With the anniversary of these events fast approaching, I have thought about this a lot. We all have this mystical clock with the countdown timer set the day we were born. We are not allowed to know the time remaining and there are ways or decisions that we can make that will speed it up., still without knowing the reaming time. I know with the loss of my father in law that was in his Mid 50’s it felt too early especially since he appeared healthy. Within 6 months of his diagnosis with cancer, he was taken from this life.. Only a short time later, I was talking to a coworker who has a daughter in law that is in her late 20’s. She was picking something up and heard a “POP” which from my experience was not all that uncommon in a person after having a baby only a year earlier.. I know it takes some work for their body to “go back together” after having a baby.. well after the pop, it hurt and would non stop so she went in to get it checked. Amid the diagnostics there was a scan performed that revealed spots throughout her body. A short time and many test later it was concluded that there were several types of cancer spread throughout her body and most were stage 4 (un-treatable). She was given 6mo to possibly a few years.

It may be that it is close to home that causes me to  notice this but, to me it seems like I am hearing more about people around me that are being diagnosed with cancer at all ages and stages of life. With my religion I take comfort that these people are not lost to us but rather a different stage of life. I also take comfort that the supreme being some call GOD, deity, Father, and so on; is really a Father. Not a Father here on earth but a real and literal father that loves us and understand us more that we could imagine.. I know that the reason we are here is for a “Test” as a way to grow and experience things that could only be experienced and learned from in this environment. I laugh a little but the truth is, this “Test” is not like a test you would expect to see in school.. This test is tailored to each individual, the scores are based on everything we experience and how we respond in thoughts and actions. None of us are Perfect in the eyes of others but, based on the eyes of the father, he knows us and he is the one that will give us that score..

Anyway, sorry I am getting off on a tangent, one of the things that we have been comforted in is the thought that our “Father” needs us in the next stage of life and that is the reason so many people are taken from us at an earlier stage in life for no apparent reason to us. Another thing to think about is that, our “Test” is complete and it is just simply time to go to the next stage. Either way it was simply time to move on based on the plan that our Father prepared for us.. I know that we will understand better later but for now that is what we have.

There is one more thing to this that I have experienced. I have yet to see if the same experience is had by my co-worker. Several years leading up to the death of my father in law there were “things”, “Feelings” that indicated something was going to happen. At this stage in the game I cannot recall what all of them were but as a testimony to the things that I believe, this is an example of why I feel so strongly about this.

Back in the spring of 2011 the thought of my wife and I wanting more came to the point that we could no longer ignore it. There was a new feeling that we were supposed to be doing something more/different than we were at that time. I was making OK money at work and I kind of enjoyed what I did. We thought and prayed and that Fall decided to move to Provo. To go back to school for a Mechanical Engineering degree to align my career with what I enjoyed doing. The first semester was hard trying to take as many classes as my schedule would allow with me working full time and having a side business that required a minimum of 1 hour every night.  The following semester, I was feeling tired and worn out. So I reduced my classes to ease the pain. Still no rest. Somewhere in this mix my family was one of 5 families quarantine for whooping cough.

On top of all of that (because of the medical expense we had already incurred) I decided to have my arms tested as we thought I may have had carpel tunnel. We ran out of time to do all of the tests but they were leaning toward tendonosis. In the process of all of this testing we had also found out that my health was not so good. My blood pressure was through the roof and I was diagnosed with Phase-2 hypertension.  As we, in despair, pondered what we needed to do since what we were doing was not working. We decided that we needed to enjoy what we already had and that I needed to take what I learned and stop going to school. Those trials had to have been what I needed to do so that I could learn something, and we did. We learned we did not need a big house to have space. We learned that good friends are invaluable and we learned that too much is too much.

After all that, we decided to stay where we were and go back to focusing on work and family. There was, however, still a feeling of something looming ahead of us still.  We could not figure out what it was. We wanted to have more kids so we “stopped stopping” the process. Nothing happened, but , the feeling was still there.

