Why I Might Entitled These Essays: Life’s Interruptions

I give most of the credit for who I became in life to my adoptive mother and father.

There was never much conversation about my adoption at around age two. Maybe that was intentional. Maybe it wasn't. But somewhere in my internal thinking, I always wanted to respect their decision to simply move on with their lives—with me now being their newest responsibility.

Or, looking back, possibly their newest interruption.

An interruption can be defined as an action, event, or thing that stops an ongoing activity or continuous process.

I have no idea what plans my parents had before I arrived. But whatever they were, suddenly there was me.

As I look back, I think their goals for me were pretty simple:

Prepare Mike to become responsible and independent.

There were several strategies—some probably intentional and others simply part of the way they lived—that reinforced those two qualities as I grew up.

Responsibility taught me to face reality, make decisions, keep commitments, deal with problems instead of hiding from them, and eventually own both my successes and my failures.

Independence taught me not to spend my life waiting for someone else, better circumstances, or a different outcome to rescue me.

Together, they taught me something else: Pay attention.

What worked?

What didn't?

What might need to change?

And then do something about it.

Through the years, I discovered that being responsible helped me learn faster. I could listen to advice and accept help from others, but ultimately I had to own my decisions and, for the most part, their consequences.

I didn't realize it then, but maybe my parents were preparing me for something much larger than independence.

My first real encounter with creating my own interruptions came as I began college, 500 miles from home, trying to find my place in a completely new world.

Hitchhiking was popular then, and suddenly my world could expand far beyond the boundaries of where I had grown up. Starting my own small business brought financial independence, adventure, and probably some of the fuel for the risk-taking that would become part of my future.

Those years became a testing ground.

Could I make decisions on my own?

Could I take a risk?

Could I live with the consequences?

And, of course, all of that eventually led to the most important interruption I had ever chosen.

For better or worse—and you know the rest.

At age twenty, I proposed marriage.

That particular interruption has lasted for the past 57 years.

Maybe that's when I began learning that interruptions aren't necessarily bad. Some happen to us. Some are forced upon us. And some of the most important ones are choices we make ourselves, without having the slightest idea where they will eventually lead.

Exploring this topic has become an amazing journey of reflection.

Adam and Andrea were next. Looking back, it seems that blessings might better describe their impact on our lives. They certainly interrupted life as we knew it, but they also opened an entirely new chapter filled with possibilities we could never have imagined.

During these past four months, with more time than I ever wanted to think, read, remember and write, I have begun looking back at my own interruptions. But I have also found myself thinking about people I have known who faced circumstances that, at the time, seemed almost impossible.

Some lost people they loved.

Some lost careers, dreams, health, security, or the future they thought they had planned.

And yet I watched some of them face those interruptions with remarkable grace and dignity.

Today, I find myself dealing with what I now call a major interruption of my life—the brain bleed that resulted from the head-on collision in May.

And maybe I am finally beginning to understand what my parents started teaching me more than seventy years ago.

We don't always get to choose life's interruptions.

But we do have choices about how we live through them—and what we do with the life that follows.

Maybe that is why this book has finally found its title.

Life’s Interruptions.

And so I am thankful for those in my life, past and present, who have dealt with life's medical interruptions and have served as both heroes and role models: Paul, Rose, Jessie, Peggy, Mary, Mary, Sandy, and countless others.

Their stories, along with my own, are where this exploration of life’s interruptions really begins.

And so for the months ahead, i will follow the doctors advice, sleep more, nap more, avoid stress and let do the brain doing its own healing! Thankful for that thing called responsibility!