Each loss makes me feel grateful for the irreplaceable ones I love

By David McElroy · July 15, 2021

I’ve paid more attention to Merlin this week than I have in a long time. I hadn’t been ignoring him before. He hasn’t done anything to require more attention. But I’ve been painfully aware that he won’t be with me forever.

I’m sitting in my bedroom floor Thursday night and Merlin is sleeping on the bed just inches from me. Lucy is in the floor next to me on my other side. (Thomas is off doing his own thing in the office.)

Molly’s death last Friday had the same effect on me that all of my cat and dog deaths have had. The pain of losing one of them reminds me to love and appreciate the ones I still have — while I still can.

Merlin has been with me for about 14 years. (I don’t remember for sure.) He was already several years old when I brought him in from the streets. When I put those together, I realize that my wise old man might not be with me too much longer — and it makes me want to appreciate whatever time he has left with me.

If you want to love and appreciate something you love — or someone you love — just remember that you can lose this cherished person or thing. There comes a time when it will be too late.

One of the strangest things about human life is that we tend to lose appreciation for the ones we need the most. The people and things we love the most come to seem routine, as though they’ll always be there.

If you’ve ever lost something or someone, you might know what I mean. Even though you might have said you loved someone or cared about a thing before, its loss can leave a hole far bigger than you might have expected.

You suddenly realize what you’ve lost. You feel guilty for not valuing this person or thing more dearly before the sudden loss. And the hole is your life is bigger than other people can understand. The loss is almost too much for you to bear.

We take members of our family for granted. We can take a loving spouse for granted. And we can even take for granted that someone who loves us will always be there, even if we don’t choose to invest in that person.

I’ve lost six dogs and maybe 15 cats over the years. They all hurt in some ways, but some are worse than others.

In 2008, I lost a German shepherd mix named Maggie who was an amazing dog. I was very close to her and she was an important part of my life. Then one night, with no warning, she couldn’t stand. After a long and sleepless night at an emergency animal clinic, she died the next morning during surgery.

She had had cancer and I’d never had any idea. And as much as I had already loved her and cherished my time with her, I realized as soon as she was gone that I would have given anything for a few more days or weeks with her. Every moment that I’d chosen to waste on frivolous things suddenly seemed to have been a terrible choice — because I thought of the time I could have spent with Maggie instead.

It can be the same with people. You can think someone will always be with you — or that you’ll always have the choice of making that person a part of your life — and then the person can suddenly be gone.

Merlin isn’t as strong and muscular as he once was. He’s skinnier. His fur isn’t as healthy as it once was. And Molly’s death last week has me paranoid about losing him, so I’m spending more time with him and giving him more attention — which he might or might not want anyway. (He’s a cat, after all.)

If there’s someone you love, remember that you might very well lose him or her. Be grateful for the time you have and make sure that person understands that he or she is genuinely loved.

The time will come when it will be too late to say, “I love you.” It will be too late to let someone know how very much he or she means to you.

So do something about it. Right now. Before it’s too late.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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