06/07/2026
Look at that photo.
Every man in it is holding up four fingers.
Last summer we thought it was funny. Today it feels like a warning.
The first time we made this trip was the summer of 1981. We were nineteen years old. Fraternity pledges at Furman University in Greenville South Carolina. Someone said there was a lake house in Arkansas that belonged to one of our brother's families. We had no idea we were starting something that would outlast almost everything else in our lives.
Mark's family had been going there for generations. They called it the Summer Place because that is exactly what it was. Every summer they would leave Memphis and spend months above Greers Ferry Lake. Swimming. Sailing. Boating. Kids growing up with lake water and long afternoons and no particular place to be.
Mark and his brothers inherited it from their parents.
We just never stopped calling it ours.
Because it is.
For forty four years an unbroken chain of men who met as teenagers have found their way back to that porch. Sometimes ten of us. Sometimes twenty five. Different combinations every year depending on what life had going on. But every year without fail somebody showed up.
The chain never broke.
We spent forty years watching each other become who we were always going to be.
What started as a continuation of college became something none of us could have predicted. At first we were all single. Then most of us were married. Then the kids came. Then about eight years ago the grandkids started coming.
The lake hasn't changed much.
We have.
Hips got replaced. Reading glasses appeared. Parents died. Grandchildren arrived. We went from morning runs to morning fast walks. Cases of beer to a nice red. All night to before 10. The stories are the same stories. The jokes are the same jokes. The bond has never moved an inch.
Saturday mornings we sit on the porch. Coffee in hand. Lake in front of us. And we have a devotion.
Not a church service. Not a sermon. Something rawer than that. Men who have known each other at their best and their worst and every complicated place in between saying the things they can only say here. Divorces announced on that porch. Addiction admitted out loud for the first time on that porch. Things said that had never been said to another human being with the lake sitting still in front of us.
The older you get the fewer people there are who remember the version of you that was nineteen years old.
One day there will be nobody left who remembers that kid at all.
Last summer someone brought up the fourth quarter.
In college football when a team enters the fourth quarter every player on that field holds up four fingers. Not in celebration. In acknowledgment. Everything that came before. The August two-a-days. The film sessions. The sprints nobody watched. The three hard fought quarters. It all gets settled right here. The fourth quarter is where the game is won or lost.
He said we are in it. The fourth quarter of our lives. And rather than put our heads in the sand we ought to hold up four fingers and acknowledge it. He said the fourth quarter isn't when life gets smaller. It's when all the stuff you spent years chasing quietly loses its value. And the people you love become the only thing worth a damn.
Every man on that porch agreed. Nobody argued. Because by the time you are in your sixties you have attended enough funerals to know exactly what quarter you are in.
So we held up four fingers and took a picture.
We didn't realize reality was already on its way.
Here is what nobody tells you about the fourth quarter of your life. You do not get to see the clock. You just get to decide how you play. And here is the part that should keep every one of us up at night. You can do everything right. Work every quarter. Grind through every two-a-day. Build everything you were supposed to build. And still get taken off the field before you ever get to spend a day of it.
A career ending injury does not ask if you are ready.
We go every year with golf clubs. Not all of us are golfers. For some of us it is the only round we play all year. It was never really about the game. It was always about the players.
Every year somebody would ask what Mike showed up with this time. A new rangefinder. Some training aid none of us had ever seen. A putting contraption that looked like it belonged in a laboratory. He always laughed the hardest at himself.
That was Mike.
One weekend he was on a golf course in South Carolina. The next he was gone. No goodbye. No warning. No we saw this coming. Just a message on the same thread where we had laughed a thousand times.
Just like that. A man who had occupied thousands of days simply stopped occupying any more.
And somehow the sun still came up the next morning.
Most last conversations don't sound important while you're having them.
The last thing Mike sent on that thread was a joke. Nobody knew it was the last one. Neither did he.
This is the part nobody wants to say out loud about men.
