I’m usually the one asking the questions.

This time, Gregg Hinthorn put me in the other chair on his show, Inflection Point — and he didn’t go easy. I didn’t want him to.

We talked about proposing to my wife after 30 days, and what 50 years of marriage actually taught me. The difference between loving correction and constant criticism. The business decisions that cost me. Why money never repaired a single relationship I damaged.

We talked about my recovery from alcohol and my faith in Jesus — the kind of change that only happens from the inside out.

Then he asked the question I hear more than any other: Is it too late to start something new?

I gave him my honest answer.

Watch my full conversation with Gregg on Inflection Point.

Fifty years later, we’re still here.

People ask how I can back a founder I’ve only known for a few months. This is where that comes from.

Full conversation drops Tuesday.

Last week, I shared the first ten lessons I would tell my twenty-something self. Here are the final ten, the ones that matter most in the end.

1. Don’t be satisfied with what you have. Want more. It has a big effect on what you’ll do to get those things.

2. To want more, you have to give more. It will keep you relevant. So be generous.

3. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t add a bad chapter to your story.

4. Keep showing the same interest in your wife that you had when you first met her.

5. Be nice to people. You are a role model and influence others whether you know it or not. What you say sticks with people. So be kind, not just insightful.

6. Spend time with your kids and, in the future, grandchildren. They want you around, and they want you to help them. But be nice. Be understanding.

7. Family is all you’ll have left in the end. Think about what you can do today to show you know this to be true.

8. God will use you, but you have to trust him and not question him. Step out and be bigger for God. He’s thinking in terms of transformation, and you are thinking in terms of incremental change.

9. Think positive. Think about what you can do. Never focus on why you can’t do it.

10. Dream. Dream of the future and not the past. You can’t change what has happened, but you can live what is to be. Anything is possible. Are you thinking about possibilities and potential?

You have inspired a list of things I wish I had known when I was in my twenties. When I was young, I had energy and drive. Now I have experience and wisdom. So what advice would I give my twenty-something self? Here are my top 20 lessons learned.

1. Don’t drink and don’t smoke. Drunk people are embarrassing and pathetic. They are boring, not interesting.

2. Work out regularly and eat right. Stay fit so I don’t have to take care of you.

3. As you go through life, act your age, but don’t think your age. There is nothing worse than an old guy who acts like he’s forty.

4. Start riding motorcycles. Stay interesting by getting out of the house and taking a risk.

5. You still have a lot to learn, so keep learning. Get better at what you do. My father used to make fun of his cousin. In Italian, he would say, “Pete, the-know-it-all.” He laughed at him because no one knows it all. Stay hungry to learn.

6. Travel. Meet new people. Speak. Write. See how others live. Test the truth by sharing the truth.

7. Allow yourself to be bad at something new. Fail. It’s okay. Force yourself to do the things you know you want to do but are afraid to try. This will make you less boring.

8. You can take advantage of business opportunities that come your way. Shutting down is a cop out. They’ll make you a better businessman. Don’t waste them.

9. Make friendship a priority, and seek out differences. Different ages, faiths, races, and nationalities. This is the richness of life.

10. Be willing to start a new career. Crazy, right?

1. A great entrepreneur is relatively disciplined but not patient. Drive outweighs discipline.

2. Before investing, angels want the big return. After investing, angels want risk mitigation. It’s human nature.

3. Sustainability is always a nonprofit’s number one challenge.

4. Most of the leads we get come from proactive efforts we made to generate them. “If we build it, they will come” is a faulty principle.

5. People don’t fund ideas. They fund businesses.

6. When a prospective investor raises a concern about you or your business, what you say matters not. It will always be there, even if he funds the deal. Can you live with that?

7. You know you got it and have to do it when you come to this conclusion: What it can be is more important than the fear of me failing.

“The guy is an orchid,” John blurted out.

John Teira was a 30-year-retired IBMer who was working for me. He was hired to introduce our professional services company to IBM lab directors nationwide. He was an intelligent and experienced senior sales executive who knew how to talk to IBMers.

John was in the last season of his business career. He didn’t want anybody reporting to him. He just wanted to sell, make money, and add to his retirement account.

I was President of Sterling Software Professional Services worldwide, a division of a publicly traded company. I had an apartment in NYC, my HQ, with branches throughout the US and Western Europe. I was in my mid-thirties and was a little over my head.

The big problem was that I was a product guy running a services organization. And this was my first stint at running a company with remote offices across multiple cultures.

I needed coaching.

I needed a consigliere.

John Teira was the man.

I treasured the time we spent together while on the road and over dinners. John lived in New Jersey but worked out of the NYC HQ office. The more I got to know John, the more I trusted him. The more I trusted him, the more I opened up to him about strategy, people, and my insecurities. In short, he became my mentor even though he worked for me.

His experience was invaluable in developing sales strategies, but his wisdom and understanding of people helped me succeed in running this division.

A couple of stories come to mind.

I had a NYC branch manager who was close to hitting his numbers but was never there. In trying to nail this guy down, I always came away empty-handed. But the killer was this. I was a busy exec, and he was taking too much of my time. A likable guy who communicated well, but was needy and lacked the confidence to make decisions.

While talking to John about my frustrations with this branch manager, John blurted out, “The guy is an orchid.”

“A what?

“An orchid.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

An orchid is a beautiful flower that is almost impossible to keep healthy. An orchid requires just the right sunlight, the right humidity, the right potting, and just the right amount of water to flourish.

“Your NYC branch manager is an Orchid.”

From that moment on, I was always on the lookout for orchids. If I happen to hire one or inherit a direct report like this, I will move quickly. I never had time for an orchid for the rest of my business career, including as an angel investor.

Another John story.

I had an opportunity to become the CEO of US Operations for an even larger public Professional Services company. A requirement for the job opportunity was moving to Los Angeles. I wanted the job, but I felt this was the wrong time for Kathy and me to move. Our kids were thriving in our Atlanta community. In addition, I was on the road most of the time, and the move to LA was not going to change that part of the job.

I talked to John about this opportunity. He knew me and knew I was ambitious. I wanted this. But he could feel my dilemma.

We talked about this for a couple of hours over dinner in NYC.

After dinner, he drove me to my hotel, The Hyatt at Grand Central. We pulled up to the roundabout at the front entrance. I thanked John for the ride and the dinner conversation. As I shut the door to his car, he rolled down the window, called me back, and said, “One more thing to think about.”

I tossed and turned all night thinking about this.

Within a year, I realized that my family was more important to me than becoming a career executive. I left my corporate career and decided to start a business in Atlanta. Whatever I started would be focused only on Atlanta. I would not travel. I was determined to stay home, focus on my family, and build a business that honored those constraints.

Thanks, John, for sharing your life’s wisdom with me when I was a 37-year-old executive.

