A death, birth and birthday: the most bittersweet week of my life - Part 1

I don’t often go 11 days without sending an email, but sometimes life throws you the most bittersweet week ever and you don’t have a choice.

As most of you know, I usually send 2-3 emails per week focused on business, marketing, AI, etc. This email will not be on those topics.

Why?

Because I’ve barely had time for any of that. To get you up to speed, last week consisted of a funeral, becoming a dad and having my birthday, all within 6 days.

Strap in, this will be an update unlike most:

As you know from my last email, I had big plans for 2025 on both the family and business side. Little did I know the second week of the year would be a rollercoaster unlike any other.

I’ll try to keep it short, but due to the ups and downs, this will be a longer email than normal.

It all started last Saturday night in the middle of watching a movie with my lovely wife (Carry On, for anyone curious about that detail). I saw a phone call coming from my mom who doesn’t normally call me at 9pm on a Saturday.

It wasn’t a good call.

Sadly, my grandmother - who I was very close with growing up and who was arguably the most friendly, loving and caring person I’d ever met - passed away. Peacefully in her sleep, thank god, but at the age of 89, she was gone.

As you can imagine I was devastated. She was living at an old age home in Ottawa with my grandfather, who she’d been with for 66 years, and I had to arrange to go in from Toronto for the funeral.

The only problem: my wife was 38 weeks pregnant and we had a doctors appointment that Monday at 1:30pm.

Luckily for me the funeral was scheduled for Tuesday and my wife was doing great, so I was sure the appointment would go well and I booked a flight to Ottawa Monday night around 6pm and a return for Wednesday night. This would give me time to attend the funeral, spend an extra day mourning with family and friends, then come home to be with my wife who could go into labor any day.

If only it was that easy…

Our doctors appointment went well but due to some irregular baby movement, the doctor wanted to induce her asap, which because of their queue at the time, was the very next day (Tuesday). Further complicating it was it was a call system, so we had no idea when the hospital would call as it could be any time of the day when a spot opened up and give us an hour to come in.

We considered the situation and since the hospital said they could try to push the call to my wife until later in the day on Tuesday, we agreed I should still fly in. I could attend the funeral Tuesday at noon, then fly right back to Toronto for whenever the hospital called.

So Monday night I flew to Ottawa, saw my family and got to say goodbye to my Bubbie (Yiddish word for grandmother) by visiting the body before it was put into the casket the next day.

Tuesday we woke up and had the funeral. Not much to say other than it sucked. It’s never fun to bury someone you love so much, and it just sucked, other than the fact that so many friends and family attended, and their support made it just a little bit better.

The funeral was over by 1pm and my wife reported in that she still hadn’t received a call from the hospital - sweet! I had moved my Wednesday flight up to Tuesday at 6pm, which meant I still had a few hours to go to the shiva (for those unaware, this is the week long mourning ceremony for the immediate family members of the deceased).

I spent about an hour there chatting with friends and family before I felt something weird. I wasn’t sure what it was, but a feeling of anxiety.

A feeling that I had to leave, I had to get home to my wife.

I’m not a very religious person, and I don’t even know if I’ve had something like this happen before, but something made me feel like I had to leave, so I said my goodbyes and had my mom drive me to the airport early. I knew there was a flight leaving 2 hours before mine and wanted to see if I could get on it.

We arrived at the airport and I rushed to the check-in counter to get on the standby list for the earlier flight. It was full but the attendant said there was a chance. It was almost 3 o’clock, the flight was leaving at 4, and my wife still hadn’t received a call from the hospital.

15 minutes after checking in I got an automated text from Air Canada - I was moved up to the 4pm flight! Someone was looking out for me…

I boarded the plane and landed just after 5pm in Toronto. As soon as we hit the runway I texted my wife - still no phone call from the hospital.

Until…

1 minute later…

Another text from my wife…

They just called, less than 3 minutes after my plane touched down. They’re ready for her to come in.

We’re going to have a baby.

Woah, this already got kind of long, and the story is just warming up. I’m going to pause here, and in the next day or two I’ll send the rest.

Have a great day,

- Josh Schachnow

Canadian lawyer, CEO at Visto.ai

P.S. hold on tight, I’m getting back into the thick of things on the business side, and business/growth/marketing/AI emails will continue asap as well.