I think most single people my age detest being called “single.”

We all feel a bit like Hester Prynne walking around town with a consonant.

The “S” word for some is a choice, but for most of us, it’s a consequence of being divorced, busy, preoccupied or some other convenient public excuse to still the questions and help to make socializing in a coupled world a little more bearable.

We go to “singles” groups and functions because that’s where we “belong,” only to find them uncomfortable venues where solo men and women are in search of partners, willing to drop their standards to pair up or at the very least, hook up.

Okay, perhaps that was a bit of an unfair generalization, but if you’re single you know what I mean.

I used to be the life of the party.  My natural gravitational pull was always to groups over individuals. I was socially savvy, interpersonally comfortable and could easily engage an entire room with my wit and personality all night long.  At some point, however, I lost those skills.  My recovery made me realize the shallowness of being the center of attention and as a reaction formation, I have probably swung the pendulum a little too far in the opposite direction instead of settling on a happy medium. Mental note: change that.

It started when I was divorced.  When you’ve lived a coupled life, you develop coupled friendships and activities with other couples and oftentimes have more potential for social life than you have time on your hands.  But, suddenly single, the quake creates a giant, nearly impassable crevasse between you and your former social life.  Stranded on a cold, detached sheet of ice that is an outflow consequence, the growing distance can be pretty lonely.

For instance, I went to a Halloween party last night.  Though the place was fabulously decorated, the costumes were incredibly ornate, the food and drink and music–perfect, I never felt more alone.  Well, maybe not “never,” if I were to be honest and a bit less dramatic (enhanced self-pity is another consequence of being alone most of the time. Nobody is around to keep it in check.)

I suppose it didn’t help that it was populated mostly with high school friends I haven’t seen in 35 years. People look a lot different now. And of course, we were all in costume. For these two reasons alone, they all might as well have been complete strangers.  I recognized very few except for those whose years had been very kind to them.  The social trifecta was completed by the fact I was single.  Being single at a party like that, at least to the single mind, feels like that scarlet letter once again. “He’s single? Must have been a bad divorce or else he’s gay or there’s something unpleasant about him.”  In my case, you could make a case for all three, I suppose.  But that’s how the single mind works.  It develops thought bubbles over everyone’s heads to the point at which the popping sounds become overwhelming and you just need to bolt because the last couple episodes of The Walking Dead and your dog have been patiently waiting for you to come home for at least the past 45 minutes.

Any slightly believable excuse for the host and hostess if you stay long enough to say good bye. I didn’t.

 Single adults now make up more than half the American population. This is a large, looming, lonely statistic.  Our mind’s norm, however, still conceives of ourselves as the minority.

So I head home to be socially extroverted on Facebook and other “social” media where it’s safe to be single and the loneliness is controllable, fishing for likes as life partners rather than real relationships.   I make lame attempts to belong by describing in detail and pictures the deep, meaningful relationship I have developed with my dog who would have loved to join me last night if I had a costume for him.

Sometimes I wish I was stupid and ignorant.  But once a psychotherapist, always a psychotherapist.  My training and experiences don’t let me escape self-evaluations like this very easily.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  I write stories like this one as a form of self-therapy and to educate, inform and inspire others who might have like experiences.

Honestly, I don’t walk around all day forlorn, feeling sorry for myself, prowling for a life partner.  There are aspects of my singleness I greatly enjoy.  I don’t feel entirely incomplete or unfulfilled, just a bit lonely at times when I observe happy couples who have grown together for many years and have someone to hold at night and talk about nothings as if they were somethings.

Though I should know the answers to my problem, admittedly, I do not.  I have tried unsuccessfully to make some more convenient, spontaneous friends who could join me in outings like this.  Though I don’t seem to fare well in these social misadventures alone, underneath, the invitations alone are a therapeutic salve I enjoy perhaps more than the event itself.  For the uncoupled, it feels good and “normal” to be invited, wanted and desired.

I don’t drink. Or perhaps better said, I don’t drink very well.  In an effort to stave off the increasing desire to bolt from the party earlier than I did, I quickly downed two vodka tonics in an attempt to loosen me up for an engaging conversation with nobody at my table. All I got was sleepy and this pounding headache at 4am the morning after.  As a recovering drug addict, I have no business drinking but it’s never been my drug of choice and they weren’t serving bowls of meth at the bar.  Alcohol and drugs are never the answer or solution to this internal problem. I’m intimately aware of this.  But the desire to stay just a little bit longer hoping I could make the feeling pass was so strong, I was prepared to do anything just to last another half hour.

