Children

We have three children ranging in age from late 20's to early 30's. Two live in Nashville and the other in Oxford, MS. One is a social worker, one is a commodity trader, and one is a police officer.
We are extremely proud of the fact that we have raised three responsible, hard working adults.
We also have one son in law and he is as close to a third son as we could have. Son in law is a cold legalism that doesn't do justice to the love we have for him.
I couldn't stomach telling them that I lost my job. It was a combination of things.
First, every time I had to tell someone, especially early on, it was like poking myself with a hot stick. I just didn't want to go through it.
Second, after all these years of setting the example for them that I always wanted to set I now had to tell them that somebody had decided I wasn't worth keeping.
Third I think was just the normal fatherly instinct to protect your progeny from any kind of harm.
And finally I kept saying to myself I would tell them once I "got things figured out", in other words I would be able to say yes this happened but.....
And finally, with visit to Nashville on the horizon, I had no choice but to send the email to the 4 of them that I knew I had to send.
The responses came quickly and I learned something right away: waiting to tell 4 of the people who love me the most was dumb. Really dumb.
The words they used and the tone of their voices instantly started to heal me. I can hardly describe it. And instantly I realized, more than ever, what a treasure those kids are.
I even heard some of my own advice coming back to me, things I've said to them over the years when they encountered their own problems in life. It appears not only had they listened but it meant enough to them to recite it back to me in my own time of need. Absolutely priceless.
It was during that Friday morning that I had my only real emotional breakdown of this process. The dam broke and I probably needed it.
I had only experienced that level of emotion 4 other times in my life: the deaths of my three siblings and the death of my mother. I do not suggest that loss of job equates to loss of family, I'm just trying to give you some idea of how I felt on that day in that circumstance.
My siblings were all older than me, 2 married and one single. My married siblings left behind 2 spouses and 8 children. My other brother was engaged at the time. I used to spend a lot of time struggling to understand how one family deserved that fate and how my mother could possibly be asked to endure such a burden. Then one day I gave myself this thought: 'You can't forget your past but you can't relive it every day.'
That Friday morning after talking to my children I reminded myself of that saying. I now had another past to deal with but I wasn't going to relive it every day.