Princeton, BC, Municipal Campgrounds, the work nightmares,

Gilbert let us sleep in till 5 am. He was coughing and his breathing was stressed.  I took him outside and  walked him. I was only wearing  a hoodie over my black underwear.  Laura has told me they look like bicycling shorts. Gilbert peed a river. The diuretics are working. He loved standing at the river edge below us drinking the mountain creek water.  He was then ready to mark his territory some more.  I was ready to go back to bed.

I let him up on the bed to join us.  Laura spoils him with tickles and massages. I fell back to sleep. 

In a bad dream, I was trying to get a judge to get funding for a guy to have an assistant and for them to set up a group for others to participate in a large community program.  The judge agreed to the money and then I turned to the counsellor and he was delighted with the high pay but hadn’t a clue what was expected now. He had no idea what oversight was   was needed. Like so many he thought it was all about him getting a job and him getting paid and anything like accountability and outcome not being important.  The fellow who I’d got the services for wasn’t even able to say thank you. I asked him in an aside, did you smoke up before this meeting, and he said,”lots and lots’.  He was totally gorked.  Such was addiction. The judge was suspicious, pausing for a moment to study me,  but finally signed the order. We had the funding. Substantial amounts. 

I had no time. The counsellor had promised they knew what to do and had complained that all they needed was money. But it was readily apparent that they didn’t know anything about what the judge expected.  I was fully booked in my own schedule for months ahead. Now I’d helped these guys and dozens more to have funding for recovery programs but  now it was apparent they just thought they were getting money and despite their education and training  hadn’t a clue what was expected. I’d attached my good name to their madness.  I had no time and yet I was going to have to make more time to babysit this program and ensure the judge had the paperwork he required.  I awoke from this nightmare.  

It really was funny when I awoke.  I smiled. It represented my constant battle of 30 years to get funding from authorities for the mentally ill and addicted and then the fight with the mentally ill addicted and their caregivers to get them to do something more with the money than buy natchos and sit around and talk.  The whole idea of accountability was a foreign idea and these people with supposed training had had so little scientific or economic training. It amused me as here on vacation I was having a nightmare of the constant insanity of  my life caught in the middle.  I really do think it’s a metaphor,

 All my work life I was challenged by ‘outcome’ measures. I knew in recovery the good standard for programs was the Navy Pilot Program.  Alcoholic pilots, flying multi million dollar planes, having cost millions to train.  One month of a recovery treatment centre, once a week drug and alcohol counselling, three meetings a week of AA and seeing an addiction psychiatrist once a month.  At 5 years 80% of pilots clean and sober flying planes.

I loved morbidity and mortality stats and working for positive results

At the same time it was always like moving through molasses with so many others making more money to ensure illness and addiction. I just remembered when the Canadian liquor store staff without education, were paid more and more compared to the drug and alcohol counsellor with 3-4 years university education.  Here was the government, our employer saying one thing, doing all manner of preening and lip service but their actions spoke so much louder than their words on the inside.  I made more money doing abortion than doing obstetrics with less hassle and risk.  The same with my colleague who does Euthansia today in the MAiD program.  She makes way more money, has less expectations and is considered sexy and happy compared to me plodding away in the misery and poverty of the human quagmire actually trying to heal and rescue people. 

All the while the College, the government police agency,  was giving the pass to the people who did nothing while I was constantly attacked using a standard of ‘political correctness’ which rewarded doing nothing and punished any activity. My colleague laughed and saw the same people without any improvement in their circumstance for 40 years.  I set various standards like getting patients to get jobs, housing, reduce or stop suicide attempts, all these measures of success, achieve abstinence, live longer than their cohort. .  Meanwhile we had a variety of much higher paid Harm reduction programs that maintained the status quo.

My favourite day was when the head of the multi millionaire program in Vancouver told me “Dr. Hay I know of your great work and how successful you’ve been helping people but we’re not on the same page. You seem to want to get people better while we don’t want to “interfere with the culture of addiction” but see our job as getting them money and other resources.”  