Mentors are so valuable.

I am seventy-three now, and I still look for older mentors. They are harder to find in this season of life, and sadly, the ones I’ve found keep leaving me. But I never forget their wisdom. It shapes me long after they are gone.

“What’s your bottom?”

That’s the question people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) always talk about. They say things like, “When my car was repossessed because I forgot to park inside the warehouse where I was sleeping, that was my bottom,” or, “When my wife asked me to leave and wouldn’t allow me to see the kids, and the kids were relieved she did it, that was my bottom.” The lowest bottom is death.

I had what’s called a high bottom.

I loved to work. It was a great way to bury issues in my life I didn’t want to think about, never mind deal with. But when I left my corporate job, I found myself with time on my hands. Time to reflect on my day-to-day behavior and the drivers behind it. I’m not talking about healthy behaviors, but destructive behaviors driven by guilt and resentment. Work helped me avoid this self-reflection, but when I didn’t have work, the destructive behaviors came into focus.

Here’s my story

Kathy and I had dinner and our usual bottle of wine. She drank a glass, and I drank the rest of the bottle. She left to clean up, and I grabbed a beer and sat down to watch a Braves game. I was on my third beer when it hit me. “You’ve become your father.” I loved my dad. He was a passionate romantic. He loved people and loved life. He was well-read for a man with only a high school education and loved to talk on any subject. He was fascinated with people, and people loved him.

Except when he drank.

After a few drinks, he turned unpredictable. As his son, I didn’t know if he would love me or verbally attack me. I watched him do it with my sister for years. Janet, the firstborn, is 11 years older than I am. She took his verbal abuse for years, long before I showed up. She stayed his primary target long after my arrival.

I realized I’d become my father.

I was sitting alone in the family room. Kathy was in the master bedroom with the door closed. As my eyes swept up and around to the second floor of our house, I saw Julia, my oldest, in her room with her door closed. Lisa was in her room with her door closed. David was in his room with his door closed. No one wanted to be with me because they didn’t trust me. They knew I was drinking again. At that moment, a thought hit me, “If you keep drinking like this every night, you will be alone the rest of your life. You will lose Kathy and the kids and everything else you treasure.”

This thought sent a chill down my spine.

I decided I needed to do something. For the past few years, I have been thinking about my friend and former neighbor, Jim. He was 15 years older than me. He was married to a wonderful lady for life, had four kids, was a regional manager for a printing company, and was a very social guy. Normal, right? One day, I heard Jim was in rehab for his drinking problem. That scared the heck out of me because even back then, with a good job and great family, I knew I had a drinking problem, too.

I was controlling it, I told myself.

Even though I hadn’t talked to Jim in a couple of years, I called him the next day. He was defensive at first, thinking I was trying to sell him something. But then I said, “I want to talk to you about drinking. I remember you went to rehab.” He replied without hesitation, “Are you free for lunch today?” Jim and I sat at a table for two by the window. I remember it like it was yesterday. He told me some of his story. “As a regional manager, I looked for opportunities to go to liquid lunches with customers. When I couldn’t find a customer for lunch, I would eat at my desk and grab a few beers from my personal office refrigerator.” Then he asked me, “You know where this goes?”

I shook my head from side to side.

He said, “I would wake up, get dressed, and go downstairs for breakfast. I would pop open a 16 oz. Budweiser and drink it down in three sips. Then I would grab another one for the drive to the office.”As he told me this story, I was thinking to myself, “Could that ever be me?” I was a night drinker. I rarely drank during the day, except on Saturdays and Sundays, or when the “let’s go to a late lunch with the office and blow off some steam” opportunity presented itself. I knew this: when I drank, I drank too much. I couldn’t help myself.

He said, “Come with me to an AA meeting tonight.”

I was stunned. AA? Me? He saw the panic in my eyes and said, “Don’t worry. It’s not a bunch of smelly drunks in dirty raincoats there. It is filled with people just like you and me.” I agreed to go. This was during my crazy and mostly unproductive networking days, so when I showed up, I was dressed in a suit and tie. I was not going to look like a drunk. I saw Jim and latched on to him. He was my lifeline in this strange environment. I was relieved to see well over fifty people there. I asked if we could sit in the back so I wouldn’t be recognized. I don’t remember most of the meeting, but the end changed my life. What happened never happened again to anyone in the hundreds of meetings I later attended.

AA meetings all end the same way.

They ask, “Is there anyone here who wants to stop drinking one day at a time?” Sometimes people come forward and take the white poker chip. This white chip represents the international sign of surrender. After that, colored chips are offered to recognize 30, 90, 180, and 360 days of sobriety. Then the meeting leader concludes the meeting by having everyone stand and hold hands. We say the Lord’s Prayer together and then shake our joined hands up and down while saying, “It works if you work it.” When everyone stood up in my first meeting, a house painter jumped to the front of the room.

He said, “Everyone, sit down!”

He then stared at me as I sat, head down, in the back of the room. He said, “If you want to stop drinking one day at a time, you need to commit to doing two things. First, come up here and take this white chip and stop drinking one day at a time. Second, when you wake up in the morning, drop to your knees and ask God to keep you sober that day. Just before you go to bed, drop to your knees again and thank God for keeping you sober.”

I don’t remember what happened.

It was almost like an out-of-body experience. The next thing I knew, I had a white chip in my hand. That man died two years later from colon cancer at the age of 42. But he changed my life. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. I can’t even recall his name. But he cared enough to challenge me so I could have what he had. A life without alcohol. A real life. What he didn’t know was that he permitted me to do the two things I wanted most in life. He permitted me not to drink. And he permitted me to talk to God. The God I had stiff-armed since I was 18.

I spend too much time telling people who they should be and far too little time celebrating who they are.

I actually made one of my company’s CEO cry.

It was the most successful investment I ever made in my angel investing career.

The CEO had grown the company from $4mm in revenue to $16mm.

He missed his numbers about halfway through the $16mm fiscal year. I was then the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the largest investor. I called the CEO and asked for a meeting. A meeting that I wanted sooner rather than later.

I started the meeting by telling him how disappointed I was that he was missing his numbers. I then recounted why I think he was missing his numbers. I went through his lack of urgency with his direct reports, his lack of commitment to this important goal, his lack of timely action in replacing the non-performers, and, finally, his seeming calmness in the midst of this crisis.

As I went on and on about his shortcomings, he began to cry. Not big, heaping tears where it is difficult to catch your breath. These were tears of brokenness. But being a good Chairman, I ignored his tears and finished what I believed needed to be said. I wasn’t there to show empathy or be put off by an emotional showing. I was there to address the missed numbers and his inaction, which I saw as the culprit.

I left that meeting asking myself, “Could I have handled that meeting differently?”

The next day, the CEO called me and asked if he could come to my office.

