Every Card Is A Gift

He expected one thing and got something else altogether, and it killed him ten years before I buried him.

Josh Bunch
2 min readJan 16, 2021

I wonder what it felt like living those last ten years alone.

Except for me, a few olds ladies in his semi-assisted living complex, a social worker, and the convenience store employees across the street, who else did he have? What did he think at night when he dozed off?

Could it be that dad concocted a story? One that let him slip away from the world, one day at a time, with nothing more than a motorized periwinkle chair and The History Channel.

And if so, what kind of story makes someone ok with giving up?

The stroke that changed my dad forever was a hand no one expected. Especially him. But it hadn’t cost him everything. He was still at the table. He could’ve made another bet.

But dad didn’t. He expected one thing and got something else altogether, and it killed him ten years before I buried him beneath a flag, several gunshots, and a few forgotten handshakes.

Most days, it takes everything I’ve got to remember that every deal, every single card in the deck, is a gift. It’s on me to discover how. And even if I do, it doesn’t mean I won’t lose the hand in the process. But it means I get to keep on playing, and that’s all that matters.

How can a losing hand be a gift? That’s the challenge. How is this hand, the hand I’m playing now, potentially different from the hand I’ll play tomorrow, in my best interest? What am I here to learn from it? And maybe I don’t understand any of it until the end. Maybe I’m three seconds away from my last breath when it hits me. Maybe, and so what.

What else is there to do but keep playing, complain about the losing hand, worry about the next, or settle into a navy blue, motorized chair until time runs out? None of which seems helpful?

So I’ll play the hand no matter the cards. Then play the next one. Play it proudly as if it’s a gift, an opportunity, a jackpot.

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Josh Bunch

Bunch is one of those rare humans who only talks about what he knows; fitness, food, philosophy, and movies. And puppies.