MAY WE ALL DIE RICH

Life, Why Me, Why Now?


If I live till April I will be 71. Like most of you I never ever figured to live to be 70 years old. In my 70 years I have lived many lives. Yep, many lives to this day and I believe this is the last one.
My first life was as a baby. Sorry, I dont remember much about that because I was usually hungry or pooping in my pants or saying ''Goo'' because that was my only vocabulary. That life was a loooooooong time ago.
My next life was when I was about six years old. I was still hungry but I had stopped pooping in my pants and my vocabulary had risen to a lot of words. Life was a new adventure with school and learning and new friends and the great adventure of summer time when you could go barefooted and make things like sling shots and spears and you could ''Make believe'' anything you could think of. In that life I was a gladiator and a ships captain. I was ''Bumba'' the jungle boy and I was ''The Captain Copper Head'', crime fighter, and my ''Copper Head'' was a painted lard bucket with a couple holes punched in the side and the wire bail under my chin. I bumped into a lot of trees but I always beat up the bad guys like ''The Captain''.......
Back then cowboys were real people and they had a six shooter that would shoot about forty times and they rode horses that were smarter than any outlaw in a black hat and the heros like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers because they could easily beat up any bad guy and never lose their white hat. It was amazing to me but it was real as life.
When I was about seven, Ms Hodgen died. She was in her seventies and she was our neighbor that I drew water for and carried wood in for her. She was always nice to me with good pies and cakes and lots of good things to eat and she always had lots of goodies in her pantry. Mom explained that death is a part of life and it would happen to all of us someday. She was my friend and why did she have to die now? Why did this bad thing happen to me that I should lose a friend. Why me,,,,,,,,,,Why now?


My next life started when I was thirteen. Yep, the ''teenage years''..... Puberty …....... My voice changing from a squeak to the beginning of a mans voice. My interests changed seemingly over night. GIRLS. WOW.. Little snot nose Annie Mae became a little lady with ''bumps'' on her chest and a ribbon in her hair. I threw away my cowboy hat and got me a real ball cap. My feet grew and it seemed that about every few months Mom was buying me bigger clothes. From fifteen to sixteen was forever. It seemed like it took four years to get from fifteen to sixteen. DRIVING LICENSE...... DATING..... The adventure began and my life was good. That year my friend Gary Misenhamer was killed in a truck wreck. He had skipped school on Thursday so he could go to Florida with his girlfriends dad to deliver furniture. Gary was fifteen years old. I lost a friend that I had known all my life............ Why him?........Why now?........Why is life so mean?.........


My next life started at eighteen when I graduated from high school and joined Uncle Sams Navy. ''HOLLY KAMOLIE'', what a life, what an adventure. Dress Navy blues and a ''girl in every port'' if you had a couple dollars. TRAVEL and seeing the world thru a porthole and over the rim of a glass of beer. New friends, new places, new adventure. LINDA CAROLE SPICER.... wearing pedal pushers and her dads white shirt. Pink cascade rollers in her hair. Very shy because all she said was ''Hi'' when my cousin Edith introduced us. Two years later I married this shy girl. A new life began for us.


My next life started when I left the Navy and got my first real job making $1.25 an hour. My first raise was two and a half cents. WOW, the next raise was a whole nickle. We were rich. In 64 ''Dad Bentley'' died of a heart attack. I had known this family since age 12. He was no direct relation to me but he seemed like family. They lived above Boone at a settlement called Vilas. I spent many summers with them. Dad Bentley was about 77..... Why him...Why Now...... Why is life so cruel....


My next life began in 1977 when my best friend Tommy Johnson and I started a business in his two car garage. We worked hard and long and made the business grow. We rented 1200 square feet and filled it in 15 months and we bought 6000 square feet and paid for it in four years and we filled the building with machinery and we bought 12000 square feet and roared toward the future like a couple of lions in a chicken coop..... In May of 1988 we laid out another 14000 square feet addition on the building. Life was good. On July 1st,1988 my brother by another mother, my best friend, my partner whom I would trust with my life was killed in a motor cycle accident in Washington state close to Mt. St. Helen. Tommy, Linda and myself had taken a much deserved three week vacation. W H Y?????????? WHY HIM????? WHY NOW????????? WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME???????? WHY? Life was hard for a very long time.........


