Our Memories

I am headed out tomorrow to go hunting.

I enjoy hunting even though I may not come home with anything.  It gives me the chance to get out in nature where nothing cares that I am ill, indeed dying.  She, nature, accepts death as an integral part of life.  Accepting all in this world who She knows will add to the cycle that we all are a part of; birth, life, death.

As surely as we all will meet that same end, we neither know, nor should we know, when that end will come.  I am luckier than most in that I know I have a time frame.  A time frame in which I have the chance to pack as much living into it as I can before I can no longer live a full life.

Then I will have memories that I can draw on to keep me company.  Good memories of crispy air on cold mornings; of the sound of turkeys at day break; a squirrel barking to let the morning know that it is up and raring to go; of the snort of a deer; of the sight of a doe and her fawn feeding not 20 feet from where I sat.  I have been, and continue to be, fortunate to see things in the woods that most people will never see.

These are the experiences that I cherish.  These are some of the memories that will sustain me.

There will be others of course, and that will be as it should be, for none of us are one dimensional.  None of us should be.  Unfortunately, because I hunt, there will be those that will only see me as a slayer of Bambi, the slaughterer of cute little squirrels, and on and on.

Others will only remember and see me as a man with ALS.

I am neither.  I am both.  I am so much more.

I can only hope that those that know me will not see me, nor remember me, as a one dimensional.


Until next time....................