A Day of Pointless Foolery

April 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never been a fan of practical jokes. Not the crude ones like whoopie cushions. Not the mean ones like switching sugar and salt. Not the cruel ones like sending someone a fake love letter purporting to be from a person they’ve admired from afar. Not the disastrous ones like telling someone you were dying. And especially not the elaborate ones where the poor pranked person hadn’t a clue.

There was once a television show where the hosts played practical jokes on people. In one episode, a well-known actor had been wined and dined extensively by industry bigwigs as a prelude to his getting some important acting job. He played it cool, not getting excited, just accepting the scenario as possible since there was nothing out of the ordinary about the situation. At the end, when they told him it was all a joke, for a moment there was a blank look on his face, not embarrassment — just blank. As if the whole thing had been totally pointless, which such pranks are.

When I was growing up, we didn’t have a television because my father didn’t want us to be like everyone else, nor would he let us listen to the popular radio stations. Since I was naïve and out of the mainstream, kids often picked on me. One day, I got to school and found chalk hearts all over the playground with PB + EP inside. I couldn’t figure out what EP stood for since there was no one in the school with those initials, and no one would tell me what they meant. They laughed, thinking the whole thing hilarious. I don’t know how many days they strung out the joke until someone finally told me EP stood for Elvis Presley. I just stared at them, totally at a loss since I’d never heard of him. (Yep, I was that culturally isolated.) I still don’t understand the point of that incident; it just seems so utterly bizarre.

Today is April Fools’ Day, though in my world, it’s not something I ever bother to “celebrate” except in the way I celebrate anything — by learning about it.

Our April Fools’ Day probably came from a combination of two different historical events. The Romans held a Hilaria Festival on March 25, celebrating with masks, jokes, games, parades, the first day of the year where daylight was longer than the dark. Also, until 1582, people used a Julian Calendar, where the first day of the year was April 1. When they switched to the Gregorian Calendar, some people didn’t know that the first day of the year had been changed to January 1 and so continued to celebrate on April 1. They were considered fools, fair game for the pranks more enlightened folk played on them. Yeah, fun.

The only time I have ever been a “good sport” about a practical joke is when someone said something outrageous, then immediately admitted they were just joking. Anything longer is just . . . well, it’s just cruel. For the rest, being a good sport seems to mean that anyone can do anything to you and you’re supposed to take it with a smile, and that’s something I can’t do since it gives tacit approval to unkindness. Luckily, I’m old enough not to care what sort of sport people think I am and so can stop pretending that meanness is fun.

So, whatever the general meaning of this day, to me it only means staying inside by myself until the pointless foolery is done.

 

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, culture, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Reading the Books I Wrote

March 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’m continuing to read my books. Not the books in my personal library (which consists of a single bookcase) but the books I wrote.

It’s funny to think that this is most I have enjoyed reading in years. Even though I read and wrote about the Wheel of Time book series, I’m not sure I actually enjoyed reading the books. It was more of a puzzle for me, a game, a thing to study and to learn from, a way to pass the time.

But my novels? Pure enjoyment! Admittedly, since I was the one who wrote the books, they probably find an echo in my psyche even though what I remember barely qualifies as an elevator pitch (a one or two sentence synopsis). But I don’t know if that matters. It feels as if I am coming to them fresh, not as if I wrote them, not as if I’d read them years ago, but as if I’d vaguely heard of them once upon a time.

I’m working backwards. I started with the most recently published novel, Bob, The Right Hand of God, and am now reading Daughter Am I. There are only two more books for me to read — the first two I wrote — and I’m already feeling the loss. I was used to having nothing to read that I truly enjoyed — I just read for no other reason than to read — but already I have become addicted to the surprises inherent in my books.