In that meeting, he asked me if I wanted him to resign.

I proceeded to tell him all he had accomplished, how he had grown the company’s revenue over the last few years, and how he had built an amazing management team. How he and his team designed practices and processes to increase efficiency and reduce future financial liabilities, and how the customer base was a great source of references.

He listened, then said, “Why don’t you ever talk like this to me?”

I said, “I don’t know. I guess I have an eye that only sees what is wrong, and then I feel like I have to talk about it first.”

He said, “What you said in the last meeting drove me to the floor of my office. What you said today lifted me and motivated me to even greater achievements.”

And then he said this. I will never forget these words.

“You give compliments with a teaspoon. You should think about giving compliments with a ladle instead.”

This is what I want people to do with me, too.

But this is not what happens. I am also criticized. Told by others what is wrong with what I said or did. I am rarely told what I am doing right, what I accomplished, or what they appreciate about me.

So my excuse for my bad behavior is, “I can’t give what I don’t have.”

This is a bad, bad excuse. Because more people than not do compliment me. But I don’t receive it.

I treat myself like I treat others.

This became clear to me recently at breakfast with the CEO of a $1 billion company. I told him how much I admire him. I listed his characteristics and his achievements that impressed me. I then double down on speaking to the man: he is in Christ, and what a fortunate company to have him lead it.

He listened to me and said, “Thanks for saying that, but if you only knew.”

I called him out on his reaction. I said, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

That is not how God talks to us. God made us in His image, and He loves us. Why do we talk to ourselves harshly? Why are we surrounded by people who judge us? People who tell us we are not enough. What is wrong with us?

We discussed these questions for a few minutes, then moved on to something else. It appeared to me that this topic made him uncomfortable.

And it was this breakfast that reminded me that over twenty years ago, I made that great manager who worked for me cry. The last time I remembered this story was two months ago when I attended that man’s funeral.

I was sitting in his funeral at his church and thought, “If I were asked to speak on this man’s life, what would I say?”

I would say, “I’m sorry for that day. I am sorry for what I said. Thanks for forgiving me. Thanks for your advice. You were a great friend over the last twenty years. You changed my life with your advice. I’ll never forget it.”

Don’t give compliments with a teaspoon. Use a ladle.

10. Secret to unimaginable success: Do what you say you are going to do. That’s it! Really. That. Is. It.

9. If, as the employee of a startup, you have the same relationship with the founder that you did the day the company started, then the company is not growing.

8. You can’t be in it just for yourself. If you are in it for others, they will be in it for you.

7. If you have a vision, share it. This is the first step to conviction on the road to success.

6. The military gives medals to people who sacrifice for others. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice for us.

5. Review your priorities. Stand for something that will endure the test of time.

4. God put his spirit in us: a God of abundance and dreams without constraints. Seek God with all your heart, and you will find Him and the dreams he has for you.

3. Value is narrow and not wide. Fail wide, and you are dead. Fail narrow and live another day.

2. To be a craftsman requires thought. Thought requires quiet. Lose the quiet, and a craftsman withers away.

1. What makes for a great company? A buying market and great people serving that market. A simple success formula is not readily found.

“I came to Christ because of you,” I told my youngest son.

“Me?” he asked innocently.

My youngest son is thirty-two this year. Thirty-three years ago, on a Saturday morning, Kathy came out of our bathroom and sat next to me as I was waking up. When I turned to look at her, I saw she was in tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I’m pregnant.”

I started crying too. We cried together.

I was thirty-nine years old and out of work for the first time in my life. Before leaving my last gig as the COO of the US operations for a UK public company, my work life was always up, up, up—a partner in a successful software company, which we sold when I was twenty-eight. I got a chunk of money and the beginning of an exciting corporate career running businesses.

And then it was all gone one day. One breakfast meeting with my boss. I walked out of that meeting unemployed. Clueless. Without a job title to hide behind. No prospects. No network in Atlanta. No purpose. I went from master of the universe to being knocked to the ground after hearing the words, “Maybe you should move on?” To what I thought.

This, on top of hating the roady executive life. Nothing good happens on the road. It is filled with lonely people trying to build relationships, only to fail again and again. Our relationships, our real relationships, are at home. I nursed this wound of loneliness with first-class travel and five-star hotels.

Mind you, I was only in those hotel rooms for six hours a night. Then off to breakfast, a meeting, and a flight to another city. I was building a business, setting goals I didn’t care about, making great money, and building my career so I could do it again for another boss yet to be discovered.

But I stayed the course with the help of alcohol. It shut off the anxiousness generated from the questions I was asking myself. I didn’t want to pursue these answers. I wanted to love what I was doing. The truth was, I didn’t. So I drank at night to quench the guilt and pursued activities to make me forget who I was afraid to be.

My life at home was with a wife, two little girls, and a four-year-old son. We had a beautiful home, two Mercedes in the garage, and three private school tuitions. I’d wake up in the morning when unemployed and feel like my kids looked at me like I shouldn’t be there.

“Don’t you work? Shouldn’t you be traveling? Why are you here?” These were the questions I saw on their faces. Their life at home was no longer my life. What happened? And now we were having a baby.

The prospect of a new baby hit me hard. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I had no plan and no opportunities to pursue. I had nowhere to go. I started the search process thinking I was the most employable CEO/COO in Atlanta tech. Within a few months, after zero interest and then a couple of false starts, I lost my confidence, all of it.

I hit bottom.

But the family was growing.

Then three things happened in succession.

1. I joined AA - no more addiction!

2. I came to know Jesus as my Savior and Lord - I was no longer in charge of my life!

3. I fell in love with the Word of God, the Bible - I had the playbook for right living!

I was born again, filled with the spirit, and following Jesus.

Within six months, through the craziest set of circumstances, I started a new business and a new career. I became a full-time angel investor and the creator of the first-of-its-kind IT services incubator. And it worked. It all worked really well.

Over the next few years, the old cowboy song played backward for me. I got my dog back, my truck back, my wife back, my kids back, and meaningful work back. Yes. Jesus brought all back and then some.

Thirty-two years after my son’s birth, here is what happened.

Kathy and I will celebrate our forty-eighth anniversary in May.

My daughters are married to two fine men. They have six of our grandchildren between them.

My then-four-year-old son is now married and has started a worldwide business out of London, England. He has a beautiful little girl, who is our first Paparelli grandchild.

And that surprise baby, the one who was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He is a successful SaaS sales representative and is building a great career. He is still looking for that one special woman so he can start a family. We are praying for her.

It is amazing how God works. I had to hit bottom to be open to asking for his help. And you know what? He was right there, waiting to be asked.

I came to realize a truth in life. It came to me by helping others who hit bottom. And the truth is this. There is always hope, always. And here is why: Jesus hangs out at the end of our rope. He is always there to catch us. All we have to do is ask.

