in many different ways.

by God's Grace