The biggest surprise, of course, is how thoroughly I have forgotten these books. Odd, but true. The next biggest surprise is that I really do know how to write and know how to tell a story. I have no idea why I’d begun devaluing my writing ability over the years, unless it’s because of that non-selling thing. Still, other obscure writers manage to hold onto the idea of their own worth, so it’s good to at least get that feeling back. I do understand to an extent why the books languish. There’s nothing shocking, such as with the Shades of Grey franchise, to catapult them into fame. There’s no horde of people looking to read anything new in their preferred genre, such as with the Wheel of Time readers, because my books have no distinctive genre. And none of my characters are ever despicable enough to command bestselling attention. They are kind folk who are nice to each other. The stories are never about their interpersonal conflicts, but their joint conflict with an outside antagonist, who generally isn’t all that despicable, either.

Whether other people will ever come to like my books, it’s enough that I do. The stories are fun with plenty of twists and turns. Just when I think I know where the stories are going, they head in a different direction. And the endings have all come as a total surprise to me. Not just the ending, but the twist that comes after I thought it was all over.

Now that the shock of how much I enjoy reading my novels has passed, I find myself second guessing what I am reading. In Daughter Am I, is there too much story telling going on? The old gangsters that the hero Mary has managed to gather around her love talking about the old days, and one long-winded fellow named Teach lives up to his name and has tendencies to lecture. But is that a drawback or a necessary part of Mary learning who she is and where she came from? I don’t know. Luckily, the book is finished. Published. And all that’s left for me to do is what I did with the others — simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride! At its most basic, Daughter Am I is a modern version of the Hero’s journey. The hero, Mary, goes on a dangerous journey to learn about her recently murdered grandparents. Instead of wizards and other magical folk, her mentors and allies are six old rogues (gangsters and con men in their eighties) and one used-to-be nightclub dancer. By journey’s end, all their lives have been transformed. For a more detailed description of the quest, click here: Daughter Am I and The Hero’s Journey | Bertram’s Blog.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

A Very Readable Hoot

March 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Before I moved back to Colorado, I was living in California and taking dance classes. When one classmate discovered I was a writer, she suggested I write a murder mystery about our class, and she volunteered to be the victim. I wasn’t sure I wanted to kill off someone I knew — words have power, and I didn’t want to unleash that power on even a suspecting victim. Despite my misgivings, I started to follow through, going so far as to take a photo of our lovely victim for the cover of the book. I’d expected to have to take several shots to get the pose I wanted, but she sank to the wooden floor as gracefully as she did everything else, and lay in the ideal pose. Right then I knew I could kill her. She was just too damn perfect.

After a lot of procrastination, I did end up writing the book, though funnily enough, after it was published, she asked “Why did I have to be the victim?”

Another member of the class belonged to a book club, and when it was her turn to choose the book, she chose the book I’d written, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, and invited me to join them for the discussion. I agreed because I thought it might be fun, but when I arrived, I found out that the discussion was to be cut short because of a baby shower as well as a birthday party. They weren’t all that interested in discussing the book, anyway. Nor were they interested in anything I had to say. The only person who actually addressed me asked accusingly if I’d been my own editor. I mentioned that I had several copy editors, and she just made a rude noise and said we’d all done a lousy job because there were more typos than she could count. I did ask her to point them out, but she ignored me. So I thanked them graciously and left.

I’d had a lot of problems with my publisher during the publication process — he insisted on editing the book but ended up making many mistakes. After several heated discussions, he finally agreed to submit the manuscript as I had formatted it, but I had no idea if he had followed through, though when I got the final proof, it seemed okay.

As I’ve mentioned in the previous couple of posts, I’ve been reading my books, though always with a bit of apprehension. This one most of all since I didn’t want to face the “more typos that she could count.”

I also worried that since it was more or less a novelty book, it would seem silly or lacking any depth. But I shouldn’t have worried. After all, it is a “Pat Bertram book.”

As with the other of my books that I recently read, I was astonished by how good the writing was and by how much I liked the book. Except for the brief synopsis, I had completely forgotten the story. I hadn’t even remembered who did the deed, and wow! The ending really blew me away.

