Pat,
I read your detailed post about what your body, and, in a sort of almost detached, absolutely rivetingly honest way, you described what your mind and soul are going through.......I did a double take, shook my head and conclude that, in my entire life, I have never witnessed or been privy to such a display of 1)total honesty in the face of almost indescribable discomfort and total realization of the facts, unobscured, unfiltered and unsmeared or filtered from your full consciousness 2) total lack of self-pity, 3) preservation of your appreciation of what's important to you right up to the end, but 4) most starkly, undisguised and screaming loudly at us all is this message that hangs out there, as if suspended for all to see, hear and touch:
I, Lugnut, am near the end of the road, but I will bare it all and live what's left with all of you, because you all may benefit from what I'm telling you and feeling and thinking. It may change your (ours, that is) way of dealing with life, death, pleasures, disappointments and put them all in a perspective that reading your epic journey will cement in a different, shuddering way.
In my book you stand alone in my encounters of persistent and unflinching pure-bloooded guts and fiber for this last hugely selfless and, costly, to your energy and resources, stand to drum into us the real and relative values of life's hills, valleys, cliffs, volcanoes and peaks, which you articulate to us as you coast them daily. The biggest shock - not in a sense that I am surprised that it is you who is the author - rather than the fact that anybody, not yet sainted or deified - can have this strength and will to make a statement of this magnitude.......this blows me away.
May your final thoughts and solace be not that you have guided us, albeit true, but that you have left a legacy for Barb and your gene pool that any other Medal of Honor winner, will look down at you, smile and say, "Yeah, he is one of us..........." This legacy to your family will be peerless, matchless and priceless to them in their years ahead, not to mention the genes giving them the same Right Stuff to achieve their own amazing feats of living that their forebear did. That is your royal prize, the biggest of them all. That will be the thought and satisfaction that will finally allow you to go in real peace............
I am sorry, deeply, that I didn't ever meet you, but believe you me, we know you. And we are infintely richer for it.
Thanks, Pat.
I read your detailed post about what your body, and, in a sort of almost detached, absolutely rivetingly honest way, you described what your mind and soul are going through.......I did a double take, shook my head and conclude that, in my entire life, I have never witnessed or been privy to such a display of 1)total honesty in the face of almost indescribable discomfort and total realization of the facts, unobscured, unfiltered and unsmeared or filtered from your full consciousness 2) total lack of self-pity, 3) preservation of your appreciation of what's important to you right up to the end, but 4) most starkly, undisguised and screaming loudly at us all is this message that hangs out there, as if suspended for all to see, hear and touch:
I, Lugnut, am near the end of the road, but I will bare it all and live what's left with all of you, because you all may benefit from what I'm telling you and feeling and thinking. It may change your (ours, that is) way of dealing with life, death, pleasures, disappointments and put them all in a perspective that reading your epic journey will cement in a different, shuddering way.
In my book you stand alone in my encounters of persistent and unflinching pure-bloooded guts and fiber for this last hugely selfless and, costly, to your energy and resources, stand to drum into us the real and relative values of life's hills, valleys, cliffs, volcanoes and peaks, which you articulate to us as you coast them daily. The biggest shock - not in a sense that I am surprised that it is you who is the author - rather than the fact that anybody, not yet sainted or deified - can have this strength and will to make a statement of this magnitude.......this blows me away.
May your final thoughts and solace be not that you have guided us, albeit true, but that you have left a legacy for Barb and your gene pool that any other Medal of Honor winner, will look down at you, smile and say, "Yeah, he is one of us..........." This legacy to your family will be peerless, matchless and priceless to them in their years ahead, not to mention the genes giving them the same Right Stuff to achieve their own amazing feats of living that their forebear did. That is your royal prize, the biggest of them all. That will be the thought and satisfaction that will finally allow you to go in real peace............
I am sorry, deeply, that I didn't ever meet you, but believe you me, we know you. And we are infintely richer for it.
Thanks, Pat.