 I dressed as Santa Claus first because I had the costume on hand and second, because my extra weight would be masked as part of the costume. There, I admitted it. For the most part, I really and genuinely like myself and who I’ve become as an uncoupled man.  I recognize I probably would have never created such a mess of my life nor enjoyed the fruits of life changing recovery had I remained coupled.  So singleness has been a blessing in that regard.

Well, I am pleased to report that my splitting hangover headache from that pair of vodkas has mostly subsided and I’m feeling pretty good about today, being a single man on a Sunday morning.

Sundays are always a reminder that while I may be lonely, I’m never really alone.

And that Hester Prynne never deserved what she endured.

Anyone have her number?

LMSM,

Don

(btw, this story is unedited except for spelling and grammar, so if it reads disjointedly, blame the vodka and my laziness.)

It’s nice to see all of you here today.

So many people from the different eras of our dad’s life

here to pay their respects to Mike Miller

…and glancing around to see who might be next.

Well, they say every cloud has  a silver lining.

If you own a Mike Miller original,

the value just skyrocketed.

Congratulations.

There’s a very good possibility that you’ll leave here today having had

more laughs  than you think you should have at a memorial service.

All I can say is, we hope so.

That’s exactly what dad wanted.

Actually, he wanted a couple things:

One, for all of us to laugh when remembering him.

Two, for heaven’s housekeeping to get his room ready YESTERDAY.

He was an impatient man.

Ever since that first day he was diagnosed with cancer and realized the end of his life was going to be much sooner than originally thought, dad started planning for this very day. And of course, it was only hours later that Mr. Quickdraw  came up with the idea of the final experience he wanted to leave for all of us.  But once he’d finished the job, he endured the most difficult thing he has ever done.

He had to wait.

Up to the very end,

Mike Miller hated to wait for anything.

During his last days, we served him some ice cream and he got sick from it.

I said “We should check the expiration date.”

So we very gently asked, “Dad would you roll over a minute?”

As a family, thanks to dad, during these past months, we have laughed more than we have cried.  And he taught us never to be ashamed of it.

As difficult as it is for me to stand before you here today remembering the life of our dad,

it’s a piece of cake compared to having had to watch the slow fade to black of this wonderfully impatient man named Mike Miller.

We all spent the last months of his life talking openly about this day and all those that preceded it after he was first diagnosed.  We talked with him and with each other about death, life, this memorial, arrangements, the plans for mom, the plans for everything that would be affected by dad’s passing.  And through it all, I don’t think we have ever laughed and joked in such morbid, horrible ways ever before. That’s how he taught us to think about most everything.

There were more quips, quotes, puns and sight gags about his death and dying than anyone could ever understand and still respect us as a family.  Most were private between us and they’ll forever stay that way.  Others have leaked out in passing conversations during his declining days.

Like when Todd and I were in his garage with him going through all his paintings and he got tired and sat in the chair.  He had some gas and Todd and I grimaced a little and told him that there’s no way we were gonna have an open casket if that’s what cancer smelled like.

Another involved the question:  So, now you’re going through it, Pop…do you think it’s best to know that you’re going to die soon or do you think it would be better to just get hit by a bus?  He said, I think it’s best to know for a couple months and THEN get hit by a bus.

You see, I suppose for some people, to know you are dying soon is necessary if you don’t have your affairs in order.  By affairs, I’m not referring to picking out your casket or plot, planning for the distribution of your leftovers or the remains of the day.

Those tasks were just great opportunities for jokes for him and for us. Again, we laughed hysterically about all those necessary kinds of things easily because…well…because they were superfluous details and we all knew it.  Dad knew where he was going. He’d planned his entire life around this day.

As the cards, emails, calls and letters came in from the people of his almost 75 years here, the content rarely included lauds and applause for his accomplishments, awards and talents.  Sure, there were some, but overwhelmingly, they were about times, events and circumstances of his life that spoke of his character, his integrity and the less tangible of influences on the lives of people he touched within the industries he lived and worked.