I was especially delighted by the sly mention of mystery genre tropes. For example:

The first thing you learn when you set out to write a novel is that you need a strong protagonist. No ditherers. No brooders. And I am both.

And:

I climbed into my ancient VW bug (no, I am not plagiarizing a well-known fictional detective, I really do own such a car—bought it new when I was young and never got another auto) and drove to the gas station.

And:

Like a fool in a bad drama, I stared at my phone. Huh? She expects me to drop everything and drive over there so she can tell me something she could just as easily have told me over the phone? With a shudder, I realized what had just happened. The worst cliché of all. So often in mysteries, someone makes such a call, and when the recipient arrives at the rendezvous, they find the person dead.

And:

In every mystery story, it seems, there comes a time when the author wants a way to present insights, needs to show state of mind, or simply gets bored with a straightforward narrative and plays at being creative, so the storyteller recounts a dream. Since I hate dreams, my own included, I usually skip those parts of a book, so I won’t bore you with the details of my dream.

There isn’t a lot of action in the book, it’s more of a psychological mystery, but it’s a fun story within a story — a writer writes a story about a fictional writer writing a story showing how life follows fiction.

As reviewer Malcolm Campbell wrote, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare is “a very readable hoot. In this dandy mystery, everyone has a secret, a reason for covering it up, and a possible motive. The characters are well developed, the introspective protagonist wonders if she inadvertently set the stage for a murder by agreeing to write a murder mystery based on the dance class, and the cops tell her that in real life, most amateur sleuths end up dead or worse. Readers who love mysteries will enjoy this book. Writers who write mysteries will consider being more careful when pretending to kill off their friends in a novel. And those who’ve been thinking of taking a dance class will see the story as a cautionary tale.”

And oh, yeah — there were typos. Three of them. One absent hyphen, one missing “not,” and one extraneous “a.” It’s possible there were translation errors in the ebook, which she had read, but that’s a mystery for another time.

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Click here to read the first chapter of: Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare.

Posted in being me, books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 7 Comments »

Feeling Like a Poseur

March 26, 2026 — Pat Bertram

For a long time, I’ve felt like a poseur, embarrassed to admit I had written books. I’ve hesitated to even look at any of my published works lest I find out how mediocre they are, and proving that yes, I am a poseur. I don’t know when the embarrassment at calling myself a writer took hold. In a blog post in June of 2018, I wrote that “when it comes to writing, I don’t feel like a fraud” so it started sometime after that.

A lot of people, especially successful women, are beset by “imposter syndrome,” where they feel as if they don’t belong in the position they are in, but that isn’t my case. First, I’m not successful, and second, I’m not in any position — I stopped writing books years ago. For many months, I even stopped blogging. Can one be a writer if one isn’t writing anything, isn’t even selling the books that are already written?

Whatever the answer to that, the non-sales of books all these years whispered to me that perhaps I really was simply posing as an author rather than being one in truth. And somewhere deep down, I figured if I admitted I was a non-successful author, then I’d have to admit that maybe I wasn’t a good enough writer after all.

I don’t know where I got the courage (desperation at not having anything to read?), but I’ve been reading my books lately, something I’ve never done once they were published. I’ve been amazed by how good they are. Well written. Interesting stories. Characters that have to deal with life-changing events. Even though I’ve mostly forgotten the stories except for a brief synopsis, it’s possible that something in me recognizes the books as ones I’ve written and so see something that is not there, but I don’t think so. I tend to think they really are as good as they seem.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem like the types of books that will appeal to many people, which makes sense since I started writing them when I could no longer find the books I liked to read. (You’d think that would be a clue to their salability, wouldn’t you?)

