Maybe it is the increasing stress that accompanies an unavoidable confrontation with old age. Maybe it is a list of deceased Facebook friends that numbers into double-digits. Maybe it is that my high school graduating class in Fort Thomas, Kentucky is about 10 percent smaller today than it was in May 1980. Maybe it is a combination of all of these things.
Whatever the reason, it is easy to be more philosophical about life when reality sets in and you admit that not only are you not invincible, but you are closer to the end than the beginning. Much, much closer. Along with that is the realization that some of your time here has been wasted on things that in the big picture are not as important as you once thought, and that the people and things that are important have been given the short shrift.
By nature, I am a private person. Discussing topics like mortality and stress and how they are intertwined is way out of character for me. I am more likely to address your mortality and your stress in print than I am my own. When numerous friends and family members, all of whom I thought would outlive me, die far too early, well, here we are. In the past, my M.O. for dealing with personal stress and tragedy has been to bottle it up, stew over it and never discuss it - with anyone. I am here to tell you that is NOT the way to deal with things.
Al Kinkle has taken unthinkable tragedy and turned it into an avenue to help others. He is all about kindness and stressed that those who cannot be kind to their fellow man pretty much suck at life. His words, not mine, but he is right.
Stress comes at us from every angle. We are expected to do more with a dwindling pot of resources. Job-related stress runs high, quality time with family and friends run low. Relationships and health suffer.
Although it is no mistake that Paul MacCormack's Mindful brand is increasingly popular, superintendents do not have a corner on the market of job-related stress.
Unlike Paul, I am far from qualified to administer life-changing advice to anyone. I have not mastered the art of zen or the pursuit of inner peace, so I certainly am not equipped to advise others on how to find true fulfillment in life. There is a chasm-sized gap between philosopher and psychologist, and I know on which side of that canyon I reside.
The extent of my expertise as a shrink is limited to the role of father, and even then my wife and daughter would probably say I am batting about .500; great for a baseball player, not so hot for a parent. My most coveted skill at home is killing bathroom-invading spiders for women who believe Charlotte's Web belongs in the horror genre.
Sometimes you have to be hit over the head with tragedy to wake up and prioritize life and everything in it, and losing a cousin, father-in-law and two very special friends all in a matter of months was that dose of reality.
My best friend from high school died suddenly in May at age 56. By all accounts, he was reasonably healthy, but dropped dead of a heart attack while at work. Before he married and moved off to St. Louis, the Tim I remember possessed a million-dollar smile and a laugh that was infectious. Somewhere in his home, a device must be logged in to his Facebook account because he appears every day in a list of contacts currently online, which makes for a very surreal browsing experience every day. Throw in my own third-degree burn a year ago in a kitchen fire that required a hospital stay and countless visits to a burn unit, and I now know I am not as bulletproof as I once thought. Consider my head sufficiently hit.
I do not pretend to have a monopoly on tragedy, or answers on how to cope with it. We all have our own experiences. They are all different and everyone has to deal with theirs in their own way. What I do know is what works for me, which can be described as, for lack of a better term, random acts of kindness.
Life is short - yours, mine, all of us.
Things that once were important, are not. Things that I took for granted, and shouldn't have, have moved up on my priority list. I try to appreciate the simple things - sunrises, sunsets, the peace that a thunderstorm brings. Who knows how many of them any of us have left?
My most coveted skill at home is killing bathroom-invading spiders for women who believe Charlotte's Web belongs in the horror genre.
I appreciate when people - family, friends, acquaintances and strangers - exhibit kindness. It makes life's journey a little more bearable. It is how I want people to treat my wife and my daughter. If I desire that or expect it from others, I have to practice it on others, as well. I try a little harder now to be kind to everyone, though there are some people who have not earned that goodwill, like the guy on the Florida Turnpike who expects everyone to drive 30 mph over the posted speed limit and shows his disappointment in you with a one-finger salute when you do not.
We are social animals by nature, and smiling and being kind to others comes naturally. It is much easier than being indifferent or rude, which actually require effort.
One of those hit-me-over-the-head moments came on a recent trip to Florida. Our friends at Bayer took a group to meet with golf course superintendent Laurie Frutchey at Lexington Country Club in Fort Myers.
Laurie has been at Lexington for 18 years and shared with the group what she does to burn off work-related stress. During our stop, we also visited with her general manager, Al Kinkle. We met with Al only for about 10 minutes, but what an energy-packed 10 minutes it was. It was immediately evident in just a few short moments that this man was born to lead and inspire others. And at age 75, he is covered in tattoos - both arms, both legs. He showed us all of them, and explained their meaning, most of which centered around the death of his 35-year-old daughter, Kimmie, to a fentanyl overdose in 2016.
Since then, Al has become the chairman of charitable entity known as Barbara's Friends. Named for Barbara Haskell, who died of breast cancer at age 32, Barbara's Friends helps provide treatment options for pediatric cancer patients in Fort Myers and throughout Lee County. He also was instrumental in starting Kimmie's Angels, which is named for his daughter and is an assistance fund to help benefit Barbara's Friends families.
As a father who has buried a child, Al has experienced way more personal tragedy than me, way more than most and way more than I ever want to know. To his credit, he has taken that loss and used it in a positive way to influence the lives of others when they are at what often might be the lowest point in their lives.
He gets it - way more than I do. Five minutes with him was like five minutes with a movie version of a healing evangelist who lays his hand on the crippled and makes them walk again.
He has taken unthinkable tragedy and turned it into an avenue to help others. He is all about kindness and stressed that those who cannot be kind to their fellow man pretty much “suck” at life. His words, not mine, but he is right.
We are social animals by nature, and smiling and being kind to others comes naturally. It is much easier than being indifferent or rude, which actually require effort.
Fort Myers also happens to be the final resting site of a friend who died unexpectedly in January at age 48. This was a friend who held a very special place in my heart and my wife's and after my encounter with Al Kinkle, I felt like I had to go to Fort Myers Memorial Gardens to see her. Soon I was talking and crying into the facade of a concrete vault - hardly how I expected my next meeting with her to be. That moment was a reminder that perhaps I have sucked at life a little more than I care to admit and that I need to keep working to change that.
A little-known fact about me is that for the past six years, I have coached a CYO track team at the Catholic school where my daughter when to middle school. Each year I have somewhere from 75-110 kids on the team. It is a 100 percent volunteer position that I started when my daughter was in seventh grade. She heads off to college in less than a month, but I am still coaching that team and do not make a dime for it.
The payoff is the chance to work with kids, introduce them to organized sports in what I think is the right way and make a positive impact on their lives through teaching the value of hard work, discipline, teamwork, respect for themselves and others, how to win and lose gracefully and have fun doing it.
After my roles as husband and parent, coaching is easily the most fulfilling thing I do. Sharing the few talents I do have and using them to help others is the best way I know to help myself - and in the meantime try not suck at life so much. That part, however, remains a work in progress.