Pop didn’t need all the months of fading that he ultimately endured.  There was really nothing that needed fixing.  No relationships he was compelled to mend. No apologies to be given and no wrongs to right.  He had no enemies, didn’t live a life of lies and cheats, and did no harm to anyone.

Of course, he was no angel.

At least not then.

So in trying to find an explanation for this long lingering these final months, he and all of us talked many times about how seemingly unnecessary this was.  Why wasn’t he just hit by a bus?

Only at the very end of this time did the answer finally come to all of us.

On more than one occasion, he expressed his embarrassment that while everyone knew he was dying he wondered if maybe they were saying “alright already, when’s this thing gonna happen?”

We concluded that these last several months of his life were given for us, not for him.

Selflessly, he gave us time to recall and time to laugh.

Even during his last days in that hospital deathbed, in and out of lucidity,

he’d wake up or turn his head and add a punchline to the quiet conversations we thought we were having while he slept.

If you ever get the chance to die very slowly,

I hope you are able to make good use of it, and not have to waste it thinking about what might have been, could have been or should have been.  Because if you’ve lived your life right, what was and has been will be more than enough.

None of us are ever promised a bus.

During my last visit with him, we had the talk between father and son. At the end, he said “I wonder what that final moment will be like, ya know?”  I said to him, “Remember last night when you woke up and I came over to you and the TV was on and you asked me to turn out the light, pop?  I think it’ll be like that.  You’ll just wake up and ask someone to turn out the light and they’ll just say, “Sorry Miller, this one doesn’t go out.”

He looked at me, smiled and chuckled at 3am.

He thought that was a good answer.

It’s a very strange thing, cancer. It gives you a certain amount of time to prepare, reminisce and say good bye before it takes you.  Getting hit by a bus might have been easier and I think it would have been dad’s choice had he had one.  But if so, we would have missed so much.

Now I’ve been to many memorials of people who have passed and will likely go to many more before my own.  And quite frankly, I’ve been disappointed. Let me explain.

It seems that memorial services like this are times when everyone eulogizes about the greatness of a person, their devotion, character and all the positive things they will leave behind.

Now if I were to be perfectly honest, I knew better of some of those people.  And to my recollection, they didn’t always live up to their eulogies.

I wrote my own eulogy many months ago on my website, life means so much dot com, which, incidentally, was named after a popular Chris Rice song and entirely inspired by my dad.  And because of his influence on my life, I was able to be completely honest and open about myself, both good and bad.

I didn’t want any surprises or questions about the kind of man I was or have become.

Having completed it, I realized I am  very much, and very proudly, Mike Miller.

Unless there is some rogue bastard child in the audience today

A hidden mistress

A shady business deal

A dirty browser

A bad habit

A dirty secret.

If you really  knew Mike Miller, you know there are none of these.

I have only one wish left.

I wish that everyone here today who has somehow been painted by the brush of the man we called Mike Miller,

can someday be eulogized with the clarity of conscience and character  we all have offered here today.

And if not, that in walking away from this event, driving home, going to bed and to work tomorrow, that you will ask yourself some very important questions while you still can.

You see, from the very moment he was informed he would surely die within the next few months, he spent no time mending fences, righting relationships or confessing secrets for last minute absolutions.  He just went on living the best he could until he could live no more.  I’m sure he searched deep during these months but found no demons or death-bed confessions. Surely he had a case of the woulda-shoulda-couldas like all of us, but he just lived and laughed through them knowing that what he’d gleaned and left of this life was more than enough.

Unless we meet that bus,  most of us will come down sick at some point, faced with our own mortality. We’ll get suddenly sober and spend our last days getting right and making amends.  What a waste of precious time that would be.

I think most of us, given a few months left, would want to spend the time doing things that were both meaningful and enjoyable, to the extent they could be enjoyed.

Dad did just that.

Living with Mike Miller has been awesome.

Patiently dying with him, not so much.

So, our family is now missing the capital F.  We are missing him horribly.

But he left us all we need to get through this.

Live right and die laughing.

And at the very end, like Mike Miller, you might also be able to say…

“My God, it’s full of stars!”

And you will be among them all.

He woke me from a dream and dragged me to the living room as if he had every right to. I hadn’t slept much the past few weeks, what with him dying and the kids’ wedding and work. I also haven’t written much lately but hey, I’ve been kind of busy, Dad.