And here I am on vacation shedding the tension of this life of doing good against the forces that ‘aren’t on the same page’.  I imagine the peace makers really piss off the arms dealers. That’s been my experience in life and dealing with the government arrogance where they see themselves as holier than thou but have made a pact with the devil to have a soft life and acquire the most resources. I took comfort at times in reading Bonhoffer’s struggles with the Christian authorities in Nazi Germany and Arendt’s study of the Nuremberg trials looking at the Nazi bureaucrats, insisting they were just doing as they were told, and not responsible.   Arendt  coined the term ‘banality of evil.’ 

Joseph Campbell described my journey of the young fool as the ‘hero’s journey’.  Now I’m at the end of that and look back and see that like any good soldier I served. I was in the wars. I fought well. I had idiots for commanders at time, other times great leaders,  and the government was corrupt mostly but other times far better than expected. In my little sphere I did my best. I served.  I frankly don’t know what I could do better.  I stopped killers. I identified pedophies. I refused hundreds of thousands in bribes. By the measures of morbidity and mortality I outdid expectations. I prevailed. I had outstanding successes. I lived through having threats and guns pointed at me and stayed true. I am sorry my dog was killed. I suspect my care of Gilbert today is somewhat influenced by the guilt I feel for taking Stuart into danger and letting him be poisoned by drug dealers. I know my marriages were hurt by my inflexibility, my refusal to go with the flow, to take it easy, to focus on the money and a good job and not ‘fight city hall’.  

My colleague laughed and said “I stopped reading medical journals 20 years ago and took up studying real estate. You keep reading science and medicine and what’s it got you. I’m a millionaire. You’re a poor clinician and you still have fools telling you what to do. It’s the system.  You can’t do any more when the government is corrupt to the very top. The Prime Minister is paid by the money they take from drugs and alcohol and gambling.  It’s just a party for him and the others. “

My teacher said ,”when you feel you’re doing more work than the patient, you’re no longer doing therapy, you’re giving them your tit.”  He was the one who taught me the fisherman story and reminded me that the best caregivers burnt out because they thought it was a race when it was really a marathon.  I had such good teachers and parents and now after 40 years of work I’m finally registering their genius.  

I’m here in a camper on the side of a stream with no threat and I’m having nightmares about work.  In the midst of the trauma there’s no time to pay attention to the wounds, we’re all just trying to survive and get through the wars , the bureaucrats and patients create. In the frontlines where I lived we were constantly in the war zone while the critics and the activists, the College, politicians and the celebrities and television preachers were always with the ultimate leadership, far from the front, living in the palaces and dachuas.  

Now that I’ve begun winding down I’m on vacation and my unconscious is churning up these dreams that truly make me laugh. Despite the best training and best intentions I got caught in the same old traps. So here I am still dealing with hubris.  Pride and self pity.  I like the idea we’re all on the journey climbing the mountain in our various ways and the idea is not to compare and not to envy or judge but just keep on trekking. I was so easily distracted. How many times did I turn aside to help a maiden in distress only to see myself conned. How many times did I leave the beaten path to help a fallen comrade only to be shot while doing the rescue.  How often were my own mistakes the cause of my own distress and yet I always looked to blame something else, or someone else.  How often I did it ‘my way’ rather than the way my elders recommended. I listened to my teachers in the workplace but not my parents in my personal life.  I am blessed to have had ministers, teachers, elders and friends who set good examples. I miss having had the ‘children police’ that truly guided and dictated most of my friends good behaviour. My dogs have exercised me and reminded me of meal time and contemplation time. I’ve learned love from and through them.  Gilbert, blind, with arthritic back, valvular heart failure and congestive heart disease is making the best of the good moments.  I’m so admiring of friends who have cared for sick relatives and parents like my Mom cared for her mother in our home till she died.  My brother cared for my father.  Dad cared for mother.  It’s in living and caring that we heal ourselves too. I weary of the shallowness of mainstream media and seek the wisdom and depth of ages. 

I’m healing here. The forest is a healing place.