Come January of 2013, another trial stood ahead. I was laid off from my job of over 7 ½ years. I cannot say I did not see it coming. Business was getting slower and the company had done several layoffs. Really there was only 5 or so people in the company that had been there longer than I had and with the consolidation that was happening, I knew my position would be eliminated.

This is a strange point in what happened. Rather than going and getting a job doing things I know well, we resorted to working with my father-in-law. The pay was minimal and the work was hard. finances required us to move in with my in-laws. All of this felt illogical but right. Less than a year later is when my father-in-law was diagnosed with Cancer.

Was the cancer what we felt coming, I still don’t know. Much has happened even since then. A lot of “I would never”s have happened and it felt right.

We cannot plan what will happen. We cannot determine how much time we have. All we can determine is what we are going to do with the time we have and, since we do not know what time we have, we can only determine what we are going to do NOW.  Our lives can end at any moment and without any warning.

I have debated how to present this thought for fear of offending someone but, in all reality the ones that are offended by this are the offenders and should realize how much doing this offends or even bothers others. Let me start of by giving you a few of the experiences that I have had over the past few months.

The first one that I did that made it very obvious was when a TV in our house quit working. The “FIX IT” that I am did some diagnostics and found out that the lamp had burnt out (this was a nice projection TV). It is an easy part to replace and the cost was about $100.00 but when it came down to it, we really did not have the need for the TV so we decided to put it in the local free ads. For those of you who know me I stay very busy, especially as of late so in the ad, at the top, it said “DO NOT CALL!”  “This tv is located on the front porch at this address. Come and get it “  and then went on to indicate what was wrong with it and where to get the part for the best deal.. the ad contained EVERYTHING  a person would need to know so that they would not have need to bother me..  Within the hour of the post I received 5 phone calls and several text asking “where can I get this?”, “What is wrong with it?”, “how much would it cost to fix?”. I don’t get that.. If the ad says DO NOT CALL, what part of that do they not understand? What is it about people looking for a good deal that don’t bother to take the time to READ the details of an Ad and would rather bother the person than put the effort to put ALL of the details in the post..

Now maybe there needs to be a little background to explain why this bothers me so much.. I personally HATE to read.. I will read for a need but, it is not enjoyable to me. I have  some level dyslexia on top of a long diagnosed case of A.D.D. If I can read an ad for something I want how is it that there are so many people that simply won’t.

Before this even, I was attempting to sell my motorcycle.. I gave as many details in the ad as I could and included about 16 pictures of all angles of the bike as well as close ups of things such as : tire tread, chain and sprocket condition, gauge cluster, seat , and so on. I had had only a few Nibbles when I had one person that sounded serious want to come see it in person. After a week and a half of trying to find a time that would work for both of us, the apt was made. When the time came he arrived  and I took him out to the garage where the bike was located. He stood back and glanced at it. I awkwardly tried to explain any details that I thought of and let him hear the engine and so forth but he seemed reluctant. A short time later he left with no sign of commitment. Later I got a text that said something along the lines of “Thank you for wasting my time, What happened to the “Beautiful” bike you described in the ad. I drove over an hour with a second person so that I could drive the bike home” and it went on. All  that ran through my mind was “what was he expecting that he did not see?” how many more pictures and details would have it taken to make this guy happy? Really I don’t know.. and after giving it some thought.. To make me feel a little better, I did later look up the bike that he was selling that he thought was “Beautiful” and it appeared to be a junk yard bike with a mismatch appearance with parts looking like it came off a dozen different bikes.