“It is all about the destination and not the journey.”

This is how I ended my kickoff company speech in January 1985.

In this speech, I recounted all we achieved. I told stories of the hardships and the challenges. I thanked the people who hit their goals and contributed to our grand achievement. We hit our numbers. Numbers that seemed so big, so out of reach, that there was only a remote chance we would get there.

But, as a team, we got there. We worked hard every day. Our eyes never left the goal. We never questioned it. We believed that if we worked together, we would hit it. The market was working in our favor when we started. Then, with four months left in the year, it became far less welcoming. But we never gave up. We knew someone would succeed in our market; why not us? We had to change plans. We needed to innovate quickly. We needed to change our day-to-day execution. What we didn’t change was our commitment to making the number. And we made it.

I then switched gears to what now lies ahead for each of our companies and us. I summarized it with the quote at the beginning of this article. Here’s where it came from.

I asked my boss at the time, Jim Porter, for help on my kickoff speech after such a great year. He gave me this thought to share with the company. “It is all about the journey and not the destination.”

When I heard it, I thought it was inspiring. I was thirty-one years old at the time. I was the General Manager of our great business. This quote was definitely the way to end my kickoff speech.

And then I screwed up the quote. I ended the speech, after recounting the richness of the journey, by saying what really mattered was the destination, hitting the goal.

I would call this a “Freudian slip.”

For me, at that time in my life, it was all about hitting the goal. I was so focused on leading our management team to achieve this goal that I walked right past the experiences we had together in getting there. I was young, hungry, and relentless. What mattered was hitting the numbers to achieve the earnout. Yes, the earnout. I had one chance at getting it. It was too much money for Richard and me, the former owners, to leave behind.

By screwing up the quote to end this kickoff speech, it was clear to me then, and crystal clear to me now, that the destination and not so much the journey was still important to me.

Today, forty years later, that is not the case. The memories from the team experiences of building companies throughout my career hold a richness of life. Yes. It is incredibly important to hit the goals, to arrive together at the destination. But whether we did or didn’t, the day-to-day experiences were still enjoyable because of the great people I worked with. We learned and lived life together.

I didn’t win in everything I did, with every team I worked with, or in every investment. But my stories are all based on the journey, not the celebration dinner. In fact, the celebration dinners were anticlimactic, fleeting.

I remember thanking my VP of sales as he was leaving the office on December 31, 1984.

I said, “You did it. Congratulations! Thank you.”

He answered, “When I come in on Monday, I’ll be behind quota.”

He’s right. But Monday marks the start of a new journey to a new destination.

What I learned is this: Keep setting destinations, but be sure to enjoy the journey. The destinations will be realized.

Keep going!

My dear reader. Here is a little background on this topic.

In 2002, I was on an Alaskan Cruise. We visited museums that described the Alaskan Gold Rush. One of the museums featured this poem by a former gold miner. He got me thinking about the importance of the journey in reaching the destination, whether it’s gold or startups.

The Spell of the Yukon

By Robert W. Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— 

Came out with a fortune last fall,—

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it.

Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe, but there’s some as would trade it

For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kind of sinning;

It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it’s been since the beginning.

It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow.

That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;

And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,

With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer—no sweeter was ever;

The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness—

O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;

I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish

I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;

It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;

And it’s better than this by a damsite—

So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;

It’s luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,

It’s the forests where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

The highlight of May — perhaps of this entire season of grief — was placing my sister, Janet’s ashes into the ocean. This was her desire: to have her ashes spread on the ocean in Florida. Florida was her home. The ocean was her love.

She is finally free. Free to be in the sea and move with the sea. No longer confined by walls, schedules, or the endless demands of living. She is free to float. Free to observe the beauty of God’s undersea creation that was always hidden from us. Free to be alone while surrounded by thousands of creatures who neither know her nor judge her — yet somehow still recognize her presence.

She is free of pain and dementia. Free from her battles — with her past, her friends, her teachers, her father, her mother, her choices, her loves, her losses, and yes, even the television. Free to think without distraction as she floats around the world, the ocean her pathway.

Free of when.

Free of why.

Free of what.

Free of how.

Free of should.

This is real freedom. She just is. Floating. Watching. Seeing. Being seen. All without judgment — neither judging nor being judged. She is finally accepting where she is, who she is, and what it all is — as God’s plan. Right now. Exactly as it should be.

She is finally experiencing God. Not reading about Him. Not hoping for Him. Experiencing Him — His majesty, His power, His love. A perspective only available after one dies. She has entered the supernatural. Her eyes are open to God and His secrets. Her meaning is now possible for the very first time in her life.

And that raises the question I kept turning over while standing at the water’s edge: What is it all about?

The answer, I realized, is both obvious and humbling. And here is the hardest part — even if Janet had known the answer while she was living, it would not have mattered to her then. Not because the answer isn’t true, but because we are not built to receive it this side of eternity.

Why? Because God. That’s why.

God is God, and we are simply not. He is the Alpha and the Omega — the beginning and the end. And we? We are a morning mist. Here at dawn. Gone once the sun rises.

We disappear. Leaving only God.

My friend told his son, a talented high school baseball player, “Remember. Your identity isn’t being a baseball player. Your identity is in Christ.”

I disagreed.

The Christian thought around identity is exactly what my friend told his son.

But when this was said to me years ago, and still today, I didn’t know what to do with this answer.

Everyone I associated with in the marketplace, the VC’s, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, identified me as an angel investor. That was my identity.

The Christians I know who explain that my identity is not an angel investor but rather in Jesus Christ are all Christians who have a job and an unmistakable identity in the marketplace. In other words, their identity in the world is settled, so now they can be philosophical.

When I ask them what it means for my identity to be in Christ rather than in what I do, I never get a good answer. What I mean is, I’m not sure what to do with “my identity is in Christ.”

Thinking through this issue, here are my thoughts on identity.

We live in the world. The world demands we have an identity.

At a networking event, like a cocktail party, what are the first two questions everyone asks you?

What is your name?

What do you do?

I answer, “I’m Charlie Paparelli. I am a professional angel investor.”

But there was a time when I wasn’t an angel investor. I was an unemployed CEO.

I lost my job, and my identity went right out the window with it. I hated networking events during this time because I didn’t know how to answer the “What do you do?” question. My answer was a recount of my resume. The real answer was, “I’m an unemployed tech executive.” Not a very impressive identity.

And this was embarrassing. It was also a very difficult time in my life. I was a man with no job, no identity, and no God. I was adrift.

One day, I found myself driving my four-year-old son home from school. He asked me, “Dr. Phil next door is a doctor. What are you?”

“Yikes!” I thought to myself. I froze—such an easy question to answer. I had no answer. Right then, I was nothing. A what? Unemployed? How do I answer my four-year-old son’s question?