I woke this morning. Another day I was ready to go bear hunting. Today is the last day of the season. Instead I slept in. The problem is that if I shoot a bear we have to pack up and take it to a butcher on the way home.  I’m liking it here. I’m enjoying the down time and even though I’ve worked quite a few hours it’s been unscheduled and responsive to immediate needs.  No strangers either. No facing the unknown insanity.  Just taking care of business and lots of reading westerns.  The great allegories.  I want to get on my motorcycle and head into the backwoods but if there’s a bear I’ll just have to shoot it so by sleeping in I’ve missed that.  In the fall I’ll shoot a deer. I love venison. I’ve never enjoyed bear meat that much and it’s all so much work since I’ve grown older. The last elk I shot almost killed me though I loved the exquisite meat I had for nearly two years.  I’ve a rabbit in the freezer from last year still.  

I’d hoped to catch some fish but I’ve been rather lackadaisical. I’ve a freezer with steaks and smokies. Last night we had barbecued smokies and I made baked potatoes after getting the gas oven working for the first time.  It’s supposed to rain. Laura is easy on the eyes and easy on the mind and soul. She’s happy. Gilbert’s happy.  I’ll probably ride into town and buy a work watch. I broke the strap on my Swatch and even that’s been a metaphor.  I need something more rugged for these excursions since I passed on my Garmin gps watch to a wilderness loving friend who had patience for setting it up each time it was needed. I’d enjoyed it the first time but didn’t use it enough to keep up with the computer updates. I love my Apple Watch but it’s not meant for the back woods.  

It’s another day in paradise and I’m really happy, feeling each day I relax a little more.

Princeton

The elevation here is a 600 meters rather than the 900 meters of 100 mile House.  Gilbert is happy. The drive down was a delight going through the Interlake region to Little Fort and Kamloops. We had such fond memories of our Hwy 5A motorcycle trips on these winding forest and lake roads. I’d done this trip on my Buell . Laura and I had done it on Harley Roadster.  The wind on that route had lifted us up and deposited us half a lane over.  With the Ford Truck and Camper we even felt the cross winds on the high open plains.

Now we are at the Municipal Campgrounds in Princeton where we used to come on the Roadster with a pup tent and enjoy long weekends years past.  It’s busier here.  The administrator was delightful.  We’re booked now. I love looking out on the river. Water and electricity. A Sani dump across the way.  Our black holding tank is good for days.  We could have gone to wilderness sites but I just wanted ease. I like not worrying about water rationing. I like showering.   I wanted to be on wifi and cell. The 2.4 g wifi so far hasn’t worked but cell coverage is good.    

I rode the KTM into town and brought back a pizza from the spectacular Princeton pizza place. We’ve enjoyed their pizzas for a decade. Laura was so pleased. A nice surprise. She’s been eating my cooking for a week. Except yesterday.  We had A&W hamburgers, a tradition for road trips.  Gilbert prefers MacDonalds.  Laura likes the onion rings. I liked the chips. We also listened to a Johnstone’s western on audio, “a movie in your mind.”  Western’s go with the terrain.  I’m reading a western on Kindle, .45 caliber by Peter Brandvold. 

Gilbert had me up at 3:30 in the morning. I think the diuretic kicks in and the coughing gets worse. Mostly it comes from him trying to climb up on the high bed with us. He gets frightened and likes to be in the bed. I climbed down and walked him about.  He pees for ever.  Then settled we go back to bed.  When I wake in the morning I have that feeling I used to know too well after nights on call.  Focused yet cobwebs.  This morning knowing he was coughing because he was trying to climb up, hoping I’d come down and lift him up so he could be with his true love, I just told him to lie down. He did. I slept in.  What a luxury.  I took him out for a walk at 9 and it was warm and sunny and summer.  I love Princeton.I love this vacation.  

