“There’s a difference between breathing and living, John.”
So I kept going.
Part 3 — Learning How to Live Again
University humbled me almost immediately.
On my first morning, I walked into a lecture hall filled with students who seemed impossibly young.
Some were wearing headphones.
Some were staring at phones.
Some looked at me as though they expected me to announce that class was canceled.
One young man finally asked, “Are you waiting for your grandson?”
I smiled.
“I am a grandfather.”
He looked relieved.
Then I added, “I’m also enrolled in this class.”
His face turned bright red.
He never asked again.
There were funny moments like that.
There were also difficult ones.
My memory was not what it had been at twenty.
Sometimes I had to read the same paragraph three times.
Technology frustrated me.
Assignments that younger students finished quickly could take me an entire evening.
Exams were the worst.
Before one midterm, I sat in my car for nearly fifteen minutes because my hands were shaking too badly to walk inside.
More than once, I sat alone at my kitchen table after midnight with books spread everywhere and asked myself what I was trying to prove.
Nobody was forcing me to do this.
Nobody needed me to finish.
My sons already thought it was foolish.
Some classmates clearly thought I was strange.
And Margaret was not there to tell me whether I had completely lost my mind.
Those were the nights I looked at her photograph.
She had always believed curiosity was one of life’s greatest gifts.
When our boys were young and constantly asking why the sky changed color or how birds knew where to fly, Margaret never told them to stop asking questions.
“Questions mean they’re paying attention,” she’d say.
Eventually, I realized I had spent decades paying attention to everyone else’s life.
My wife.
