Hank and the Good Life

Daily Meditation 1,074–2/13/2025

Today’s meditation is for those in our lives who we may or may not have been friends with but who we perhaps forgot. It is also a reminder that life is what we MAKE it and there is no guarantee it will be a good life.

Many years ago, I worked at Walmart. Well, twice, technically. In my senior year of high school I pushed carts for a couple summers and then again in the 2010s for 5ish years as a manager.

In both instances as well as back into the 90s, there was a guy named Hank who I worked with. He was a tall, skinny and sort of sickly pale dude whose only personality and humor was generally dealing with customers. Hank would always remember everyone’s names, pat you on the shoulders and so on. Really swell guy.

His mother had worked there, too, for 30 odd years and then retired in the early 00s. Hank lived with her full time and cared totally for her.

He had never once married, never had any relationships, and had lived at home with his mother his entire life. When I left Walmart in the late 2010s, he was in his late 50s and nearing his retirement after almost 40 years with the company. In the mid 2010s, his mother finally passed after more than a decade of rapid mental and physical decline. Hank’s time was wholly spent bathing, dressing, and feeding her — even his…