I’d put the gear out last night to go bear hunting this morning.  I’ve radio, shells and binoculars all ready for an early morning ride up into the backwoods.  Ha! There’s such a disconnect between what I ‘think’ I’ll do in the morning on this trip, and what I really end up doing in the morning.  Not once did I get fishing before evening. Morning’s have been drinking coffee reading and occasionally some work.  I think any fishing and hunting plans are just excuses to get out and do something. I’ve not had any of the old desire to harvest.  I’m happy to play the games, I guess. Nothing to prove.  Just enjoying the motions.  I expect I’ll get out with the rifle and do some target practice when the bears are asleep.  I do like shooting.  I will be so glad in the fall to eat venison and grouse again.  

Now I’m thinking a little lie down on a lounger in the sun is the only thing I’ll schedule. Maybe another dog walk. I don’t think that will cause me to feel too pressured and harried.  

Sunday, Cariboo Bonanza Resort, Horse Lake BC

We have so enjoyed our stay here. Horse Lake is between Lone Butte and 100 mile House in the Interlake Region of BC.  I’ve had a lot of fun getting my Coronado XT pontoon boat with electric motor out onto the lake. I’ve fished but not caught anything. Everyone else around me did. Rainbows and Kokanee’s. I also bought a Chiappa 22LR /20 gauge over under shot gun, the “Double Badger”. I rode all over on my KTM 690 motorcycle and shot targets. I took some great bird picture with the Nikon Coolpix P1000.  I read some westerns and sci fi novels. I scrolled a lot of FB and added flippant thoughts and political commentary with knee jerk genius contributing to the cacapohonousbedlam of social media.

I felt blessed. I prayed. I was with my beautiful friend Laura who is easy on the spirit. Gilbert the blind cockapoo with injured back, valvular heart disease and congestive heart failure was a true source of joy. He had us up all night coughing and struggling to breathe. We phone Dr. Biernacki at North Road Animal Hospital and he told us is was the higher elevation in the Cariboo that had caused it.  He upped his diuretic furosemide and Gilbert’s been so much better since. Yesterday he was rolling up and down the hill and playing with his ball. We have a family of ducklings join us each day with their mom and he is just fascinated by their chatter.

We’ve had wonderful heart warming fires and beautiful sunsets. Everyone about has been so civilized.The resort attracts  international visitors as well as locals.  Rustic cabins in the uptown section and downtown RV camping where we are. Lots of old people and children.  Serious fishermen.  Not me.  I even sought the advise of the great fishing guru, Bill, to no avail.  I felt Sentimental hooking the worm.  I’d become a vegetarian again but their sentience disturbed me as much when I cut into a zucchini.  Not surprising, given my Irish roots, I loved potatoes here. I barbecued steaks and smokies and pork chops and had them with boiled potatoes and sour cream and mashed potatoes.  I made bacon sandwiches and bacon and eggs. I’ve enjoyed cooking.  I especially love barbecuing.  It’s been a wonderful vacation with that sense of cares dropping away.

I’ve worked some. With wifi and cellular service I’ve been able to connect to the Oscar Remote by computer and talk to patients on the phone. It was rainy some mornings and I was able to be of service and help.  I only thought about Covid and the catastrophes its brought to some people when I was working. Here its seems another world away.  I’ve seen the continuing corruption of Trudeau politics and Communist China and diabolical UN on Facebook but it’s at a distance. The background here is forest, lake and woodsmoke.  

This Adventurer camper has provided all the amenities with sewage hook up , running water connection, propane heat and hot water.  I’ve really enjoyed reading westerns and sci fi, rich allegories of good against bad.  Lots of tribal justice and revenge.  I then meditate on faith, hope and love.  Forgiveness is always a theme. Letting go. I’m older and still bothered by lustful and fearful thoughts and feelings. I struggle to let go of guilt and shame. Acceptance is a key idea today.  I have to remind myself I’ve not stolen millions from hard working Canadians to launder overseas with euphemistic projects, done any abortions or cannibalized my neighbor. On the balance sheet I’ve not been doing too badly especially this week when I’ve mostly been self critical for not getting up early and catching fish or getting up early and writing the great Canadian novel. I’ve been kind of lazy. I have slept in and napped. Walking Gilbert at his pace with his heart condition. I’ve bought a couple of pairs of sandals at Work Wear in 100 mile House.  I’ve bought a half dozen fishing lures that would have worked better if I had my line in the water more. I’ve kind of stagnated.  Lots of coffee and reading.  I’ve enjoyed my little corner here at the table stretching my legs out to rest my feet on the second drawer where I’ve put a cushion to create a self made couch. Laura has done cross words. Gilbert has slept.