So I got up here at 245am, apparently at your request, and I’m sitting in front of my laptop asking for a little help. Yes, I took off work today to help with the family’s plans for your memorial service tomorrow morning and except for the ding of the coffee maker just now, there are no bells going off on what was so urgent that you had to call me from what might have otherwise been a good night’s sleep.

Angels don’t sleep, do they? Actually, that wasn’t really a question, but rather more of a statement. I know, because you’ve been all around me day and night since you died, Dad. I haven’t said much to anyone about it because I didn’t think they would believe me and just write it off to some crazy bereavement psychosis. After all, it’s not even been two weeks since you’ve been gone and I still cry when I close the car door a certain way and when I breathe air.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me until you. I’d read all the crazy accounts of people saying they continue to feel the presence of those they loved at the strangest moments, sometimes always. And either I’m just experiencing the newness of grief or this shit is real.

Last week when I was up at 245am writing my father of the bride toast for the wedding, you recall I felt something and looked behind me as I was thinking what to write next. I turned back to the laptop and wrote the funniest line of the toast. You should have seen the room laughing at the reception, Dad. But you’ve always been my inspiration to be funny and I’m sure you saw the whole thing and were proud. After all, it was a line only you would have written.

I heard you laugh yesterday. I was napping on the sofa and it woke me up. I probably should have laughed right along with you but the tears wouldn’t let me.

So now I’m a believer in spirit guides, Dad. Isn’t that crazy? I mean even you, when you were alive, laughed stuff like that off as nuts. So now that makes two of us as converts I guess.

I think of you and feel you when I’m driving, when I’m making even the most routine decisions, in meetings at work and when I’m watching TV. You’re a still small voice…a second conscience of sorts….at least that’s the best way to describe it from this side. And I always see your face when it happens, which looks remarkably like my own these days.

So now percolating on my third cup of coffee with no turning back to bed for the day, I ask you: Is this what you wanted me to write? Is this why you woke me up and dragged my ass to the living room at this silent hour? Did you want me to write and tell people that this stuff really is real?

There’s your face again.
I think they actually might believe me.

Thanks Pop. You make me cry as much as you make me laugh. Tomorrow’s memorial is gonna be great and we saved the best seat in the house for you.

After a long battle with cancer, dad has gone fishing.
He passed in his sleep but kept us laughing every time he was awake. Cancer didn’t take his life, it took his body. He’s still very much alive and enjoying the start of his eternity. We will celebrate his colorful life at a memorial service to be held at The Crossing, A Christian Church, 7950 West Windmill Road, in Las Vegas. Watch for date and time.

I’ve been celibate since 2011, and the further I get, the better I see.

It was a choice I made when I got off drugs and a choice I make still today.

Not much is written about celibacy.  In today’s sexually-slathered world, it’s not a popular subject.  It alienates, labels and renders one less than desirable to many who still regard sex as a plaything and an inalienable right to exercise freely, openly and without much regard for its significance or consequence beyond it being a driven, primal, self-indulgent pleasure.

To be honest, I’ve had more sexual partners in my lifetime than I care to remember. Many I choose not to, most I can’t, and all in hindsight I regret except for the union of love that produced my three wonderful children.  And that was many, many years ago.

There is a huge difference between mere resistance to sexual temptation and a conscious choice of celibacy.

The first one spends too many hours fending off attacks while the other refuses to wage the war.  One is a choice to be in a constant driven turmoil while the other is a constant choice of dignity and self preservation.  No engagement. No bloodshed. No preoccupation with momentary pleasures.

Most men find it an incomprehensible option to be celibate.  Culture has made great strides over the years not only to make open sexuality the “normal” way of life but also to banish or render odd those who believe or choose differently.

Imagine, if you can, the amount of sitcom time spent on the subject of sex.  Imagine the number of stories and exposes about the sexual foibles of otherwise good men and women.  Imagine the volume of time, the countless pages, the vastness of entire industries spent on sexual pursuits and libido-lifting messages, telling us it’s just as healthy a way to stay in shape as aerobic exercise.  No, it’s not your imagination.

Truth is, sex has become the replacement of an important need by an urgent one.

