LIFE found in DEATH...

"if she is doing something you do not like, leave her",

The last words that were spoken to Rick, before his father passed on from a sudden heart attack at 64. Did his knuckle-headed son listen to his father? A simple answer would be, NO! A couple of months later Rick chose to marry the same woman that his father warned him would not be a great choice for a long comfortable relationship. We could go on to the specifics of what occurred with Rick and his wife but it will just be the same ole' story we see played out on the LIFETIME channel on TV with just different characters. The courtship lasted a year and the engagement lasted 2 years; but the actual union under God only could fake it exactly 6 months, 3 days, and 5 hours.

It was a Saturday afternoon and very gloomy outside when Rick finally decided to go through the boxes stacked in his basement that belong to his departed father. Each box brought back a mixture of tears and giggles with a flood of positive memories. By the time that he had reached the final box, Rick decided to take a break and go have a smoke and some coffee. He walked onto his back porch with the usual daily routine he had become accustomed to since he and his wife had divorced. While laying back on his chair, looking at the dark greyish blue clouds it felt like something in his mind was trying to forcefully push forward through his usual self-pity thoughts. He lit the cigarette. By his second puff, those same dark clouds began to transform to a lighter blue and by the 5th puff, they turned completely white. At 1st he did not notice the change because it was looking at a bare tree daily and the next day it is full of leaves. Finally, his conscience caught up with his sub-conscious and the SUN bruised through the cloud cover and never even had a thought of leaving. Then he heard a familiar clear voice in his head. It was his father's voice with enormous masculine energy yell, "Get your A%$ Up"! Rick came to attention as if he was in boot-camp in the Marines and immediately got onto his feet, just dropping the lit cigarette onto his deck. Then a softer feeling, no it was a voice, no it was just a feeling came into him urging him to finish what he started that morning. Those who had someone very close to them die are very aware of the feeling that Rick had at that moment. It is like a conversation without words with that person who moved on but it is not a conversation pulled from memories. It is brand new as if that person is right there standing in front of you. Rick picked up his cigarette off the floor and put it in the ash then and took one more sip of his coffee and left it on the deck table. Then he immediately walked back down to his basement and retrieved the last box that he did not open yet. He chose to bring it upstairs and go through its contents in the living room.

Rick sat on the edge of his couch and opened the box with a creeping curiosity. When the contents of the box were exposed, Rick was not excited. It should have been a child opening a gift on Christmas, but the reaction could be compared to a deflated Tom Brady football. In the box was just papers and books that were thrown blindly into a box while cleaning out his father's house. He did not pay much attention to anything he put in this box because it was nothing, at the time, he felt was fragile and important. The only reason he kept it was because of some of the books; not that he planned on reading any of them but he was going to add them to his library for decoration to make it look like he was more knowledgeable to the guests who came over. Ricks' father was an executive director of a popular and always over-performing Tractor Trailor School. With each paper, Rick learned more and more of what exactly his father was up to and the enormous benefits and even greater responsibilities a person in those types of positions actually must bear. By the time he had almost reached the bottom of the box, which he assumed was just more papers, his hand hit something hard yet soft. When he pulled the item out of the box its look alone astonished him. It was a very noticeably fancy soft leather black notebook, that could fit in a person's back pocket while still being seen. When he flipped the book over to its front cover, he noticed it had engraved on it "for my SUN..." written in metallic gold color. At first, Rick did not feel ready to open it because he had guilt and fear become friends and cloud his head with a darkness that things are about to go bad. After all, his father told him to let go of a woman that he decided to put a ring on and LIFE made them separate eventually; and he felt a pang of guilt that he did not even notice his father left him something that could have easily been thrown out like garbage. Since the pressure kept rising in him Rick felt he should just really leave this book closed and soul search until he was ready to see why his father left him a personalized book and not his siblings.

