Your Dying Spouse 510 - Love Is Legacy {FMF}

I was here.

Almst all of us, I think, want to leave some record of our passage through this world.

Gutzon Borglum left the marvel that is Mt. Rushmore.

Gustave Eiffel left the tower in Paris that bears his name.

Claude Monet left a legacy of visual beauty, and Sir Edward Elgar left us with musical grandeur that has never been surpassed.

But I'm not Borglum or Eiffel or Monet or Elgar.

Pancreatic cancer has taken those possibilities. (OK, maybe a lack of talent too, yeah?)

The only thing I can now leave are my words, animated and informed by love.

Love for my wife, who has done her best to encourage those things that I could still do, who has stayed awake with me at night when I was screaming in pain, and who has taken up the burdens I can no longer bear.

Love for my dogs, who don't care that I can't run and play with them, who are content to lie at my feet when all I can do is watch a DVD. (They love the Thor movies.)

Love for my life, in which I can still contemplate the majesty of a starry sky, and still take delight in seeing a single desert flower in bloom.

Love for God, whose Grace is extended in helping me find joy in each moment, and hope for a future that I may never see...and He's telling me that the work I do towards that chimerical tomorrow is not wasted.

I just have to count on Him.

It's these loves that I channel into my words, to bear witness to the value of each moment, each opportunity to be a channel of His Grace.

Dying is the open door to life, and I'm privileged to be living it.

Out of curiosity, I recently looked at my blog stats, and found that I have a little bit more than 247,000 total hits.

That's almost a quarter of a million chances to speak faith, and hope, and most important of all, love.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13: 1-3 (NIV)

Music from Sean Rowe, with To Leave Something Behind. It was used in The Accountant, a marvelous film to whose main character Barb says I bear more than a passing resemblance.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 509 - A Blessing Named Barbara

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Barbra is such a huge blessing to me.

She has courage without arrogance.

She gives compassion without sentimentality.

She is tolerant and does not count the cost.

She is gracious without being superior.

I'm too ill to write more today, but I think this is a pretty good list - don't you?

Here is a picture of Barb with he Dachshund, Bray. They are inseparable.

Music is from Boy Meets Girl, with Waiting For A Star To Fall.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 508 - Plagues Of Egypt: Don't Do This At Home {FMF}

First, there's bleeding. from both ends.

Then it rained, and our desert gave birth to a LOT of frogs. Ribbit ribbit ribbit.

All...night...long.

And now I'm developing boils.

When I told Barb that I seemed to be taking on the Plagues of Egypt, she was definitely not amused.

And it's not funny, but really, guys, it is.

The pain and the discomfort and the overall crap are so bad now...there aren't good moments, much less days, and tomorrow will be worse.

But I'm still living the dream. Cancer wants to hold me down, force me into a foetal position, begging for a morphine drip.

OK, yeah, you caught me. I do that a couple of times a day.

And then I get up, and do what I can do.

It's not much. God, it's so little, compared to what was! But anything done intentionally, looking to the future, is better than nothing.

No matter how much it hurts to smile, I still smile, because, well, it saves energy.

Forty-three muscles are needed to frown, but only seventeen to smile. (And only three to properly pull a trigger...)

I'll stop at smiling. Except when there are rattlesnakes about.

And no matter how much it hurts to try to talk, I can save my breath for jokes.

Heard about the new horror flick, set in a haunted oatmeal factory?

It's called Scream Of Wheat.

And now all aboard! the Soul Train with Carl Carlton, for a happy listen to Everlasting Love.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 507 - The Luckiest Man

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.