We are not good at this. We show up every August. We laugh at the same jokes. We hold up four fingers. And we don't say the real thing. We send memes instead of making the call. We assume there is another trip. Another round. Another message on the thread. We let years go by thinking the friendship is intact because nobody said it wasn't.
That is the lie we tell ourselves.
I called Mark after we lost Mike. Two guys on the phone doing the thing men don't usually do. Saying the real thing out loud.
We talked about lasts. Last conversations. Last jokes. Last visits. How you never know which one it is until it's already behind you. We talked about high school reunions. How if you don't go you sometimes never see those people again for the rest of your life. How easy it is to let the tide of convenience carry you past the people who matter.
Mark said we needed to swim against that tide.
At some point in your life you had all the time in the world. Now you are counting last conversations.
There is always a reason not to show up. Some of them are legitimate. But a lot of them are just inconvenient.
And inconvenient is not a good enough reason anymore.
I will tell you what I have figured out. The older I get the less I care whether people know what I think. I care a whole lot more about whether the people I love know how I feel.
This August there will be an empty chair on the porch at the Summer Place.
But there will also be more men on that porch than there would have been.
Because after Mike died something happened on that thread.
Guys who hadn't made the trip in years started typing three words.
Count me in.
Funny how quickly the calendar clears when you realize time doesn't.
Maybe that is what the fourth quarter is supposed to do.
Remind us who matters.
Remind us what can wait.
Remind us that inconvenient is not a good enough reason anymore.
So look at that photo one more time.
Four fingers in the air.
Ten men on those steps.
Eleven in the story.
Forty four years of friendship.
One chair about to be empty.
And a question every one of us ought to answer while we still can.
When your people need you.
Can they count you in.
You have been grinding at the game of life for three quarters.
Maybe it is time to mentally hold up four fingers.
Not because the game is almost over.
Because this is the part that counts.
Call the friend.
Make the trip.
Clear the calendar.
Show up.
Because there will come a day when you can't.
And nobody knows when that day is.
Look at that photo.
Every man in it is holding up four fingers.
Last summer we thought it was funny. Today it feels like a warning.
The first time we made this trip was the summer of 1981. We were nineteen years old. Fraternity pledges at Furman University in Greenville South Carolina. Someone said there was a lake house in Arkansas that belonged to one of our brother's families. We had no idea we were starting something that would outlast almost everything else in our lives.
Mark's family had been going there for generations. They called it the Summer Place because that is exactly what it was. Every summer they would leave Memphis and spend months above Greers Ferry Lake. Swimming. Sailing. Boating. Kids growing up with lake water and long afternoons and no particular place to be.
Mark and his brothers inherited it from their parents.
We just never stopped calling it ours.
Because it is.
For forty four years an unbroken chain of men who met as teenagers have found their way back to that porch. Sometimes ten of us. Sometimes twenty five. Different combinations every year depending on what life had going on. But every year without fail somebody showed up.
The chain never broke.
We spent forty years watching each other become who we were always going to be.
What started as a continuation of college became something none of us could have predicted. At first we were all single. Then most of us were married. Then the kids came. Then about eight years ago the grandkids started coming.
The lake hasn't changed much.
We have.
Hips got replaced. Reading glasses appeared. Parents died. Grandchildren arrived. We went from morning runs to morning fast walks. Cases of beer to a nice red. All night to before 10. The stories are the same stories. The jokes are the same jokes. The bond has never moved an inch.
Saturday mornings we sit on the porch. Coffee in hand. Lake in front of us. And we have a devotion.
Not a church service. Not a sermon. Something rawer than that. Men who have known each other at their best and their worst and every complicated place in between saying the things they can only say here. Divorces announced on that porch. Addiction admitted out loud for the first time on that porch. Things said that had never been said to another human being with the lake sitting still in front of us.
The older you get the fewer people there are who remember the version of you that was nineteen years old.
One day there will be nobody left who remembers that kid at all.
Last summer someone brought up the fourth quarter.