The next morning Rick awakened aligned to when the sun starts to climb over the horizon. Instead of the usual coffee and cigarette on his back deck, Rick change up his routine and poured some Knobb Creek in a glass, and grab a Man O' War premium cigar. He also decided to sit in the grass and just relax before he tackles a task he has put off for a day now. FEAR was no longer the culprit stopping him from reading that Black Book, Guilt and Fear had a fight and decided to go their separate ways. It was Ms. Calm who sneaked into his sheets and when he awoke she wanted him to meet her dear friend, Patience. So sitting barefoot connecting to all of nature, the dark and the light, what Rick was entering is something he ignored and ran away from for many years before that day, BALANCE. As he sipped his whiskey and puff puff on his cigar, little quick memories he did not notice about the book came into his present thoughts. "That book was a Moleskine Classic, not a Walgreens quickly put together 3.99 books", hovered in his conscience mind. He also now realized that it had the scent of his father's favorite mixture of Givenchy cologne blended with natural Egyptian musk oil; even after all these years, its aroma is still present. If anyone knows about using oils you know that they can create a sticky film that can leave finger-prints, and yes his fathers were left on that book. Each thought that entered his mind got him more excited to see what was in the book, but calm enough to walk like Father Bull told his Son instead of run.

Rick smoke his cigar right to the place it needed to be and sipped just enough of that wood-aged blend whiskey just enough to where melted ice cubes became the majority of the flavor. He calmly got up feeling so fresh and so clean and walked back to the house and straight towards the living room. Rick softly fell into the plush couch until it completed supported every part of his body; picked up the book he left there on the previous day and began to read the pages. "I need you to know why I have always been harder on you and treated you differently than your brother and sister", were the 1st words written in black ink on the crisp firm ivory pages. This opening pulled Rick into focus and knew it was something he needed to hear. When someone dies suddenly it is sometimes hard to deal with because there are so many left opened wounds or even just simple questions one may wish answered. Now truly relaxed with a calm balanced mind, Rick knows he is about to get those answers, removes doubts and assumptions spoken from others because in his hand is a small black book personal written 1st hand about the person who has always known him the best. That was the only thing written on the 1st page so he turned to the next. It read, "you have always been so talented and started a lot of amazing things doctor (that is what his father called him)", "but you have never stuck with and finished any of those projects". This is 5 years after his father's death and Rick finally has answers. Each section of this book was written personally for him and each incident in their lives where they had conflict was the beginning of, let's call them chapters. His father had written every incident right after it had happened, and in detail wrote his why attached with raw unedited feelings of his choices of how to handle each situation. Rick has been given the greatest gift any human can ever be offered, CLARITY! A chance to see his past from an alternate view, from his father's view. After finishing all the pages, the back of the last one said "I WILL ALWAYS HAVE YOUR BACK, hint-hint". Both Rick and his father are fire signs of the zodiac, Rick an Aries, and his father a Sagittarius, so they both enjoyed deep humor. Rick chuckles and thinks to himself, his father must be saying he is going to be like Patrick Swayze in the movie GHOST, lol. Where his thumb is holding the book he feels a slight rise in the leather. This treasure from his Pop's has an expandable inner pocket in the back. He reaches in and pulls out a credit card with his name on it and a post-it stuck onto it that read, "This is for you my son, to just have fun and pour a cranberry and vodka on the rock when you go pour your whisky". Rick assumed it would be a little bit of spending money, like a thousand or two, but when he activated the card over the phone he was flabbergasted. A computerized woman's voice said you know have 20,000.00 dollars in your account.

You see life is truly Divine Timing. If Rick went through the boxes right away then those words and that money would not have impacted him as much as they did when he reached his lowest point. The creator does not make mistakes, but hue-mans do make missteps. I hope people see that you may not freely be able to express your words and feelings, or thoughts, but with a journal, you have the freedom to be YOU with no one looking. We all have a chance to get things off our chest before the pressure keeps us moving around at a loss of breath. It is not the money in that little black book that change the direction of a life, it was the words written that could not be spoken that truly SAVED A LIFE!

After all that he had been through and so appreciative of that journal, Rick went to the MOLESKIN website himself and bought a v-shaped Herringbone weave, a purple cloth-bound notebook with a matching elastic closure across the front, and a bookmark ribbon to discreetly mark your place on the pages inside. Of course, don't forget he made sure it had an expandable pocket in the back.