AT 76, LIFE IS STILL TOO SHORT..

I’m not going to say “Time flies by”. But it does. We can’t do much to stop it but we could make use of the time given us. My question is, why am I still here? I don’t really believe in a God but I do believe in what God stands for and what he has created in our lives for that very thing that keeps us going. I could not have just been born and existed and then arrived at (eventually) the end. It can’t be that simple. There are so many times in my 76 years that should have been the end.
My best friend, when I was only 12, made deliveries of small radios in a small Radio Shop his adoptive parents owned. His name was Andrew Wooley and he was 15. He had a bike that he made deliveries with about every other day for his father. I almost always went with him, riding on the handlebars. It was a fairly small town in those days. He was like an older brother, sort of. One day he had a delivery up near Blackhawk Park. He said it would be too difficult for me to go that time because there were a lot of hills in that area. I was disappointed but I told him I would be home when he got back. This was about 10 in the morning. I went home and never thought about it until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. About 5 there was a report on the radio that said that there had been an accident involving a car and an unidentified boy on a bicycle. The boy had been crushed by the car. After the shock and realization that he would never be there again to be my friend, I realized that I would have normally gone with him on a trip. Why wasn’t I with him? I don’t know. It could have been both of us laying there.
In reference to the previous incident in Imperia, Italy while hitch-hiking. What if I left the bar that night and I had not been aware of what had been transpiring. I would have not took off running. I probably would have been walking down the road. If those men were as serious, as I truly felt, they could have simply hit me with the car or all jumped out and attacked me. Or killed me. No one was around to see and it was night and I was just passing through town. I have no doubt they were planning to do me harm. It could have been over then.

My wife and I were going to leave Italy, finally, in July of 1956. We were just waiting on some money from the States which was late coming. When it finally arrived we tried to book passage on the Andrea Doria from Genoa. We were too late as it was all booked. We wound up taking passage on a freighter, who’s name I don’t even remember. This is a true story. If you remember, the Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm.
Figure in the car accident on that wet dirty road in Kansas or the 2 possible drowning incidents or, if I was not so inept, at those 3 suicide tries. What powers kept me alive through all those circumstances and the bigger question is why? Is there a grand plan for all of us or some of us that we hadn’t quite completed yet? Sometimes I feel that is it. I (we) have been put here to accomplish or complete something and it just hasn’t come up yet. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering or memorable but just the completion of a plan. I feel so lucky to still be here and considerably healthy (minus one lung, of course) at the age of 76. I have always said I would never live past 63 because of my family history and my smoking and my, at times, unhealthy lifestyle. But here I am and I still buy green bananas and hard avocados.
So my point, somewhere in this micro-autobiography, is that I feel we should act on those wishes and desires so they don’t become a 'could’ve been' or a 'should’ve done'. This is the only time you will be here unless there is something I don’t yet know about. Use it!