I expect this is a kind of proto retirement. It’s a bit like a lot of my older and younger friends do.  I’ve thought about life and accomplishments. I put a decade into training at the highest levels and struggle like a number of colleagues and educated friends seeing others rewarded and given positions not on the basis of work and meritocracy but through cronyism and bullying and frank criminal behavior. I would have liked to loot a bigger tv. I obey the law and feel often like the Last Boy Scout.  When I’m with Laura I’m comfortable and feel a bit like my old man. I’ve followed in his footsteps, camping, hunting, fishing. He left me his love of the wilderness.

When I’m alone though in the city, I think  jazz and traveling to exotic lands.  I miss the theatre and television. I gave up a relatively hedonistic life of fun and pleasure for a life of calling and service.  That unforgettable moment praying in the University of Winnipeg chapel and my friend inviting me to come along and do the MCAT.  I thought Jesus was a healer but I wonder if I’d not have had a better life as a carpenter. I loved Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, discussing that very theme. 

A lot of the time I think of God and want to be closer, to know his will for me and to have the power to carry it out.  I look back on my life these days and it’s been full and exiting. I’ve been truly blessed. I celebrated 23 years of recovery this week and I’m in my late 60’s. For a guy whose been in plane crashes, sailed through hurricanes, been shot at , surrounded by Swat teams, stood up against all manner of social injustice , fought with really bad people and served the highest courts and spent days with Prime Ministers and Generals and Nobel Prize Winners and Olympic Athletes I’ve been truly blessed. God is good all of the time. But I’m never satisfied. I’m always feeling like I’m falling short of what I could be. I don’t want to be crucified like Jesus or his disciples. I’m a wuzz. Part of my reason for liking skirts and hair salons is because I’m old and feel vulnerable as an old man in todays culture and society.  I’m like an enlightened worm. Or a smart ant. I loved the metaphors of St. Francis. 

I don’t feel protected and don’t feel I can rest on my laurels.  I find myself think of Valhalla. I see the old men, the farmers and such, congregating in the MacDonald’s and A&W in the morning and think that may be me soon. I miss my brother Ron and his fish tanks. I miss my father and his fishing.  I’ve not the patience and confidence that they had. The men and women with children seem complete. The grandchildren give them meaning and purpose. I’m here with a dying dog and feeling that I’ve failed. It’s all in the self pity.  I’ve tried my best but been way laid by evil and corrupt bureaucrats and systems. Years of my life I’ve defended myself against lying psychopathic women and men.  I’ve been so disturbed that I’ve been caught in their low life games. I wanted to play the Glass Bead Game not Days in our Life.  There are times I’ve felt I reached for the stars but looking back so much has just been slogging through the mire of human existence. It’s all perspective and I’ve lived in fear and resentment and muddle.  There’s no merit in beating myself up. It’s tied to envy. I judge my insides by others outsides.

Now we’re leaving here. Packing up and moving to a lower elevation for the sake of Gilbert’s heart and lungs.  It’s an unknown destination.  We had booked this week but on a whim and due to the days July 1st came we took another week of vacation. I’ve not known this amount of unscheduled open time in years.  Again I think of this as a what retirement might well be like. Like a summer vacation in school days and each day an open slate. This truck and camper is like a land yacht and I actually enjoy it more than my sailboat, the land appealing more to me with better wifi and hook ups and the culture of Good Sam RV world. My parents loved the RV world and it’s a more appealing lot than the yachting world. I like the motorcycles and quads and all the dogs.  Life is good.  I am very grateful.  Now I must get stowed and on the road. 

