Yesterday I got another example of how our lives can quickly change forever.
For over 20 years I'd worked with a business associate and friend who provided us with accounting and consulting services.
He was a pleasant man in his seventies who did a good job with our books, keeping the IRS happy and usually giving us good advice about how to take care of our finances.
He had a few personal quirks, such as a mild stutter when he got nervous, which was sometimes distracting when I was trying to have a serious conversation with him. But, all in all, I was satisfied with his services and figured he'd be with us as long as we were in business. He was a bright man and had good ideas for tax strategies.
But then during tax season two years ago he called me up around 8:00 pm, which was not like him, and started rambling to me about some tax work that we needed to complete right away. Tax work that we'd completed a month earlier.
At first, I thought maybe he'd had a memory lapse, or maybe one too many drinks, and explained to him that we'd already filed those taxes on time. When he called me the next day, he brushed it off as a memory lapse and I didn't think much more about it.
But over the next few months, he began having more lapses in memory and judgment and I realized that something serious was going on with him. Somehow we scraped through the tax season. But I started talking with my business associate about finding another accountant. Which we ultimately did to complete our 2017 taxes.
After that, I lost track of him. I tried calling, but he didn't answer. His old firm, which had let him go, wouldn't give any information about him. He'd disappeared.
Then, the other day, I ate at a restaurant he used to frequent and they told me that he'd developed dementia and that his grown children had put him in a local rest home. Which didn't surprise me, considering how erratic he'd become the last few months I'd worked with him.
I was saddened to see how quickly this man deteriorated. How quickly he went from being active and employed to being confined to a nursing home.
And it reminded me how everything in life is temporary. And that we should live it to the fullest.
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