Medium4 Ways My Son’s Passing Is Changing My Life | by Gary Buzzard | Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age | Nov, 2026 | Medium
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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

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4 Ways My Son’s Passing Is Changing My Life

6 min read2 days ago

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A Japanese Oak in the Portland Oregon Japanese Garden — Photo by Dennis Haug on Unsplash

One way grief has transformed my life is that it has made writing much more difficult. It took me two weeks to finally finish my first essay about Scott’s passing.

It’s hard to write through pain and sadness.

That’s why I decided to make this post a listicle, because listicles are easier to write. You compose an introduction, make your list, and fill in the text. That’s how I got up the nerve to write publicly, six years ago. It served its purpose then and is serving me again now that I am a bit frozen by my sadness.

Another way to make writing this article easier would be to feed Claude a few prompts and watch while it coughs up a serviceable article in two seconds. That’s more than easy. But I write essays about how I’m dealing with old age — first-person singular essays — and I don’t want the stench of AI on my work.

So here is my listicle on five ways my son’s passing is changing my life, 100 percent human-written.

Return to Stillness

Grief cancels your appointments, clears your calendar, erases your to-do list, postpones your bucket list, and wipes away the trivial, frivolous, small talk, and chit-chat of normal life you take for granted until the rug is pulled out from…

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Gary Buzzard
Gary Buzzard

Written by Gary Buzzard

I’m 80, and I write stories to make you feel glad you're old--the joys and the challenges of life as we age. Email me at gary@20-minutevacation.com. --Love

Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.