And finally the one that topped it off for me last night. With the recent loss of my father in law, we have had a lot of things that needed to be sold and gotten rid of.. On top of that our rental house is open for the week so we have a huge list of things that need to be done to it to prepare it for the new tenant moving in within the week. Needless to say I am super busy.  I took the time and put together an ONLINE yard sale with pictures, details, and pricing and indicated that times for viewing and pick up were by apt only so that I would be able to keep going on the things that I needed to. I have had a fair amount of interest in several things but finally , I did have an individual call wanting 2 wheel chairs and a walker. I Indicated that I would take some of the cost off for a bundle buy. He agreed to the terms and arrangement of collection.. I told him that it would be on a specific day from 5:30PM – 6:45PM. He indicated that it would not be a problem, he got off work in SLC (1 hour away) at 5 pm and would come strait here. So the day came, I got home from work right at 5:30 and while waiting for him to show, I ate some dinner and started loading things up to go work on the rental house. At 6:49pm I called to see where he was at since he had still not arrived. He indicated that he was “at the north end of the valley headed my way (putting him still 30-40 min out)

– “OK please hurry I have an somewhere I need to be at 7pm”…

” OK will do”.

I finished loading up what we needed and then sat to relax with my wife.. and so we waited, and waited, and waited  by 8:30pm I was pissed! How could someone waste so much of my time without the courtesy of  a call or respect for my time. Now there was of coarse the benefit of the doubt given by this point assuming there were car problems, traffic, something.. out of anger I sent him a text that said (8:36PM) “did you get lost.. pick up time was 5:30 to 6:45… it is now 8:30.. I have had to cancel all of my plans because you were not here on time”… ahh that is better, now he’ll come back and say sorry my car died and I was trying to get it taken care of it so I could hurry and meet up to get those items right? Wrong, no , this was his reply (8:55PM) “I apologize I am stuck in Ogden, Thank you for your kindness, I’m sorry for inconvenience, please move fwd. “ Ogden?!?!?!?! Ogden is north of SLC  and in fact is an hour and a half away making him a full hour more away than he said he was when  I called when he was late in the first place. I replied with a “when I called you said you were at the north end of the county coming from SLC!” and left it at that.

This person was completely fine with wasting 2 hours of my time on top of the hour I had already agreed to give him.. at what point was he going to say I am not going to make it. Or even “plans changed and I wont be able to get there until a specified time later”  something to make sure that he was not wasting my time.

These are 3 experiences I have had over the span of a month.. How many times has this happened to you.. how many times did you have an appointment at the doctor (they want you early too) and then you proceeded to sit in the waiting room for 2-3 hours? How many times have you stood in an “Express checkout line” while someone who was not in any hurry purchased too many items and then did not even have payment ready and on top of that decided on a paper check and filled it out slowly..   How much time have you spent in an average day waiting on someone that feels that their time is so much more valuable or important than yours? YOU ARE IMPORTANT TOO! Your time is valuable! I don’t care who you are. A home maker, a janitor, a CEO, I don’t care.. we are all allotted a certain amount of unspecified time on this earth.  Now to turn the tables, How many times has this person we are all waiting on been YOU? Be sure you do everything to make sure the last question is not yes..IF YOU ARE NOT EARLY, YOU ARE LATE! Be considerate of others time, we all have lives, we all have trials. We all have a magical clock counting down somewhere that we are racing against.

I can do nothing more than laugh when I get asked this. Now  for those of you who know me personally, you already understand why this is fun to me, and maybe it is something that is just a simple communication problem that everyone experiences. My guess is the latter simply because of the way the economy is going and the way several people are responding to it. The other night at a Church function I was sitting next to a couple that I did not know very well when they asked this very question “So, what do you do?”. Sure if I was to be all literal about that, it would go a whole different direction but, even being that I understood what they were asking, I was still at a loss of how to answer. Shall I list out what  I do ( for income)?

At the time this was asked, I could have simply responded “my Full time job, I am an Engineer”. the sad part is that really says nothing. I was not a licensed Engineer but my employment position was the responsibilities of a Manufacturing engineer. Even this position was very limited sighting because not even my employee was able to give me an official title with limited grasp of all of the things I was doing for the company at that time.

Even at that, I know that often when that question is asked, it is in an attempt to get to know someone and, with their employment occupying most of their time, it tends to be a good description of who that person is and an easy way to open the door to conversation. For some reason, that has not been the case with me and has made it difficult to answer without killing the conversation altogether. Tips? let me know..