The phone call that changed everything

On April 20th, I got the phone call…

You know the one:

“Zeke, I’m so sorry to be coming to you with this news.

Do you have a minute?

Are you somewhere quiet?”

In that moment... I froze. 

I knew. 

I knew what this was. 

The call could have ended right there and I would have known that I had 2 more weeks of income…2 more weeks of health insurance… 2 more weeks of security. 

Standing there in my bedroom as I looked out of my 22nd floor window into an abyss of Jersey City, I listened to a member of my HR team walk me through the exit process. I heard words like “COBRA” and “I’m really sorry” and “April 30th”. 

These stuck with me.

The rest of what she said was blank sounding. I had so many questions echoing in my mind, but when I was asked “do you have any questions?” I remained quiet and simply said “no… I don’t have any questions. I understand; thank you.” 

As I hung up the phone, my mind raced. 

What do I do now?

In that moment, I was the most unsure of myself that I'd ever been.

By reaction, and no real thinking of how I should tell my wife, I just walked from the bedroom to the living room and stood there silent. I watched on for about a minute as my wife was building a Magna-Tile house with my 12 month old son.

This was one of the longest minutes of my life.

Danielle looked up: “hey Bub, what’s up”. 

I sighed and broke the news. I told her I needed some time to process the whole thing. A stay-at-home mom with a small consulting business, I could see she was jolted. I read each and every question on her face. But, she calmly gave me a nod and softly said “OK”, letting me know she was with me. Without saying anything more, she said so much. 

As I nodded back, my heart fell deep into my stomach and I simply turned around and walked back into our bedroom.

For the next 3 hours, I didn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t make a phone call. I didn’t text. I didn’t check Instagram. I did nothing. I just sat there on my bed. My body sank into the mattress as hundreds of questions circled through my mind. For those 3 hours, I lived with my confusion and I didn’t make a move.

My wife gently opened the door and poked her head in to see if I was OK. She looked at me but didn’t say anything. Again, she didn’t need to. She nodded once more, closing the door somehow even more gently than she'd opened it.

The door must not have closed fully, though. 

Because, not 5 seconds after she left the room did my son push through the opening and come crawling in with a huge smile on his face, saying:

“Dit”

This was his way of excitedly saying “Dad”. 

I got up from the bed, and I’ll never forget that low, unenthusiastic, somewhat muffled and unrecognizable “hey bud” that responded to his smiling face. 

I walked through the door, inching past my son like a zombie.

I took 4 steps. 

Four. 

Four steps and I said…

“Nope… nope that’s not me. 

That’s not how we’re doing this.”

I turned around, I put a MASSIVE SMILE on my face, I picked up my son and if I gave him 1 kiss, I gave him 1,000 kisses. I walked over to my wife and I said:

“you know what, this sucks but we’re going to make the absolute most of it and we’re going to be OK.”

I rallied. 

It took 3 hours and a painful 4 steps to knock me out of my looming depression. I remembered that I’m smart, I’m talented, I’m creative, and I’ll never not be a role model for my son. He’ll never look at his dad the way he would have (and should have) had I taken that 5th step.

This is v1 of a multi-part series — the story of how I rallied... coming soon.

For more, here's the blog post: https://www.andwerally.com/blog/the-phone-call-that-changed-everything