Thank you God for another day in paradise. BC is God’s country and the views are just constant eye candy.  Thank you Jesus.  

Horse Lake, Saturday, Hails, Wind, Worms and Cold

Last night’s storm was shocking. I was fishing half way across the lake when the storm clouds appeared. At first I thought they were going to bypass the lake. The other fish boats weren’t moving but then the rolling thunder sounded and that concerned me. I began heading to shore with my slow electric motor watching as the other boats one after another kicked into gear and rev’d their gas outboards leaving me putting along with my little electric.  The thunder rolled again, the sky darkened and wind came up against me. I grabbed the oars and began pulling hard. I had visions of being fried from a lightning strike.

I later quipped that Olympic athletes would have been impressed by the last stretch of rowing that took me into the protected waters. I had quite the audience of other RVers filming my heroics. I pulled my pontoon boat ashore and ran with it rickshaw style up the road to my Camper.  Just as I arrived hail struck. I was pulverized by hail rocks.  I escaped inside .

Gilbert was hiding under the table. “He started up the stairs on his own when the wind came up, ‘ Laura said. She’d taken pictures of me rowing for my life before she went inside to comfort him. 

I took down the awning that was threatening to take us a loft.  With the racket of hail on the roof we sat together in the darkness comforting poor little blind cockapoo Gilbert trembling and having difficulty breathing with his congestive heart failure.  20 minutes later it passed. A rainbow appeared. The roads were flooded .Other RVers were out filming the white lawns with their iPhones and cameras. 

I took the worm I’d had on my fishing rod hook and released it into soft puddled soil.  Having survived being bait and then a hail storm hanging from a rod,  I hoped that it had enough life to burrow into the soil.  As a child I hurt when others hurt and here I am today having difficulty hooking worms to fish with. Sentimentalism masquerading as empathy. Maybe in old age my testosterone is failing.

With my nights disrupted on call to Gilbert I’m finding FB more irritating than normal.  The causes and the protests keep coming at us like pesky Jehovah Witnesses banging at your door when you’d rather stay in the  bath. I feel this silly desire to ‘balance’ the onslaught of bias. And daily seeing my government steal and abuse me taking my rights and possessions and taxing me more for their favoured groups and cronies.  I struggle to remain grateful while watching dictatorship steal rape and pillage while claiming to be acting in the best interest of the people who are more like prey as criminals get away with murder. 

We spent the evening in the camper drinking tea and reading. Gilbert slept soundly after his ordeal.  

It was so cold that I turned on the propane heater and loved my camper. Instant warmth.  I am definitely not the intrepid Stoic young man I once was. I’m becoming a thorough wuss. It was heaven to climb into bed with Laura who had gone earlier and warmed it up.  I had to walk Gilbert a couple of times in the night. He’s on diuretics and when I walk him at night he pees a river. 

Meanwhile a stalwart fisherman would be out but it’s raining and the lake is churned up with wind. I’m here inside with Laura and Gilbert having made eggs and toast and now about to enjoy my third cup of coffee, any excuse to stay put in the warmth, cozy and safe.  

Horse Lake, Thursday, Gilbert is better

Gilbert is better. Better night. Less coughing. Better breathing. Happier. More energy.  Dr. Biernacki of North Road Vet phoned to see how he was doing. I was out fishing and Laura took the call.  He told her it was the elevation.  With heart disease he’s best by the sea. 100 mile house is 3000 feet. I remembered the IDAA conference with some of the old guys on oxygen because of the elevation of our meeting in Keystone Ski Resort. That was 9000 feet and I noticed the ‘thin air’.   I certainly don’t notice the elevation here. The air is so fresh and alive but it’s been tough for the little guy especially on muggy days.  He seems fine in the sunshine.

I felt stupid. Never thought of it. We  had booked this vacation back in February before Covid and before Gilbert’s condition became worse.  Dr. Biernacki further recommended a slight increase in his furosemide, the diruretic that reduces the fluid in the lung. Sure enough his coughing and spitting up has reduced.

