Death, Taxes, and the Unknown


This weekend handed me a reminder so blunt it almost felt scripted — a collision of certainty and uncertainty arriving all at once.

I’m still up and it’s already past four in the morning. I just completed a letter to my company — a letter I never should have had to write — and decided to turn to this blog entry. You can read more about that situation in Drowning. No one should carry that much anxiety into a weekend because another human being decided to sit on a power trip. I’m standing at a point where I’m willing to face financial uncertainty just to preserve my dignity and peace. That’s not a comfortable place to stand. I don’t like any of those choices. I don’t like debt. I don’t like taxes. And I don’t like the possibility of stepping into the unknown just to escape a toxic situation.

But it’s my truth.

In a few hours, my father and I will be at Leilani’s church service, honoring her memory. She was my mother’s best friend — woven into the fabric of our family. We thought we had already said goodbye last weekend, but grief doesn’t follow schedules. It asks you to show up again. And you do. For anyone navigating loss, I’ve also been building a resource in my Grief First-Aid Kit.

Somewhere in the middle of preparing to honor the dead, I was helping with tax preparation. Then I’ll have to do my own. The irony isn’t funny, but it’s impossible to ignore. Life’s certainties have a way of arriving on their own schedule. Life is fragile. Time is short. Responsibilities don’t pause for grief, and grief doesn’t wait for convenient timing.

I don’t like any of this.

And yet here I am, walking through it.

My parents raised me without a manual. They did the best they could with what they had, and I respect them deeply for that. Everything I do now is an attempt to honor what they instilled in me while refining it as I go. I’m not rejecting what I was given — I’m evolving it. That evolution lives in Operating Without a Manual, Phase I–IV, 6 book series, my manual in progress.

Lately my vision has been blurring from the corticosteroids I was taking after a recent illness, and it scares me. It feels like the year before last, before my mother passed, when I was blind for three months. I don’t want to go blind again.

Blindness has crossed my life before. My little brother Daniel, who passed away in a house fire, was blind. Later in life I helped assist a doctor who became one of my closest friends — a man who was blind and moved through the world with an ease that was almost humbling to watch. I wrote more about them in Death’s Witness, and about my own experience losing my sight in The Book of Carlos.

And that’s what scares me.

I don’t want to adjust to being blind. I don’t want to become accustomed to it. I don’t even want blurry vision. Watching their courage fills me with respect, but it also confronts me with a fear I don’t want to inherit. Their strength is undeniable. It’s just not a strength I want to be forced to discover in myself.

Fear has a way of amplifying everything else that’s already heavy.

At the same time, I’m staring at a house full of clutter and memories, knowing I need to downsize. I need to sort what stays and what goes. Keepsakes. Family artifacts. The things that matter versus the things that are just taking up space. It’s overwhelming. It feels urgent because life has shown me how quickly everything can change.

To maintain financial stability, I may have to turn my side job as a security officer into my main job. Even that comes with a cost — expensive costs. It requires investing money I don’t have into essential gear: a vest, cuffs, spray, a tactical belt and its accessories, a firearm. These are not small purchases; they are significant expenses I shouldn’t have to be making right now. You can read more about this process in Leveling Up. They are part of what it takes to stay afloat and protect my ability to survive. Stability, it turns out, isn’t free.

And I don’t have a team of people waiting to help. It’s just me.

So this is where the spine reveals itself: certainty and uncertainty coexisting. Loss and responsibility are guaranteed. The future is not. I don’t have to like that. I don’t. But I am moving through it anyway.

This is what walking through the valley looks like in real time. Not poetic. Not polished. Just a human being trying to honor the dead, manage the living, protect his dignity, care for his health, secure his livelihood, and carve a path forward without a map.

If there’s meaning here, it’s this: I am still showing up. Even when I don’t like the choices. Even when I’m scared. Even when I feel overwhelmed.

I’m honoring what matters and stepping into uncertainty with my eyes open.

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