The first two I read, Bob: The Right Hand of God and Light Bringer, are books that take place in familiar earthly circumstances but develop an otherworldly strangeness about them. The last one I read, Unfinished, is very earthly, nothing strange about it except the portrayal of the insanity of new grief. Whenever, as a reader, I’d get annoyed by her tears or frustrated by the disconnect between reality and her perception of it (knowing her husband was dead but still expecting to encounter him alive), the scene and the energy would change to some other facet of her struggle to cope and so keep me interested.

One thing that was well done, I think, was showing how she’d been affected by the horror of her husband’s last year — she’d been left in limbo because he didn’t want anything to do with her and in fact often couldn’t remember who she was and yet, like a child, needed her care. Toward the end of that year, she’d engaged in a cyber affair with a guy who was going through the same thing she was. She thought she was done with grief and was starting over, yet when her husband died, all the feeling she’d been denying descended on her, and there she was, torn between two impossible loves. And finding out her husband had secrets of his own was just topping on that whole unpalatable cake.

I hesitated to read the book, thinking it would be too depressing, but she started to find her way through that emotional mess, and the book ended on a hopeful note.

I really liked the book. Although not a lighthearted story, it was very well written and definitely did what I wanted it to do — show the insanity of new grief.

Luckily, the next book I read will be lighter since one thing I do know is that this was the heaviest of the lot.

It really is an interesting experience reading these books. I know I wrote them, but since I forgot them, I can come at them as if they were written by a stranger. And truly, the author is a stranger; someone I was long ago but no longer am. No wonder I feel like a poseur.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, books, grief, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Family, Friends, and a Reason to Celebrate

March 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I had the weird experience yesterday of living in two different time zones depending on what room I was in. In one room, it was afternoon, and in the other, before noon. It didn’t really matter, apparently, since it took me a while to realize that there were two different times in my house. I mean, I knew it was 12:30 in one room but immediately forgot what the time was. Fifteen minutes later, I went into the kitchen and there the time was 11:45. Figuring I’d misread the time in the other room, I went back and checked my phone again. Confused the heck out of me why I’d lost an hour in one room but not the other.

Then, of course, light dawned. Sheesh. Daylight saving time. Unlike my phone and computer, the stove and microwave don’t change the time automatically.

Neither does my body.

I never think the time change will affect me since I get up with the sun, but it does, mostly because bedtime comes an hour earlier (which really means an hour or two later since I’m not tired enough to fall asleep, so I toss and turn longer than if I had simply gone to bed an hour later).

I hope this moment of confusion isn’t indicative of what my old age will be like — a lot of confusion with (hopefully) a quick dawning of understanding.

Of course, if I’d looked at the calendar or continued my perusal of online articles, I would have been reminded, but I’ve been narrowing my focus to what is in my immediate surroundings.

And apparently, yesterday, what was in my immediate surrounding was two different time zones — MST and MDT.

I have been enjoying my narrowed focus. (Even though it’s an online activity, blogging is still a narrowed focus because what I see is the words in my mind being written in black and white.) It helps that the weather is nice so I can go outside to expand my horizons, but I’ve also been bringing my horizons inside. At least, I did on Saturday, which was the seventh anniversary of my buying this house.

The house anniversary is one of the few dates in my life I like to celebrate, and so does my next-door neighbor. (Apparently, I was an answer to her prayer for a good neighbor. Makes me feel special since I’ve never — to my knowledge — been the answer to anyone’s prayers.) To honor the occasion, she gave me these gorgeous roses!

She and a few other friends came to help me celebrate. It was nice that they couldn’t all come at once, so I was able to visit one on one or one on two which is best for me. I find more company than that causes me too much confusion, though unlike the time difference mentioned above, this isn’t age-related confusion (or whatever the problem with the time was) but simply the way I’ve always been.

My sister had asked what I wanted for a gift. Since I don’t need anything, I told her I’d like gifts for my friends. So she made me the most wonderful party favor kit, which was great on so many levels.

I had the fun of receiving the box of goodies, the fun of assembling the kit, and the fun of handing them out.