I don’t watch much TV, largely because of its stupidifying effect on the masses.  I do watch movies though. Lots of movies.  And even there, I see how unentertaining most plot lines would be without the sex factor.  The general malaise about, and the lack of creativity within media is largely due to the potency of the sex factor to arouse and stimulate single-minded misled people into applause for an on screen violation of what might otherwise be a potentially creative story.  But with sex shoved down the throats of the masses (pun partially intended) as if we were all malnourished hookers, we’ve learned to hunger for it like the rush of a smoking bowl of meth.

As a social consolation, those who promote free sexuality have successfully fended off attacks by seasoning their appeals with “love, romance and intimacy”  as if to give added value to what they are really selling.  Eroticism is now much wider in its appeal, equating being sexual with someone or anyone for that matter, quite the “special” thing.  Special with this one, special with that one, and each special encounter so meaningful in its own way.

Sex is not the highest form of love. Not by a long shot.

Humanity’s lie has been to suggest that sexual union with another is the most intimate expression of love in the world.  As a celibate man, I believe nothing could be further from the truth.

To obey the greatest commandment to love one another is a far cry from having a passionate roll in the hay with them.  Loving acts have staying power while sex quickly goes…well…flaccid.

Celibacy creates a vacuum for important things.

The years I have spent without losing small pieces of my soul to random sexual partners has opened my eyes to greater forms of love than I might have otherwise never known existed.  When I stopped seeking pleasure, a vacuum was created inside of me and I began seeking to fill it with true love.  Not a person. Not another. Love.

Big difference.

Storge, philia, agape.  Go ahead. Look them up.  Affection, friendship, unconditional love. These alternate kinds of love always get the shaft from sex promoters, yet they are the kinds of love expressions that make you cry at commercials, weep at songs and experience the kind of joy of the spirit of a sports team with an incredibly moving back story.  They are the kinds of loves you remember over and over again, long after your meaningful casual fling left your bed for home.

Perhaps one day I will rediscover that eros kind of love again and my celibate days will be over.  But I have found that my freed mind is now capable of deep thought that births deeper movements of love and compassion and a preoccupation with things that last much longer than an orgasmic minute.  And when I do find it, I’ll have learned to respect it with much more dignity than I ever did before.

And if I never do, I will nonetheless have learned to love as a celibate man, and by then I should be a pretty good at it, because the further I get from sex, the better I understand love.

She was a poor high school girl who just needed a ride.  And if she’d never had the courage to speak up, I wouldn’t be here today.

Each morning, handsome young Mike Miller drove past her house on his way to North Hollywood High. He usually picked up a friend on the way.  Barbara, friends with his morning passenger,  asked her one day,  “Do you think Mike might pick me up also? I’m right on his way.” Her friend offered to ask on her behalf and returned the next day with his reply:

“He said if you want a ride that bad, you have to ask him yourself.”

What a jerk.  What a cocky, arrogant ass.

Swallowing her pride for a ride, Barbara caved.

She sat in the back seat, but not for long.

The chemistry between them became too much and she soon moved to the front where their molecules mingled and began the Miller Family in 1958…and by some counts, even sooner.

At the end of his long, successful life, the greatest story never told about my dad, Mike Miller, is the one that belongs to my mother.  She’d have no interest in telling it herself, but someone should speak of the woman who first just came along for the ride and ended up successfully navigating an entire generation.

Don’t mind if I do.

Barbara Ann or “Babs” as they sometimes called her, was the oldest of four in a not so great childhood where she was often the only present “parent. ” She learned at an early age how to care for people, to put them first, enjoy their achievements and take a backseat to their successes.   If  I’ve spoken of my dad’s remarkable humility in previous stories, Mom’s humility is truly incalculable.

Like Dad, Mom is also an artist, but of the family genre.  The co-author, co-illustrator and presence in every sky of every painting he ever did, she is as much in every canvas of Dad’s art as the paint put upon it.  And if you ask anyone, together, they created a family masterpiece. The full story of my dad’s life is immeasurably void and incomplete without her.  During Dad’s final year, I watched them in their side by side recliners holding hands as he slowly drifted off until the day he finally drifted off forever.  She wasn’t watching the television. She was watching the man who invited her to join him for this long ride that ended all too soon.

