06/25/2025
After 45 years of marriage, my father left and moved to Mexico. Not long after, I was talking with my mother, and she shared something that’s stayed with me ever since. She said she was learning so many things she’d never had to manage before—like finances and home repairs. Then she let out a long, exhausted sigh and said, “Oh! Sometimes I wish I could just stop learning new things!” After a brief pause, she added with a bittersweet chuckle, “But then I’d be dead.”
That moment has stuck with me. It captured both her fatigue and her resilience. And now, as I grow older, I find myself revisiting it often—especially as I realize how much I’m still learning, even in obscure areas I never thought I’d care about. Sometimes I catch myself wondering: Why do I even bother with this stuff?
This week, I’ve been facing the reality that I need to be more honest with myself about my physical limitations. I can’t do everything anymore—not alone, and not all at once. And that’s brought me to a new kind of reflection. Bear with me, because this may seem like a strange detour at first.
I began thinking about Sarah Wi******er—the widow of William Wirt Wi******er, the heir to the Wi******er rifle fortune. Sarah famously believed her home was haunted by the spirits of those killed by the rifle. To appease them, she kept her mansion in a constant state of renovation: staircases that led nowhere, sealed-off rooms, bizarre floorplans. Her life was perpetual construction, and she felt compelled to keep building to find peace.
As I’ve wrestled these past few months with the mounting repairs, upgrades, and expansions we need at GBARK, my mind returned to my parents—especially my father. When his mental state became too overwhelming, he didn’t deal with it directly. Instead, he created chaos, usually by initiating major changes: a new job, a new city, or a huge construction project.
These weren’t minor touch-ups or weekend hobbies. He once tried to transform a dirt-floor basement into a finished space by pouring concrete himself—only narrowly escaping drowning in wet cement when the mixer driver pulled him out. He also nearly gassed the entire house while trying to move an old refrigerator and accidentally broke the freon line. His efforts were Herculean, dangerous, and at times absurd.
In North Carolina, he began a years-long renovation of a 25-by-25-foot garage with cathedral ceilings, turning it into a beautiful living room. When it was finally complete, he told my mother, “We’re moving to St. Louis.” There, they bought a rundown four-story brick townhouse once owned by beer baron August Busch. It had been chopped into eight apartments. My father gutted it to the studs and spent ten years restoring the 7,500-square-foot building. Once done, he wanted to move again.
This time, my mother insisted on a compromise. They moved to Kirkwood, a quiet suburb of St. Louis, into a home that needed no work. But, predictably, my father began a complete landscaping overhaul. And, again, when the job was finished, he declared: “We’re moving to Mexico.” My mother replied simply, “You’re moving to Mexico.” And so he did—leaving behind her long years of upheaval and constant transition.
So what’s my point? It’s this: lately, as I’ve come to grips with the sheer volume of work still to be done, I’ve started to feel the same unease my mother must have felt—living in a state of constant flux. But I’ve also started to understand that, for my father, creating chaos was a coping mechanism. It helped him feel normal.
Unlike my father, I’m not unhappy with my life. Quite the opposite. I love my life, and I don’t crave upheaval. Like my mother, I prefer calm and stability. But when things are unsettled, I feel off balance—and that’s pushed me to think more practically and more humbly about how I approach work, projects, and expectations.
All of this is to say: as we age, we’re constantly learning—not just about the world, but about ourselves and the people who shaped us. These reflections may feel tangential, or even strange, but they’re essential. They help us understand who we are, what we value, and how we move forward—one task, one thought, one memory at a time.