And then the right answer just came to me.

“I’m your dad.”

“That’s great.” He said.

And that was that.

I learned a lot about identity from that conversation.

I learned that I have many identities, not just my career identity. And now, at seventy-three, I realized the list of identities was very long.

Take a look.

Brother
Son
Grandson
Nephew
Cousin
Graduate
Accountant
Partner in a startup
Friend
Husband
Dad
VP of Technology
General manager
VP and President
COO
Son-in-Law
Brother-in-Law
Bible study leader
Keynote speaker
President of a ministry
Chairman of the Board
Community leader
Angel Investor
Father-in-Law
Dad
Uncle
Grandfather
Executive Coach
Born-again Christian
Disciple of Jesus Christ
Caregiver
Child of God

See…lots of identities.

Identity is what makes the world work. It makes it easy for us to figure out who we are in our families, in our occupation, and in our community. Because it identifies who we are to everyone else.

For startups, the first threshold to success is achieving product-market fit. Here is the test for product-market fit. If a potential customer has a problem they want to solve, which happens to be your specialty, do you come to mind as the person or company they should call? Some simple examples are:

I have a toothache. Who do I call? The dentist.

I just made a deal with someone, and I want it in writing. Who do I call? An attorney.

I’m in London, and I need to go somewhere. Who do I call? Uber

I’m looking for a place to eat. Who do I call? Google maps

This is true for our identity, too.

People need to know when to call us. We achieve this through identity, our ‘personal product-market fit.’ It is our identity that makes our network, the people we know, valuable to us and us to them.

And that is why we must have an identity for each area of our lives... family, business, and community/neighborhood.

But where does my identity in Christ fit in?

It is my foundation. It is my anchor. It is my unchanging identity.

Every other identity I have in the world can go away. My wife can divorce me. I can get fired. I will someday retire. Worldly identities are only for a time.

But my relationship with Jesus Christ is now and forever. The bible tells me, “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”


And Jesus told the Apostles in Luke 10:20, “However, don’t rejoice that the Spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.”

He is telling his disciples, don’t celebrate what you do here, your worldly identity. Celebrate that you will be with me forever, in Heaven.

Yes. My unchanging, rock-solid identity is in Christ.

So what is my identity now that I am retired?

My former business partner Bob told me, “Do you know how to end a conversation quickly at a cocktail party?”

“When they get around to asking you what you do, tell them you are retired. They’ll be graceful about it, but they’ll be gone in sixty seconds.”

He’s right, I tried it.

I am going to tell them next time that I am a baseball player.

7. Don’t wait for a term sheet. Start with a handshake agreement before dragging lawyers into the room.

6. Lawyers give you confidence that the deal is done right—peace of mind worth both the time and the money.

5. Never finalize a deal until after your attorneys have written it up.

4. If you wait for a term sheet first, the negotiation becomes the term sheet instead of the actual business relationship you wanted.

3. Talk through the entire deal before lawyers get involved—that’s how you preserve the spirit of the agreement.

2. Three crucial details drive everything: How much is invested? How and when is it returned? And how does the company protect the investor?

1. If you skip having a real business agreement, the investor’s lawyer will draft terms that tilt heavily in their favor.

What’s the biggest deal lesson you learned the hard way?

“Sometimes I think it would be easier to go back to working out of my house,” he said.

Bob is an entrepreneur friend I have helped for the last five years. He came to me right after his company cut his territory and commission plan…again. He had all he needed by way of experience and network to start his own business. I encouraged him to do it, and he did.

“Why would you want to go backward?” I asked.

“Trying to build a business is loaded with people problems. I think I can make the same amount of money if it were just an administrator and me,” he explained.

“You have a gift from God which most people don’t have. Making money for you is easy.” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Look at all the ways you make money outside of your main business. Everywhere you look, you see opportunity. Whether it be reselling unique items on eBay or selling your advice.” I said.

“You know what? You’re right. So what’s wrong with that?” he asked.

“Like the rest of us, your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. Because you find making money so easy, you never build value.” I said.

Building value is all about being narrow and not wide. You have to focus on one particular niche for a long time. You must go deep to build sustainable value. People with my friend’s gift are always fighting their attention deficit disorder. They are always chasing the “low fruit” because their eyes are drawn to it.

In addition, these entrepreneurs are action-oriented. They don’t sit around thinking about how they can make money. They see there is money to be made and immediately take action. The rest of us sit back in amazement at how easy they make it look. ‘Why can’t I do that?’ we ask.

I’ve observed three types of entrepreneurs over the years.

1. Entrepreneurs, like my friend, who see how to make money in everything they do, even in their hobbies.

2. Entrepreneurs who focus narrowly on building value without regard to profit. They are always looking for the grand slam home run. These folks need VC funding to succeed.

3. Entrepreneurs who build value by growing profitably year in and year out. They want to build value but rely on the business to generate enough cash flow to do it.

I convinced my friend to focus on his business. He is smart, hard-working, and knows his industry cold. If he can make himself stay focused, he’ll make the big money and build value at the same time.

Kathy told me this morning that she is feeling a heaviness in our house. This is the result of my sister Janet’s death. She brought this up because I walked into our living room to have morning coffee with Kathy, and the first thing I said was, “Good morning, Janet.”

Why did I give my dead sister this greeting?

The Urn containing her ashes is sitting on the floor in the corner of our living room.

My first reaction to Kathy telling me about her “heaviness” is to cut and run. I didn’t want to deal with Kathy’s heavy feeling because I was feeling the same way. I didn’t want to admit it.

When I spoke, I said, “I feel the same way. Her death has brought us into a new season. Something new. Something we didn’t expect.”

It reminded me of my friend Sheri Dresser’s comment when I moved my sister from Miami to Atlanta.

My sister turned eighty, and she began having health issues. I was flying back and forth to help. On one of the visits,s her doctors told me she can’t live alone. I had to decide whether to continue supporting her by helping her commute or bringing her to me.

The prep for the move was difficult.

Kathy, my sister, and I were going through fifty years of accumulation. We threw out what was deemed unnecessary. We packed the rest. I called my buddy Chuck, who lives in Florida and has a trailer. We set a date for the move, met, packed, and hopped in his truck, heading for Atlanta.

Then I had to fly my sister up here. This included flight reservations but also help from her neighbors who were kind enough to get her packed, to the airport, and on a plane.

Finally, I had to find a realtor to sell the condo. That started another whole process.

You get it. Lots of stuff to do. Which included: Getting Power of Attorney. Getting access to banks, credit unions, and other assets. Crazy and completely consuming!

It all got done.

I furnished my sister’s new Assisted Living apartment. I moved all her stuff with my friend’s help. I get Janet in the room. Fill her refrigerator. Show her around her new facility. And then leave.