I’m really getting positively lazy here. I spent yesterday morning sleeping in. Then I had coffee and read my western.  The good girl, the good guy, the bad girl and the bad guys.  Lots of gunfire.  

I actually did some work , responding to phone calls and need for prescription renewals. Since it was raining in the morning I was glad to.  It’s good to feel useful and also to have some money coming in.  I work for myself so don’t have benefits, no paid holidays, no pension, no sick leave. . I have some funding from the Doctors of BC for conferences. That pays for the plane flight but then I pay for registration and hotels but also usually tack on a week of vacation and sightseeing then.  

Some days I miss the high paid government, university and institutional jobs with the light work loads, month paid holidays, maximum 40 hour work weeks, more like 30 given the lunches and coffee breaks, 2 weeks paid study leaves, benefits, sick leave and pension..  The fattest fat cat doctors are in Quebec. Then I remember the soul destroying, bore you to death, ego driven, team meetings, all talk and nothing getting done, so appealing to the Chatty Cathy types and the posturing male suits, I appreciate my simple lowly low paid work. 

Mostly I’m just thankful to have work.  I’ve worked since I was 12 yo, part time jobs, then my SIN at 16 and working as a dishwasher.  With saving and budgeting I own what I have but think I’d be wiser to have rented and leased. My doctor friend George after his divorce argued that renting and leasing were the way for men to go now given the way,  the government and the  system increasingly preyed on home owners and people with property, while encouraging the criminals and people who simply don’t care that much to work, despite their claims to the contrary.  Parasites thrive as the hosts deteriorate. 

These camping vacations are just expense, no money coming in, and money going out. But necessary. It’s out here that I find peace and renew my spirit.  Each day I feel lighter.  Listening to others pain, fears, anxiety, depression I feel like I’m left with it. It builds like soot in a chimney. All the angst that’s burnt up in each session,  unloaded for me to incinerate. .  There are many ways people burnt out deal with distancing and protecting themselves.  I was trained to walk a mile in a persons’ shoes and to be with them. I actually will go down the rabbit hole of insanity, find them and bring them back to the light. That’s all you can truly do with the psychotic and the addict. Otherwise you’re just throwing bandaids at the problem That’s the empath challenge. Lending ego. Joining. Healing.  Easier to remain in one’s head and prescribe meds from a far.  The challenge is to remain feeling.  I thank my incredible teachers for their sharing and insights.   Still there’s that pesky  Caregiver’s burden.  They’ve finally listed the PTSD in DSM5 that folks like me experience hearing day in day out the terrible trauma which soldiers, police and prisoners experience.  Nothing better than camping and the woods to restore me. Sailing works too.  Wilderness. The outdoors. Time in prayer. Meditation. I find all those here. 

Laura’s experiencing the same relief.  Her work as a doctors assistant is a myriad of demands and activities so here she’s relaxing. As a mother she had years of children talking at her and now it’s sick adults. Out here she’s happy that Gilbert is so grateful and I’m with him. We are all wounded and it’s good to be here.  

Yesterday I rode the motorcycle over to Lone Butte Sporting Goods, my favourite outdoor shop around here. A young guy owns it. The Exeter Sporting Goods store in 100 mile House is another favourite.  I bought the Chiappa Double Badger there but the fellow at Lone Butte put a red dot siting mechanism on the rifle to help me hit the heads of grouse. Usually I have a scope. With open sites I can hit the grouse but couldn’t get head shots consistently.  I also was able to get another butane cartridge for our Thermocell.  My nephew Graeme sang their praises at warding off the demon mosquitoes so I bought one only to find I had a Thermocell Lantern in the camper. Now I’ve two and they do work well keeping mosquitos 20 feet away.

I actually fished. I took the boat out yesterday for the whole afternoon coming back in the evening.  I’d charged the battery so had a couple of hours of electric outboard trolling. I rowed. I’m getting lots of exercise. I cast. I tried every hook I’ve got. Not a bite. Fish were jumping.  The sun was shining.  A few fluffy beautiful clouds in the sky.  Perfection.  