So, who needs a broader focus in life when one has family, friends, a reason to celebrate, and lovely hostess gifts to hand out!

I was proud of myself for cleaning up immediately afterward, so yesterday morning I woke to a clean house rather than a mess. Not that we left much of a mess, but I had to clear the table and do the dishes as well as finish the leftovers since I don’t like having cake and ice cream on hand. Though to be honest, I never have them on hand because if I do, they are too soon gobbled up, and neither of those treats treat me well.

So that catches us up on my news. I’ve been spending my blog time on topics other than me (though in a way, everything I write is about me or at least what I think), but there’s truly been nothing much going on in my life to write about.

Still, it’s been nice having this narrow focus even if it doesn’t give me a lot of fodder for blogging.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, blogging, dealing with old age, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Nothing to Do With Me

March 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Every once in a great while, I will see a spike in my blog statistics where suddenly, for no apparent reason, the views on a particular day jump by 1000% or even more. During the first years of blogging, I could see where views came from, what was googled, or what link was clicked to get here, but apparently, privacy laws have now eliminated much of the practice. Sometimes I can see what posts were read, but when there is a big jump, all I see is that the views were for the homepage of my blog, not any specific article.

So I’m left wondering what it was I said that struck such a chord. I know it’s not something I wrote on that day, because this even happened a few times when this blog was all but dormant. Since no one left a comment on any post (which few people do any more), I’m left in the dark.

I’d think this was an algorithmic anomaly or maybe bots trolling the site since sometimes the jump signifies a single view, but sometimes the statistics show that people stayed to check out another post or two. Why? I have no idea. In the past when this happened, I’d congratulate myself on having said something that resonated with people, but now I wonder if such a jump in views has anything to do with me at all.

For a non-blog example: it used to be that when people were kind to me, I’d be pleased with myself, thinking that their kindness was because of something I did, my own kindness, perhaps, then it dawned on me that they were kind to me simply because they themselves were kind. It had nothing to do with me.

Is it possible the jump in views has nothing to do with me or anything I wrote? It certainly has nothing to do with any promotion I’m doing because I gave up promoting this blog years ago when Facebook banned it for being spam. Sometimes I like to think this blog could be considered S.P.A.M. — Special, Perspicacious, Astute, Meaningful — at least to some people, but that’s just me being self-indulgent. But, come to think of it, writing this blog itself is a form of self-indulgence. And so perhaps is wondering what brings people here.

I don’t suppose it matters why people come, at least it shouldn’t matter to me, though I can hope it matters to those who stop by. In any case, I can only write what I feel, throw my words out to the winds of the internet, and what happens after that has nothing to do with me.

It’s like that saying: “What others think of you is none of your business.” Perhaps nothing that happens here after I post is any of my business. Though that doesn’t mean I can’t be curious about what brings people here.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, blogging, internet, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

The Algorithms Made Me Do It

March 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Algorithms are an interesting concept. Because I followed the monks’ walk, my news feed is full of Buddhist teachings as well as a daily meditation on peace from the walkers. Also, for some reason, I see a lot of biblical references especially referring to Armageddon.

Because I posted a blog about conspiracy theories, my feed is full of conspiracy theories, (Note to R.U. — including information about lizard people). Also, there’s much talk of what people have found in the Epstein files now that they are searchable for the public, confirming events that once were only surmised by the theorists.

Because I like to see all sides of what is called “truth,” I get a lot of leftist ideology. And because I sometimes check out news from black conservative commentators, I get a lot of information about what this administration is doing to counteract what the left is doing.

This makes for a wild ride, for sure. And it makes for wild thoughts, especially when seen through the lens of The Wheel of Time, which is, at its most basic, a tale of a cosmic battle between the forces of good (and not so good) and the forces of evil (and not totally evil).

What if the conspiracists and the biblical scholars are right and we are currently going through a cosmic battle that is being played on various stages?

The political stage, of course, which seems pretty obvious since the two sides are diametrically opposed.

