20 Years

Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of my father, Michael Silber. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with feelings about it. Sometimes this anniversary comes and goes, the world spins on. This year? I don’t know. Perhaps it is the milestone. Perhaps it is all that we have endured as a planet, society, and what my individual body has been through, but the event is having a profound effect.

Right now we live in an era of loss. It is also an era of agony, division, disconnection, anxiety, uncertainty, trauma, grief, and of course a confrontation with our own very real mortality.

I survived COVID, when so many have not.
I had three life-altering surgeries that permanently changed my body and saved my life.
These experiences have give me insight into my Dad’s final years and days in ways I never could have dreamed of or anticipated.
For these, I am grateful.

These days, I find myself thinking a lot about what it all means, or what it is all for, what the Purpose of Life is, and what MY purpose is here on earth, and whether or not I am adequately fulfilling it. I feel I have been spared. Saved. So… why? I have doubts. So many doubts.

And in the context of today, I think 20 years. My God. 20 years on and I wonder have I done enough?
Become enough?
Fulfilled his hopes and dreams for me as a human being?
Would I make him proud?
And of course, we that are left behind in death never receive these answers with any certainty. It is one of grief’s sharpest cuts and cruelest agonies.

And yet, I can say with certainty that I have had more conversations with him in death than I ever had in life. 20 years of silent dialogue that provides all the certainty I truly need, and ever will.

So on this milestone of a day, I take heart in the fact that after all we have endured, I will be spending this deeply personal 20 year anniversary right where my Dad would recognize me as happy and purposeful, and where I know I belong: in a theatre, doing a play. Contributing to the world in the very best way I can. And when I think about it, isn’t that all any of us can do? Make the world better by contributing as best we can. 

I’ll close with words I’ve found before, they are near the end of the book I offered about all of this (and honored my wonderful mom and all the friends who held me up 20 years ago today). I hope it contributes something to you today, to whomever might need it:

I have had the greatest adventures anyone could ever hope for.
I would trade it all for Only. One. Thing. 

But that is not how it works. 

And that is what still smarts. And probably always will. 

Whoever you are, no matter how despairing or isolated, know this: being fully alive and fully present in all of your experiences—joyful and harrowing—is a human right worth fighting for. We are limited in life only by what we believe we are capable of. I am not remarkable. No. I am a human being just like you—capable of everything from the most deplorable of errors to the vastest glories. As are we all. But I endeavor to show up: to work, to love, to grow, to life. No matter what any of it chooses to serve. 

When we stare deep into the black infinity, when we truly take part in the democracy of loss and mortality, we recognize that all of us—no matter how wealthy, beautiful, talented, kind, willful, adventurous— die. We all die. You will, someday, die. And in the end, we all must face the same questions: 

Was I brave?


Did I use my gifts?


What did I believe in?
What did I stand for?
 What did I stand against?
Did I do what truly mattered?
Did I love enough?

It has been said that wisdom is a guide upon which to chart the journey of the spirit.
Wisdom is precious.
 And wisdom is earned.