As I walked to the elevator in her building, I took a deep cleansing breath. The project is done. It will all go well from here. I walk into the parking lot and see an old friend from Atlanta Tech and fellow church member, Sherri Dresser. She told me her mother has been in this same facility for the last six months.

I said, “I finally got my sister up here and settled into her new place. It is done. What a relief!”

Sheri stared at me. I must have stunned her with what I said.

She broke her silence by saying, “Done? This is just the beginning. You have no idea. I am sorry to tell you this.”

And now, after this conversation with Kathy, I realize it is Kathy telling me: “Done? This is just the beginning. You have no idea. I am sorry to tell you this.” She continued, “It took me a year to begin dealing with my father’s death.”

Then it became clear to me. Janet was in my life for 73 years (my age). She was in Kathy’s life for 49 years. Her death ended the caregiver chapter of our lives. Her death started a new chapter of grieving and reconciliation. We are in a new season.

The last season was active caregiving. This season is about winding down our caregiving.

This includes dealing with the vestiges of Janet’s life:

1. Her art - Lots of works and big pieces

2. Her family and friends’ photos

3. Photos + slides of her work

4. Her website

5. Her journals from over the years

6. Her friends who want some of her art and other items to remember her by

7. Her financial + legal issues

8. The Urn that contains her ashes

We are now living in the Janet Paparelli Museum; this is a big part of the heaviness. What do we do with all this stuff!

What do I do with the urn that contains Janet?

So what does the future of this new season of my sister’s death mean? What needs to be done? What emotions need to be addressed by me, by Kathy, by Kathy and me together, by my daughter, by my sons, by Janet’s friends?

I have no idea what is coming and how it will affect Kathy and me. But as Sheri said when I brought Janet up to Atlanta, “This is just the beginning.”

Final Thought

Kathy and I made a pact. Over the next couple of years, we need to get rid of our stuff so our kids don’t find themselves sitting in the Kathy and Charlie Museum after our deaths.

She said, “So you won. Does that make you happy?”

“Won what I asked?”

Of course, I wasn’t going to get an answer as my eighty-four-year-old sister was in the hospital and in a state of dementia confusion. But I learned in life that there is always some truth in the words spoken to me. I may have to think through what is said, but there is truth in there somewhere. It is so easy to discount something someone says to me. To do this is a disservice to them and to me.

What was she trying to say?
What emotion is bottled up in her that needs to come out?
Why is she saying this to me right now?
Why in this hurtful and argumentative tone?

This statement from my sister is in my head. It never left. I need to explore it, to find the truth in it.

Were we competitive?
I didn’t feel that way, or did I?
Am I being honest with myself?
Did this competition provide a life-long wedge in our relationship?

As her 11-year-younger brother, I never saw a competition. I went on with my life, working to better myself and provide for my family. My motivation was not to “win” or do better than my sister. I wasn’t aiming to create jealousy; I was aiming to achieve my goals for my family and me. I do not believe I was in a competitive race.

But my sister clearly did.

In the end, she was either jealous or envious. She was the beneficiary of this success and stability, but clearly envied it. This is a difficult situation to live in.

She lived in the tension of “My brother loves me and will help me anyway he can. I hate that I need this help. I wanted to be successful and independent, too.”

But along the way, my sister made life and career choices that laid the groundwork for a dependent life.

She chose to attain advanced degrees.
She chose to become a teacher to create financial stability.
She chose to be a painter.
She chose to live alone rather than marry.
She chose not to have children.
She chose to leave her teaching job.
She chose part-time teaching work.
She chose to accept a monthly stipend from me to keep her financially stable.
She chose to accept a gift of cars and a condo.

And now she asks me, “You won. Are you happy?”

No. I am not happy.

I didn’t want you to have the life you chose. I wanted you to see the consequences of your choices long before you had to live them out. To see that retreating from society, for whatever reason, would result in loneliness and dependence.

I know you were depressed, but you chose to stay under the care of a psychiatrist who made you into a non-functional lump of clay.

This broke my heart.

But what was I to do? I had a wife, four kids, and a career I was pursuing. I invited you for the holidays. I accepted the friends you brought. I visited you. My kids visited you.

You insulted me, my wife, my kids, and my friends. You judged me all along the way because you weren’t happy with yourself and your choices. Yet you doubled down on your life choices. “I am an artist!” you would say. Like, there was some nobility to this occupation, despite it making you my dependent.

Maybe this is some of my fault. In 1981, when we sold our company, I should have given you nothing. I should have left you to your life consequences.

If I did this, you would have to figure out how to make money. How to live without financial help. You figured it out for the first forty years. Then I stepped in and changed your motivation. You realized you had a safety net that let you lose your self-sustaining financial discipline.

When you no longer needed the money…

You stopped taking responsibility for providing for your most basic needs. You stopped living and needing others. You became all about yourself. And I allowed it to happen. And I supported you in this decision by continuing to provide for you, your choices, and their consequences.

What have I done?

I stepped into and disrupted the natural order of life. The way these systems work and have worked for millennia.

We must be educated.
We must stay in good health.
We must find an occupation that provides enough money to live on.
We must find a spouse to live our lives with (two is better than one)
We must save for retirement or harsh financial seasons.
We must have kids to honor what God commanded in Adam and Eve from the beginning, to go forth and multiply.
We must engage with society and contribute to the furtherance of a healthy mankind.
We must help others financially. Those who made bad choices are now living through bad consequences. (Although Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.”)

This is the order of the world.

These are the choices that make for a healthy person, community, and society. This is God’s design.

So, did I win, or did I make the godly choices that led to a better, more stable, healthier life?

Winning in life is choosing God’s way. Winning is not about money. Wealth may result from these choices. But wealth, as is everything else in life, comes from God and by following God.

I didn’t win as in, I did better than you did.

I followed God’s plan. The results of my choices made you envious, and I am sorry for these feelings you have. But your feelings, like your life, are a result of “doing it your way.” Your choices, which began with walking away from God, led to the consequences you faced—a life of dependence for the last 40 years of your life.

And this makes me sad for you. I am sorry this happened. You fell in with the wrong crowd and followed them to their predicted consequences.

In the end, we are who we hang with. The people we hang with are following somebody and their teachings. I followed God. Who did you follow?

Is her question to me a result of living a life ending in regrets? I don’t know.

I open my voicemail, and it is a message from a monsignor from a Catholic Church. I never heard of the guy or the church. Then I remembered. When I completed the registration forms for my sister to enter the hospice facility, I was asked to choose her religion. I wrote “Catholic” because that was how she was raised.

The fact is, she hadn’t been to a Catholic Church more than a half-dozen times in the last 65 years of her life. I didn’t want to answer the religion question with “None.”