The religious stage and the battle between cosmic forces for good and evil as described in The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and countless other novels. An ongoing battle between Christians and those who are trying to decimate Christians, such as what is going on in Nigeria.

A technological stage with perhaps a battle between humans and artificial intelligence (as has been predicted in hundreds of science fiction stories for the past century). And what is called a paradigm shift from our present awareness to a greater one (or at least a different one) if we are to sustain our species.

If the algorithms are telling me anything, it’s that there is a present good to counter the “evil,” though I wouldn’t call it evil — it seems more like unrest, an acceptance of criminal behavior as the norm, and a growing feeling that laws don’t have to be followed if you feel morally superior to those laws. As the left continues to push their socialistic-communist agenda, others are fighting back, stressing individualism over collectivism. As the unrest grows, so does the personal need to find peace within and hence the vast influence of the Walk for Peace. And the paradigm shift continues to shift, at least on a political level, such as the abandonment of punitive climate controls to one that accepts the necessity of power-hungry AI data centers.

Even if there is some sort of cosmic battle going on, and even if I sometimes worry that the world is changing to a reality I might not be able to recognize, would we even notice, or for the most part, will our lives go on, with us noticing only small changes in how we interact with the world and each other?

Probably what will happen, no matter what the algorithms tell me, is the same thing that is happening in The Wheel of Time now that I have eliminated the ridiculous substitute-author ending from my studies — just the same scenarios played out over and over again.

Does any of this make sense? I have no idea if it even makes sense to me — it’s just a wild idea I am playing with. And who knows, maybe the algorithms made me do it.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, culture, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Buying Colorado

March 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

After Jeff died, I moved to California to help take care of my father. He didn’t actually need a lot of help, but he did need someone there to watch over him, so I was able to find a life for myself. During the first three years, I mostly walked. And walked. And walked. Then I discovered dancing, and that became a saving grace for me. (Well, maybe not “grace” since it didn’t make me all that graceful, but I still managed to hold my own, even during performances.)

After my father died, I became nomadic — housesitting, traveling, staying in motels. But always, I ended up back in that desert town because I didn’t know where else to go. Besides, I had friends there, and dancing.

Then came the opportunity to buy a house in a small town in Colorado. I was sad to leave my dance classes and my friends, but I was delighted to leave California. Although the high desert was livable, the politics of the state weren’t. Even if I could have afforded to live there, I would have left out of self-preservation.

I was glad to settle back into Colorado. That is, I was glad until I realized that the Colorado I left wasn’t the same one I returned to. The state had always been moderate, and yet somehow the state had become uber-liberal, as bad if not worse than California, with punitive policies and little representation of the rural areas. I live far from Denver, but that sanctuary city with its insane laws neutralizes the outlying areas even further. Not only do they try to take our water (which makes the building of the conduit from Pueblo out to the Kansas border a boondoggle because there won’t be any water for them to share with us) but they are also taking away the ability for counties to create their own zoning laws. Instead, small towns must adhere to the same unaffordable “affordability” zoning laws that are being put into place in the big cities. A state that once had a tax surplus is now in a sinking hole of debt because of liberal ideologies and the fraudulent misuse of tax dollars. Then there is the bought-and-paid-for governor who’s making his own deals with WHO and Zelensky and anyone else that can further his agenda of separating Colorado from the governance of federal agencies. (Though he still wants federal funds.) All this creates at times an uncomfortable dichotomy between the individualistic rural areas and the collectivistic urban areas.

So how did Colorado come to this when I wasn’t looking? Tons of money from east coast liberals, and maybe even west coast, came flooding in. Most of the money for democratic candidates comes from outside the state, while most of the money for conservative candidates comes from inside the state. Which says to me that the state would have preferred to remain conservative, or at least somewhere in the middle where it had always been. (Today, slightly less than a quarter of registered voters are democrat, another scant quarter is Republican, and slightly more than half are registered as independent or unaffiliated.)  Many districts no longer even put forth a republican candidate for any office. They simply can’t match the funds the democrats have at their disposal.

