Railroadthewriter

A summer storm has trapped me inside my office.
I affectionately call it “The Cabin Out in the Woods” although it is actually in my yard and about 50 feet from the wood line.
The property makes up about 30 acres of mostly wooded land which is located about 5 miles east of the small town of Whitesburg, Georgia. We are set a good ways off the road and are technically still out in the “country”, but this does not shield us from the constant road noise- especially those supremely irritating rumble strips that have been cut into the lines of the highway!
My parents purchased this property from the Daniels in the early 1970s to escape the noise, crime and creeping urbanization of the Atlanta suburbs.
It seemed a lot quieter back then.
We slept with the windows open at night because we did not have air conditioning. We listened to the crickets, the owls, the whip-o-wills and occasionally, way off in the distance, the rumble of a train rolling through Whitesburg 5 miles away.
The Daniels retained property all around us and were our good neighbors while I grew up. There was even a boy my age named Kenny but he didn’t really play sports like me- he liked riding motorcycles. We couldn’t afford motorcycles so Kenny and I were not the best of friends and only hung out occasionally. One thing I remember my siblings, my neighbors and I doing back then was, for some odd reason, playing on the bank of the highway. There was very little traffic back then and in spite of the endless tracks of land available to us, we played beside the road!
The Daniels have all died off or moved away and we have all new neighbors now whom I do not know well. I moved out in the late 1980s in pursuit of my own identity and lost touch with the changing landscape. A few things did not go as planned and my Dad, now 90, asked me to move back and help him take care of the property in December of 2023.
The garage apartment my son and I had lived in for 10 years needed to be renovated and the landlord needed us to move out.
I didn’t understand, but God knew.
I reluctantly moved back in with my parents and my son, Clayton, moved in with his mother.
The idea was for me to move into an RV until I could build a tiny home and to not disrupt Mom and Dad’s routine. I did renovate one room of their home into a man cave so Dad and I could bond watching movies and sports while Mom dealt with onset dementia. She was active and cognizant at the time, just slightly forgetful.
Unfortunately, on January 13, 2024, Dad fell in his office (in the house) and broke the ball off the top of his right femur. He ended up having hip replacement surgery the day before his 88th birthday (January 15). Thus, I became part of the routine anyway.
After several months of rehab and focused determination, Dad recovered somewhat. It seemed that he was gung-ho and full of energy up until the day he was released from the Doctor’s care. Then, suddenly, I noticed him deflate a bit. And poor Mom, who had been faithfully standing by, ready to help Dad in any way she could but had not been allowed, started questioning what her purpose for living was. She also began to deflate a bit further.
So, though I was still working full time plus, running the NFP, UUIM, Inc. and managing the associated thrift store, the Drop-N-Shop Donation Center, I began to pick up even more duties around the house and property. The idea of an RV or tiny house had been postponed when Dad got hurt and now it seemed I would be living in the man cave permanently. But there was still this 10×16′ storage building on the property that could easily be cleaned up and adapted, so I just watched many episodes of “Tiny House Nation” and bided my time.
Then, in December of 2024, after a year of steady and inexplicable decreases in sales at the Drop-N-Shop, we had to close for good. We had been open for 14 years and had even survived the China Virus without closing or accepting government payouts! We could not figure it out.
But God knew what was coming.
For 3 months I continued to run UUIM, Inc. out of the man cave/bedroom, working on fundraising and reconstructing our website with a laptop and a small filing cabinet. Most of my office supplies had to be put into storage with most of the furniture from my apartment.
Then came easily the worst day of my life.
I have said for many years, as I creep closer towards the grave myself, that if you live long enough, you will put a lot of people in the ground. Many deaths you can see coming through old age or disease Others take you by surprise and can even shock you. This death completely crushed me.
On March 8, 2025, my son died from “fentanyl toxicity”- an accidental overdose. He would have been 24 on April 18th. (I plan to write about that another time.)
I was stunned and basically sleepwalked through the next couple of months.
One highlight of that year was getting to drive cross-country with my step-son, Caleb. He is in the Army and had been stationed in Alaska for 6 years. He opted to stay in after his 6 years was up and got relocated to El Paso, Texas. With that he got a little over a month leave, shipped his furniture to El Paso and shipped his truck to Tacoma, Washington. He called and asked if I wanted to fly out to Washington and ride with him in the truck back to Georgia.
I didn’t even pause. I immediately said, “Hell, yeah!”
So for two fantastic weeks in June, we had our adventure and I felt alive again. (That adventure will come as a later entry as well, hopefully.)
At the end of April, the walls had been closing in and my anxiety and depression were running unchecked. I had decided to try and channel that into a project that my garden and other attempts had not succeeded in quelling. I decided to go ahead and make an office out of that 10×16′ utility building on our property. I started clearing it out, had a proper door put in and deck put on. Then, upon my return from our cross country odyssey, I poured my dark energy into making something lasting and useful. (I had hit another deep depression after returning from the trip.)
I remember that during that whole year after Clayton’s death, I would essentially go to sleep at night hoping I would not wake up. And then, in the morning, not desiring to rise, I would pray that God would make me useful- to give me a new purpose for living. For a few months, that became me pouring myself into building this office: The Cabin Out in the Woods.
Since it’s completion I have been able to use the privacy and convenience of this office to accomplish many useful things, including filming teaching videos for our YouTube Channel (@Congregation13) -which can also be seen on my TikTok, Instagram and Facebook pages- writing stories and journal entries- which now includes this blog site- and continuing to run our 501(c)(3), UUIM, Inc. (www.uuim.org). I am able to study the Bible and prepare lessons for our Congregation 13 Bible Study group which meets on Sunday mornings (most of the time!). And I have a respite to escape to that allows me peace and quiet while remaining close and accessible to my Dad if he needs help with anything.
Dad reminds me regularly how useful I am to him and Mom- who suddenly became bed ridden right after Clayton’s death and now suffers from full blown Alzheimer’s- and how, even though I am not working a paying job at the moment, he is comforted with knowing I am around to take care of things while he takes care of Mom.
It’s been a long, hard couple of years, but through it all, God has carried me and provided all I truly needed to get through. There is still a long way to go, but God knows what’s coming. He is still preparing me for what’s ahead and even though I don’t know, God knows.
In the process, I have learned to listen beyond to road noise, rumble strips and busyness of life to the natural, God-given sounds of peace and tranquility that are still calling out in the form of crickets and owls and whip-o-wills as I start again…again.
This is Rob saying, “Until then…” from the Cabin Out in the Woods!