In college football when a team enters the fourth quarter every player on that field holds up four fingers. Not in celebration. In acknowledgment. Everything that came before. The August two-a-days. The film sessions. The sprints nobody watched. The three hard fought quarters. It all gets settled right here. The fourth quarter is where the game is won or lost.
He said we are in it. The fourth quarter of our lives. And rather than put our heads in the sand we ought to hold up four fingers and acknowledge it. He said the fourth quarter isn't when life gets smaller. It's when all the stuff you spent years chasing quietly loses its value. And the people you love become the only thing worth a damn.
Every man on that porch agreed. Nobody argued. Because by the time you are in your sixties you have attended enough funerals to know exactly what quarter you are in.
So we held up four fingers and took a picture.
We didn't realize reality was already on its way.
Here is what nobody tells you about the fourth quarter of your life. You do not get to see the clock. You just get to decide how you play. And here is the part that should keep every one of us up at night. You can do everything right. Work every quarter. Grind through every two-a-day. Build everything you were supposed to build. And still get taken off the field before you ever get to spend a day of it.
A career ending injury does not ask if you are ready.
We go every year with golf clubs. Not all of us are golfers. For some of us it is the only round we play all year. It was never really about the game. It was always about the players.
Every year somebody would ask what Mike showed up with this time. A new rangefinder. Some training aid none of us had ever seen. A putting contraption that looked like it belonged in a laboratory. He always laughed the hardest at himself.
That was Mike.
One weekend he was on a golf course in South Carolina. The next he was gone. No goodbye. No warning. No we saw this coming. Just a message on the same thread where we had laughed a thousand times.
Just like that. A man who had occupied thousands of days simply stopped occupying any more.
And somehow the sun still came up the next morning.
Most last conversations don't sound important while you're having them.
The last thing Mike sent on that thread was a joke. Nobody knew it was the last one. Neither did he.
This is the part nobody wants to say out loud about men.
We are not good at this. We show up every August. We laugh at the same jokes. We hold up four fingers. And we don't say the real thing. We send memes instead of making the call. We assume there is another trip. Another round. Another message on the thread. We let years go by thinking the friendship is intact because nobody said it wasn't.
That is the lie we tell ourselves.
I called Mark after we lost Mike. Two guys on the phone doing the thing men don't usually do. Saying the real thing out loud.
We talked about lasts. Last conversations. Last jokes. Last visits. How you never know which one it is until it's already behind you. We talked about high school reunions. How if you don't go you sometimes never see those people again for the rest of your life. How easy it is to let the tide of convenience carry you past the people who matter.
Mark said we needed to swim against that tide.
At some point in your life you had all the time in the world. Now you are counting last conversations.
There is always a reason not to show up. Some of them are legitimate. But a lot of them are just inconvenient.
And inconvenient is not a good enough reason anymore.
I will tell you what I have figured out. The older I get the less I care whether people know what I think. I care a whole lot more about whether the people I love know how I feel.
This August there will be an empty chair on the porch at the Summer Place.
But there will also be more men on that porch than there would have been.
Because after Mike died something happened on that thread.
Guys who hadn't made the trip in years started typing three words.
Count me in.
Funny how quickly the calendar clears when you realize time doesn't.
Maybe that is what the fourth quarter is supposed to do.
Remind us who matters.
Remind us what can wait.
Remind us that inconvenient is not a good enough reason anymore.
So look at that photo one more time.
Four fingers in the air.
Ten men on those steps.
Eleven in the story.
Forty four years of friendship.
One chair about to be empty.
And a question every one of us ought to answer while we still can.
When your people need you.
Can they count you in.
You have been grinding at the game of life for three quarters.
Maybe it is time to mentally hold up four fingers.
Not because the game is almost over.
Because this is the part that counts.
Call the friend.
Make the trip.
Clear the calendar.
Show up.
Because there will come a day when you can't.
And nobody knows when that day is.
✍️ Kevin Hayslett
