Each day we age. Each day we gain experience. Each day we learn. I am now at the age where each day brings a new ache or pain or a stiff joint. But one of the greatest things I have learn in my time on earth is that no matter how old I am or what number I represent I am only as old as I feel and think.

Some days it feels like I just graduated High School like it was yesterday. Some days it feels like that time was a million years away. Though, whatever I feel I do know that I love my life. I love all of the good and bad that has transpired in it. Losing my mother when I was in my mid-twenties was one of the worst days of my life other than losing my two sons to my ex-wife in one of the worst custody battles. But instead of letting it beat me down I took the good from each and let go of the bad. I cherished and still do each memory that was good, each learning from my experiences with my mother and my son’s. I went on.

This year I lost my father and I miss him dearly. But again I accept that is part of our lives and I take away all of the good and carry it with me forever and I try to pass on what I have learned to my family. Is that not how we live forever? I do know this, when you lose both parents, you are no longer anyone’s child. Talk about an epiphany!!!

My wife and my children and now my granddaughter are the reason I now take each breath. I look at each of them and they remind me of me at different times in my life, the good and the bad and I am thankful for each moment for with them I am not my number.

I am whatever age I want to be or need to be because of them. You see it is the quality of our lives that I believe makes us feel our “age”. It’s the things that we do with our family and friends and the MOMENTS that we make that we take with us and that they take with them.

So when I am 100 I know in my heart and mind I will be just as young as I am today because of my family and my friends and all that I am connected to.

With that I ask you, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?†Ω