Why the push to buy Colorado? I have no idea, though I guess it was easy in part because so many people from California had moved here. I never understood that, frankly. You move from a cesspool of high taxes and an overreaching government, and you immediately start creating a similar cesspool, but that’s what they did.

Although the politics of Colorado has changed drastically, the feel of the state hasn’t. The air feels like home. The weather, though not always to my liking, is what I was used to growing up.

And I’ve made good friends here, making this small town even homier.

Even though I grew up in Denver, it turns out I’m a small-town girl at heart, though I do wish — silly me — that politically things were different. Still, the machinations of politicians and their backers, and those who espouse extremist policies have always horrified me so I don’t imagine things will be that different. I hope not. And anyway, I’ve managed to survive seven years here, so with any luck, I’ll continue to do okay.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, history/myth, home, life. Tags: , , , , . 28 Comments »

Life, Fate, and Conundrums

February 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

On Chinese New Year, a friend of Chinese descent who was born and raised in Malaysia, and I, a German/Polish hybrid, who was born in raised in Colorado, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant owned by a man originally from Vietnam, who chatted with us while we waited for our food. Mind boggling, right? I can’t even imagine how many tens of thousands of decisions we each made, how many unexpected changes in our lives, and how much time had to pass for all of us to end up in that exact place at that exact moment.

It almost makes me believe in fate, but perhaps that’s what fate is: everything that has to occur so that a certain event can happen. In some cases, those events and decisions are simply living and going where the day takes you. Other times, it’s a significant event, such as the death of a loved one. In my case, Jeff’s death untethered me so that I ended up in California taking care of my father. My father’s death broke whatever strings I had left, which sent me all over the country in an effort to run away from my life as well as run towards it. It’s mere happenstance — an unasked-for email from a real estate site — that I ended up here.

I’ve been thinking about this definition of fate as it applies to the Walk for Peace. On October 26, 2025, the monks set out from Fort Worth with barely a wave good-bye. Almost no one noticed them as they walked, though they did get some heckling and a few people who stopped to talk. Truckers and Texas residents shared sightings on Tik Tok, which got them some online followers, but mostly, they walked alone along empty roads.

Then, on November 19, a pick-up struck the escort vehicle so hard that it pushed the escort vehicle into the walking monks. Several were injured. One seriously. (He lost a leg but was doing well enough to attend the ending ceremonies in Washington.) After seeing that their fellow monk was taken care of, they continued their walk with the Harris County sheriff’s department riding alongside to keep them safe. The sheriff notified the sheriff’s department in the next county, and those law enforcement officers continued the protection, and so it went, all across the country.

That accident and the law enforcement notifications catapulted the walk into the public’s eye. No longer just a few bystanders on the open road — suddenly there were miles and miles of people lining their pathway. Thousands of people — hundreds of thousands — endured the cold and wind and rain and snow to wait to see the monks walk by. Millions followed the monks online. Lives were changed. People vowed to find peace within. And the effects of that walk are still rippling.

So, what would have happened without that accident? Was it a necessary part of their journey? Was it fate that it happened? Did the monk who lost his leg think it was a fair payment for the good the walk did? Was it a further example of their belief in breathing, in peace, in accepting the physical aspect of suffering while letting go of the resulting mental suffering? (One of the lessons they taught was that 10% of suffering was physical, the other 90% mental.)

Conundrums like this keep me wondering about life, about all the dots that need to be connected for anything to happen. Depending on what source you check out, there is between a one in seventy trillion chance and a one in four hundred trillion chance of any one of us being born.

So many changes and connections. Events and decisions. And time, lots of time. And all to get us here, to this very moment.

A moment that was eons in the making, a moment that will never be repeated.

During this rare and precious moment, may you be well, happy, and at peace.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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