My next life started on October 1, 1995. Sunday morning about eight thirty. Alone in the shop working on a sample. Hummmmm? I got a chill? My jaw is hurting and my left arm feels kinda funny. Little pain in my chest like indigestion......Hummmmm? I sat on the curb stone in front of Brigmans Clinic waiting on nine oclock when it opened.
''How can we help you sir?''
''I think I am having a heart attack mam''
''Don't move, don't blink. Don't do nothing''
''Who can drive my pickup back home for me. My wife is in Granite Falls visiting her sister''...........
''Who the hell cares right now mister. Just lay still because we have the ambulance on its way to take you to High Point Regional Hospital.''
WHY ME???????????? WHY NOW???????? I DONT HAVE TIME FOR THIS RIGHT NOW........... ''Who is gonna drive my pick up home for me?''


My next life started about June of 1999 when we started building a new house in Granite Falls. I had retired from the business in 95 when I promoted a friend to run the business. He had done well and I sold him the business in 2000. I carried the note on the business and I built Linda a new house on the lot next to her sister in Granite Falls, NC. We bought a 2000 Pace Arrow, 33 feet long with most of the bells and whistles on it. Life was good and Linda and I traveled the USA and Canada. In 2001 I had a ''small heart attack where a vain in my heart closed up and made a route around the clot'' No big deal.... I was 61 years old and I figured Linda would outlive me by a ton. She had always been healthy and only visited the doctor for her ''woman check ups''.... In 2003 we were looking on a tour to Mexico. Copper Canyon for about 45 days. Leaving sometime in January I think. For her Christmas present I was secretly talking to a man about buying her a Jaguar. Forrest Hunter Green with a hand stitched interior with all the ''stuff'' on it. Hell of a Christmas present. I was gonna have her cousin deliver it Christmas eve with a big red bow on top.... Linda woke on September 30 with a head ache and by ten thirty am she was on the way to the hospital. BRAIN ANURISUM..
She was pronounced dead on October first, 2003......... My world died with her.............. WHY NOW? WHY HER? WHY,WHY, WHY.......? What did she do to deserve death? I cursed God, I cursed the doctors, I cursed life. I walked the walls of our house and wished to die. I slept on the sofa with a 357 in one hand and her picture in the other. I lived life sometimes one minute at the time........TICK TICK TICK.......... WHY WHY WHY............ TICK TICK TICK..... LIFE WAS NOTHING...... TICK TICK TICK ….. NOTHING WAS NOTHING..... I WANTED TO BE DEAD.....


I would go to Walmart to walk around the store and be with people so I would not shoot myself in the head. In January of 04 I saw a pretty lady in Walmart. I smiled and she smiled back and we had coffee and talked. It was then that my ''next life began''
She had lost her husband in 02 in a motorcycle accident. We ''dated and traveled together and got to know each other. In 05 we went to Alaska for four months and in 06 we married at Niagara Falls and this life is good again.


I have no idea what this life holds for me. My Willa is my life now. We try to live each day with great abundance and great joy. We look to the positive in all things now with much gratefulness of the joy of having each other. We live and love, we smile and sometimes cry and we laugh at every opportunity now. We have traveled in the coach some sixty thousand miles and went to the Caribbean on a cruise and back to Alaska on the inside passage for fourteen days. She and I have covered all the states except Hawaii and Minnesota. And we have covered most of Canada. We winter in Florida and we live life and love life and love each other with all our strength.


I really feel that this is my last life. I feel that there are no more ahead of me and it is my wish that when and if God decides to take one of us, I pray that he will take me because I could not and would not live without My Willa......




Poor is the man that dies rich with money but has never loved or laughed or cried or shared life with another.


Rich is the man that dies with memories of friends and the love of a woman.
Rich is the man that dies and people miss him and wish him back in their presence for his laughter and his wit, his charm and his voice, his kindness and his sharing of life.


May we all die rich............ Seajay the sailor man ..