This simple question was confusing to me because my sister was someone who claimed she was “spiritual.”

I never knew quite what that meant.

When we talked about spiritual concepts, she would quote Eastern philosophy, Jesus, Judaism, Hinduism, the Buddha, and even the Bible. We even had conversations where she wondered what happens after death. And in these conversations, over the years, she would flip-flip from “When you die, you’re just dead and gone, to “We are reincarnated.” So now you see my difficulty in answering the religion question. A most important question to me was about her about to enter a hospice where she would surely die.

The voice message from the Monsignor said, “Father John will be coming to the hospice facility to give your sister the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Having attended Catholic schools for 12 years, I am very familiar with the Catholic beliefs, traditions, and theology, including the Sacraments. And the last of the Sacraments to be administered is Extreme Unction, or what has been renamed the Annointing of the Sick.”

I kind of panicked knowing the Catholic priest was going to walk into my sister’s hospice room any minute.

I panicked because I believed she didn’t know she was in hospice. Meaning I didn’t believe she knew she was in a place where she was most definitely going to die. This was the last place she would be on earth. This bothered me because I didn’t want her to freak out, get upset, and start screaming, “Get me out of here.”

My sister was somewhat lucid when she arrived at hospice. I wasn’t in the room when they settled her in and gave her the drugs that were designed to keep her comfortable. When I made the decision to move her from the hospital to hospice, I never talked to her about it. And the reason was that she was not rational. Her dementia got to the point where she could not process simple thoughts. A to B to C made no sense. How would the reasons for hospice make sense? How would moving from life-giving care to what the doctors call, comfort care make sense? It all happened so fast for me. I knew she could not process and understand that these were the last days of her life.

But the priest was on the way. I’m thinking, “If she wakes up when he is administering the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, then she is going to know she is about to die.”

This was my panic.

In walks the priest. He introduces himself. I introduce him to Janet, who is asleep, drugged, and unresponsive. She was like this for three days. She may have said a couple of words to the nurses or me intermittently.

He puts the stole (a scarf-like garment) around his neck and opens his prayer book. He begins speaking the prayers of death, the next life, life everlasting, God, Jesus, Heaven, sin, and forgiveness. I’m praying with the priest, but also praying she won’t wake up and realize what’s happening.

After the priest prayed from his prayer book, he asked me to join him in three Hail Marys. We ended by reciting the Lord’s Prayer together. The priest then blessed my sister by saying, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As he said this, I looked down at my sister, and she was making the “sign of the cross” with her right hand. She did it just like we were taught in Catholic School.

Just like they are doing it today in the Catholic Church.

Just like she heard every word of the Anointing of the Sick Sacrament.

Just like she knew she was in hospice.

Just like she knew all along that she was in the process of dying.

She knew. She never opened her eyes. Her breathing didn’t change. She was out of it. But she knew.

I thanked the priest. He left.

I stood beside my sister’s bed and cried. She was spiritual. She knew God. She rebelled all her life. But here, in her hospice bed, when the priest gave her absolution for her sins, she knew. She accepted it all, even the forgiveness of sins. She made the sign of the cross and was ready.

It was one of the biggest blessings of my life. I believed from that moment on, when she passed from life to death, she would be with God. Her spirit would leave her body and be with the Spirit of God.

God, in his mercy, saved my sister for a moment such as this.

I am so grateful to God, to Jesus my Savior and Lord, that he planned for me to be with my sister and to see her make that sign of the cross. I knew she knew and she was ready to leave me and meet God face to face.

Wow! How great is our God.

Only one of my three friends showed up that day for our regularly scheduled monthly dinner. The one who showed said, “I just heard from my doctor. He told me I have Stage IV colon cancer.

“I am so sorry. That’s awful,” I said reflexively. Then I asked, “What are you doing here with me? You should be home with your wife.”

The real question banging around in my head was, “Why am I the only other friend from our group who showed up?”

As the hostess was seating us, I was praying to God.

“What do I say?”

“What should I do?”

“Should I insist he go home and be with his wife?”

God told me to stay and listen. And that is what I did.

When we sat down, after the drink order was taken, my friend told me this meeting was meant to be. He was supposed to be here, and so was I. It was God’s appointed time for the three of us.

This made the burden I was feeling even heavier. But I stayed and listened, just like God told me to. It was time for me to trust God, because I knew, deep in my heart, there was no trusting me in this situation.

My friend confessed to me that he was afraid. He was afraid of what was to come. The treatments, the sickness from Chemo, the pain, and ultimately, death. He confessed he was afraid to die. Not so much being dead, but the process of dying.

“What is your biggest fear?” I asked.

He thought for a moment and then said, “I am afraid I won’t die well. I want to be a great witness for Jesus. To all who know me.”

I knew my friend well. He ran two companies for me. We’ve been meeting for these monthly dinners for thirteen years. I knew him and loved him.

But I learned at his funeral three years after his fatal diagnosis that I only knew a part of his life. There were over one thousand people at his funeral. I figured I only knew twenty percent of them, at best. His communities and network ran much deeper and wider than I ever would have guessed.

These are the people my friend was thinking about when he said to me, “I am afraid I won’t die well.”

That night marked the beginning of a long, hard battle for survival.

He observed, “I start Chemo in a couple of weeks. The doctor told me I’ll be on it until it eventually proves ineffective. I’m thinking these next two weeks are the best I’ll feel for the rest of my life.”

For three years, he fought, suffered, and beat the cancer into remission. He showed up every two weeks for the chemo treatment at our local hospital. Every two weeks, he would suffer through the recovery from the chemotherapy. And every time he won this bi-weekly battle, the next day, he went into his next chemo treatment. He did this for three years.

While praying for him early in this process, God told me, “Go with him to his treatments.” If you know me, you know, this is not me. I am not the empathetic friend who does hospital support. But God told me to do it.

I asked my friend if I could attend some of the in-town treatments with him. To my surprise, he agreed. That was an incredible experience for me. I got to see up close what it looked like to try to beat cancer with Chemo.

Just walking into the cancer center’s “infusion room” was overwhelming. There were seventy-five recliners, each filled with seventy-five people. Each of them had one or two bags of clear liquid hanging from a pole, with a tube running directly into the port in their chest—a direct infusion.

To see a room that size with that many people really set me back. “Is this modern medicine? Is this how we fight cancer in 2023? Is this state-of-the-art medicine?”

By joining my friend for these infusions, I now realize I was with him on his best days. His worst days immediately followed the infusion of the chemotherapy. I wasn’t there for those days. But his wife and kids were. He was there too.

Recently, after this battle with Stage IV colon cancer, he called me from his hospital at 7 AM. He was rushed to the hospital in unbearable pain from the cancer and went to the Emergency Room. Three days of painkillers, tests, and consultations, He called me.

