As I look back over the many years of my life, I realize that the years I was most content were the years when I felt loved and accepted by the people whom I loved and cherished the most. In addition, to be perfectly happy, I absolutely felt a need to have animals that I loved, and that loved me in return. Be they cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, or birds. Without them, my life would have been lonely. That was as true for me when I was a young child as it is today. 

The Dali Lama said, “The very purpose of life is to be happy.” But when our understanding of happiness includes everything from simple pleasure to rapture—all of which are temporary, as is the nature of feelings in general—how can a person know when he’s truly happy? And is it a state that can be attained and/or sustained?

There were times when I was a child when I did not feel loved. The memory that has stayed with me since I was quite young, perhaps nine or ten years old. I was in my backyard, I can’t remember what I was doing out there except I was sitting under our large Willow tree and listening to the birds that were nesting there. I was by myself. My father came out back and said, “We are going to go visit one of my oldest friends, Dar, and his wife, Jehana.”

I didn’t particularly appreciate going over to this particular friend of my father’s because they had children who had a tendency to play roughly and say mean things to me. If I didn’t go along with whatever they wanted to do. As I stood there looking at my father, I made up my mind that I would refuse to go with them. I said, “ I don’t want to go.” My father responded, “Children who don’t obey their parents are not loved by their parents. And no one will ever love you if your parents don’t love you. At that moment, I felt my heart break. I never told anyone what my father said to me, but I never forgot it. For many years, I didn’t believe my father loved me; even as an adult, I had difficulty believing anyone loved me. Because it never occurred to me that my father said what he said in a moment of anger and frustration. I truly believed he did not love me anymore. And that there was nothing I could do to change how he felt. 

But the truth of the matter was that I loved my mother and father with all of my heart. And I would never stop loving them, even long after they passed away. My father passed away in 1986 from lung cancer. He used to smoke two packs of Pall Malls a day. It was a horrible way to die. It was even more horrible to watch since there was precious little I could do to help him. He died in 1986. My mother seemed lost after my father passed away. They had been married since 1929. My dear mother passed away one year later from congestive heart failure. At that time, there was little the medical profession could do for her aside from giving her pain meds for angina pain.

I, too, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in my mid-fifties. I am luckier than she since the present treatment for congestive heart failure allows me to continue living for many years. I will be turning seventy-three on my next birthday in May. In general, I feel fine most days. I only have to go to the cardiologist once a year. When I was first diagnosed, I had to go every three weeks for a long time. But, the medication and time healed my heart to some extent. And every day, I’m glad to be here still.

In addition, I have seen my two daughters grow up to be honest and decent people. And not every parent can say that. Now that I am retired, I find I have the time to do all the things I wanted to in the past and didn’t have time or energy to do. I spent a great deal of my time taking care of my family and working full-time until I was sixty-two. Then I decided to file for Social Security since I didn’t know at the time just how long my life would be.

Each day, I make every effort to do the right thing, work hard, and take care of my family and my pets. Bring happiness into each day. I fill my days, weeks, and years doing the things I love and being creative by writing. I have written memoirs and short stories for the past eight years. And at some point in the not-too-distant future, I will attempt to have the book I have written published. It is called GRIND. In addition, I want to begin painting and drawing again. When I was thirty-six, I was excepted at Temple University, Tyler School of Art, and graduated cum laude at forty-one. I taught art for many years. We were living in a large home that had been owned by a doctor, who had his practice in part of the house. I also taught art to children and adults in those three rooms for many years.

In my remaining free time over the last eight years, I have been volunteering at Animal Edventure in Coats, NC, taking care of parrots, macaws, and pheasants. Although it is hard work, I love every minute of it. In addition, there are some 200 other animals that live there that I can see and love.

Life offers us many opportunities; it is up to us to decide how we want to spend the limited time we have on this planet. I believe that I have spent my working years well, and I have tried to help people along the way in every way I could. That included working at NJ State Mental Hospital as a psychiatric aide and many years of working in Social Services with at-risk adolescents who were incarcerated in the locked-down facility called Ranch Hope in Alloway, NJ.

In addition, I worked at the Center for Family Services in Camden, NJ at Center for Family Services with Wilson Good, the first black mayor of a major city in America. I worked with five churches in Camden, NJ, and matched at-risk kids with members of the five churches as mentors, and I worked along with Big Brothers and Big sisters. I would visit the children’s parents, explain the program to them, and then match the adolescents up with mentors. Who were members of the Antioch Church. Often, I had to visit prisons, both state and Federal prisons, where some of the parents were incarcerated, explain the mentor program, and get permission for their children to have mentors. It was a challenging job, but I do feel that what I did benefited these kids. And the people that vollunteered to be mentors.

I can not say how long I have left to live on this planet, but I know that as long as I have breath in my body, I will put forth every effort I can to make my little part of the world a better place. In addition, I will continue to support the people I know and care for in any way it is possible for me to do so. I know that when my time ends, I have done my best. And I can only hope that the world was a somewhat better place when I was a part of it. And I keep in mind that I must first do no harm. I attempt to keep my heart open to those I meet along the highways and byways of my life.

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