She’s the first to admit she had no formal education, but graduated from what she very proudly calls the School of Hard Knocks.  She was the bobbing buoy in the family storms–unless of course they were real storms, in which case she was crouched under the stairs with her fingers in her ears. But despite the joking, she learned to make peace with a relentlessly stubborn man and lead the family from the back seat while still letting him believe he was always behind the wheel.  We all knew better.

On many occasions, she could have given up, but always regarded the potential of the investment greater than its episodic highs and lows.  She appreciated dreams and always listened intently to mine as if they were her own.  I’ve always been a dreamer with a story to tell and many a pre-dawn morning, we sat together as I recited the most elaborate soliloquies of my night’s slumber and she always made me believe she starred in every one.  And for a little boy turned author, she was my first captive audience.

She has always been fastidious about things.  The kids, the house, holidays, Dad.  For all his life,  he was her project.  Few know that.  She could plant an idea and make him believe it was his seed. She could draw a picture of the future and he would paint it as an original. Set a course and he would route it as if he’d created the map.  Together, they have at times been the Laurel and Hardy, George and Gracie and Ricky and Lucy of their many friendship circles, and were always the admired ones.

Their youth was the last to speak fondly of the woman behind the man.  It was a post-depression era when young men and women enjoyed their mutually supportive roles with pride, producing what many now consider the last of the best families of the century. Their homeostatic coupling had no room for notions of pride and independence.  Marriage had a purpose that far outweighed anything they might achieve on their own.  Each acknowledged the other as a necessary complement, a symbiotic relationship which stayed the course and often defied societal odds and birthed a well-mannered generation of survivors.

Mom has given her three kids more stories of personal sacrifice, selflessness and principled living than we’ll ever live to tell.  During our early years, she was always the mark of the family.  Without her, we would have very few of our funniest stories.

Even now, 56 years later, she still drives us all crazy.  But crazy is as crazy does and now nearing the end of her days, just like Dad, neither would change a thing.

Mom has since taken the wheel, driving the last leg of their journey alone.  But they will end up at the same destination.  For she will join him in the skies he will continue to paint for her from afar with light and color and placid memories.

They will forever be those two young kids, still enjoying that first ride that lasted a lifetime. And we will all watch from below and gather from time to time to laugh and cry and be thankful that they were that couple who once shared a front seat and drove each other, and the rest of us, crazy.

Until her own time comes, she misses him each time she gazes into the painted skies he leaves on her lonely walls.

But I’m pretty sure as she continues to talk to him over coffee from her early morning patio, he may finally reveal to her who it was who changed the setting on the dryer.

And the Valentine lovers will have yet another good laugh.

Coincidences happen every day for those who believe in them.
You pull over with a flat tire and seconds later there’s a massive pileup at the next intersection. You find a $50 rebate check and an unexpected $50 invoice on the same trip to the mailbox. The difference lies in your perspective. Is it just chance or might some other force be at work on your behalf?

The simple minded view them as mere chance with no room for divine explanation. The former offers no chance to change the outlook on your day ahead while the latter gifts you hope and optimism that perhaps you’re not so alone in this world, and a better than even chance to begin your day with a distinct possibility there’s more to this life than meets the eye.

No matter how far you’ve traveled,
The distance you’ve placed between you and your past,
The amends and erasures,
The changes you’ve made which are now habits,
And the difference you’ve since become in this world…

In just the right place, at just the right time,
He caught my eye and called me.
“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.
He really needs somebody.”

He said “I kinda need some help.
I’m wondering what you got.
I haven’t much, but three days clean
But for me that’s quite a lot.”

I said, “What’s up, my name is Don,
I’ve been where you are too,
I should be gone to prison
But today I’ll stand with you.”

We spoke the language addicts do
And quickly made a bond
He asked me how I got this far
I said “No magic wand.”

New on the scene and over zealous
He was hardly apprehensive,
Wanting one more day, and of me jealous,
Scared and aptly pensive.

I said “Advice?” He said “For sure!”
So I went on to tell him
“For what you got, there ain’t no cure”
I had no line to sell him.

He listened to my story.
And feasted on each word.
He was ravenous and hungry
For all that he had heard.

I wished him well and shook his hand
He countered with a hug.
Then thanked me for my sincere words
Which spared him from the drug.

And at just the right place and at just the right time,
Years later, less in danger
That friend I’d met with a story of mine
Was asked to help a stranger.