My friend said, “The doctors told me last night they are out of ideas to fight my cancer. There are no other trials I can be admitted to that will have any positive effect against my cancer.”

Then my friend told me this story.

“Last night, my family surrounded me as I lay in my hospital bed. We talked. We prayed. We cried. We decided together that it was time for me to accept home hospice care. To go from life-giving treatments to comfort care, ending in death.”

I caught a vision during that conversation. A vision of my friend, his wife, and his kids standing together before God, holding hands, crying with relief. They were there to accept that it was time to let their father go. His wife was there, finally accepting that it was time to let her husband go. They asked God if he was ready to receive my friend. God told them that evening, “Let me have him.” How beautiful it was to write what I pictured so clearly.

I was allowed to visit my friend at his home twice more before he was too weak to receive visitors.

The last time we met, I was determined to keep the meeting under fifteen minutes. He was frail. He was weak. This man of six foot one and, at his strongest, two hundred and thirty pounds, was just a shadow of himself: clear eyes, strong jaw, and sharp mind, but a weak body.

I asked him about that dinner question.

You’ve been through a lot in these last three years. And now there is no one better equipped to answer that question than you. What’s the answer?

You told me, “I am afraid I won’t die well. How do I die well?”

He said, “My answer is this. It doesn’t matter.”

I didn’t discuss this answer. I didn’t pry or probe for a better explanation. I just took it for what it was.

We prayed together. We embraced, and I kissed him on the cheek. We said we loved each other. We committed to seeing each other in Heaven. We said goodbye. I got up from my chair, and as I was walking toward the door, I looked back. My friend was sitting in his chair by the fireplace. He was at peace. There was no fear, just love.

That was the last time I saw my friend.

He died well and left a big hole in all our hearts.

Death is so final.

Life goes on.

God is still God.

Love prevails.

Nothing else matters.

My sister died.

I’ve been her caregiver for the last three and a half years.

Over the years, she suffered from increasingly severe dementia and cognitive impairment. This was matched by a decline in her physical capabilities. Getting up was painful.

Every step she took was painful. She lived in a place and town she hated. It all reminded her how much she enjoyed her former life of independence and full agency. She pined for Miami and the beach, the pool, the weather, her friends, her apartment, and Miami’s culture, the people.

Her nights became horrific.

The dementia would cause bouts of confusion, hallucinations, and crippling anxiety. She wasn’t experiencing bad dreams; these were nightmares. And these nightmares were her reality. She would speak of these nightly, awful experiences as though they were true.

The men who abducted her, the women who wanted to have sex with her, the men who wanted to rape her, the people who were transporting her to dark cellars with no way out. Wanting to leave but being held hostage or finding herself in jail for no reason at all. It was her mind living a life of its own, and her body was along for the ride.

After one of these awful nights, I picked up my sister to take her to the dentist. On the way out, she fell and broke her nose on the frame of an elevator. EMS was called, and she was taken to the hospital. It was there, for seven days, that she literally lost her mind. The only thing that helped her stay calm was psychotics, and even they weren’t effective.

I happened to talk to a geriatrics consultant who knew my sister. She gave me a lot of good advice, but the best advice was to ask for a Palliative Care Doctor consult in the hospital. No one in the hospital brought up this option amid the chaos.

On the sixth day, the Palliative care doctor appeared.

This changed everything.

It was the first doctor in our healthcare system who talked about her quality of life. They wanted to know all about my sister. They asked questions about who she was, how she got to Atlanta, what’s been happening since she’s been here, what happened that might have caused the fall, and what’s been happening at the hospital.

After this unhurried discussion, the Palliative care doctor asked if we could talk the next day. She needed to research my sister’s case and medical history. She came back the next day and recommended Janet to the hospice service. She further recommended we move her from full medical care to comfort care.

There was a nurse’s aid in my sister’s room with us when I got off the phone with the Palliative care doctor. I told the nurse’s aide that I had decided to move my sister to “comfort care” status.

She said with shock in her eyes, “I’m so sorry.”

I asked, “Why?”

She answered, “I’d rather not say.”

I sought out the nurse and told her, “We decided to move my sister to comfort care.”

She said, “Really?”

I said, “Do you disagree with my decision?”

She said, “Are you asking me for my opinion?”

“I guess so,” I answered.

She said, “I am not going to give you my opinion.”

The question then became, where does my sister go next for care?

She was not ambulatory, so the next step was to send her to a skilled nursing facility for physical rehab. But I objected to this. She was not in a sound state of mind to be motivated to rehabilitate. She just wanted to be left alone.

I called the palliative care doctor and discussed this with her. She had me speak to a hospice specialist who then consulted with the palliative care doctor.

The decision came back that my sister qualified for inpatient hospice care. We chose a facility. The facility’s doctor approved her, and we arranged for transport from the hospital. I visited the hospice facility and was amazed by their understanding, empathy, and professionalism.

The mission of inpatient hospice is to keep my loved one comfortable until the moment of their passing. I couldn’t believe my sister was in the last days of her life. But the hospice staff convinced me that this was true. She wasn’t eating or drinking, and she was experiencing terminal agitation, a medical term.

They kept her comfortable in a beautiful place, Wellstar Hospice Center, called Tranquility. It is a beautiful facility with eighteen beds located on the edge of the Kennesaw Mountain State Park. It is staffed by the kindest and most loving people I have ever met.

My sister told me two days before she died, “I like it here. I love you.”

These were her final words of life to me. She passed on two days later, with me in her room.

It was so calm, unhurried, and peaceful. I would be so lucky to go this way.

The greatest lesson I learned.

If ever I am getting to the end of my life, I will request the services of a palliative care doctor. These doctors stand in the doorway between preserving life at all costs and keeping people comfortable as they die.

These doctors are the counterbalance to our healthcare system.

We are not designed to live forever. We are designed by God to be born, live, and finally, to die. The healthcare system will wear itself out on the “live” part of life. They will do everything they can and spend every dollar they can to keep a person alive. This is their mission.

The palliative care doctor draws us back, as patients and caregivers, from the disease being treated. The focus is on how to fix that which is threatening the patient’s life. The palliative care doctors give us all a perspective on the big picture of our lives.

They ask the question, “If your sister is kept alive, what will be her quality of life?”

This was the first doctor to ask this question during the three and a half years of caring for my sister. As my sister’s dementia progressed, I would ask this question, but never to a doctor. Now, finally, a doctor asked this question. A doctor who understood the alternatives to doing all that can be done to preserve life. A doctor who was concerned about the quality of life.

I learned it is critical to get a palliative care doctor involved in treatment early in a chronic disease process. As the patient, I’ll still make all the decisions about my health, but at least I’ll have balanced advice from two MDs.

And this is why I think palliative care doctors are the greatest secret in healthcare.