I’m looking forward to fishing again.  Right now coffee and toast. It rained through the night. I was up once to walk Gilbert at 2 am then walked him again first thing this morning.  His breathing is better after walking.  

We’ve another couple of days here and we’ll stay if he continues well. He’s so much better today, playing ball, smiling.  We’ll head south to lower elevation by the coast then or even home.  I love the freedom. I’m so thankful to be off schedule.  Each day a blank slate.  It’s bear hunting season still here.  I’ve  even thought I might get a bear though frankly it’s a lot of work. My friends in the Urban Aboriginal Ministry always appreciate when I share wild game.   I’d rather sit around in the pontoon boat in the sun hoping to catch a fish.   

Horse Lake, Thursday, Gilbert’s Heart Disease

The sun is out big time. Hardly a cloud in the sky.  Yesterday overcast rainy with mosquitoes. Morning working in the camper. Laura puts on earplugs and listened to music.  Gilbert sleeps on the bed with her.  She’s reading. I’m working. It’s not a bad gig for a rainy day in paradise.

In the afternoon I rode my motorcycle down backroads slipping and sliding in the muck. My arms and shoulders are telling me this morning I got my share of exercise. I had the camera along and took some pictures of the area I was in.  Firs, muskeg, pine. 

I rode up a side trail and parked the bike. I took the Chiappa Double Badger folding rifle and targets to a clearing I found a short walk beyond.  I shot off 5O rounds with the 22’ single shot barrel. I was grouping within 5 inches only  slightly left and high of centre but it was not good enough to hit the head of a grouse. I’d hit the body of a rabbit but that’s not good enough. I think I might add a little scope. I’ve needed a scope in recent years partly because of my aging eyes and partly because of my precision shooting.  A grouse head is about the size of a quarter coin.  

The 20 guage single shot barrel was amazing. I tried the 6 shot and the slugs.  The slugs were a bulls eye.  I walked back to about 20 yards where I normally shoot grouse from and while I’d had trouble with the 22, I would get the grouse every time with the 20 guage.  I will have to work on reloading quickly. My mentor Bill Mewhort years back chose a single shot moose rifle for the accuracy of the longer barrel he was able to get without the regular action. He could load three shots almost as fast as I could with the bolt action.  

What’s nice about the Chiappa is I have the perfect bird gun.  It’s actually fits in my pack folded. Further if I carry a slug I have the potential in a crazy situation to be armed to defend against a bear attack if I’m not surprised.  I’m usually pretty alert in the woods the possibilities in the wild are always there.  I remember the times I’ve come across  bears and badgers and I’ve be fortunate they opted to leave me alone. I’d definitely been undergunned sometimes at the time of those encounters.  

Gilbert was sick last night, coughing and having problems breathing. He’d gone on for an hour unable to settle. I’d wake and go back to sleep only to wake again.  I brought him up on the bed and with Laura and I massaging him and some more of one of his medicines he finally settled.  I think he has trouble breathing with his congestive heart failure and he panics.  Dyspnea is a side effect of one of his meds but this was what we took him to the vet for. He coughs until he spits up clear fluid so it’s pretty certain that’s the congestive heart failure , so called ‘water on the lungs’. His X-ray showed that. He’s on two diuretics and yet he continues to have this problem. On rainy days it’s worst. Once he settled and stretched right out he slept straight through for 5 hours. Now we’re up at 9.  He’s just fine this morning.  He was barking at the ducks whose sound of landing as a group outside the door, surprised him.  He’s not coughing. I had trouble having him take his medication, it’s wrapped in roast beef. He wouldn’t take it so I walked him a bit to pee and again tried and with a lot of fuss he took it.  I was pretty exasperated.

I’m finding myself re thinking euthanasia.  Individually I’ve know that I’d like to go and have always held that if things became so wrong I’d suicide. MAiD is the euphemism today.  I found myself thinking Gilbert was going to die and then I was selfishly thinking maybe it was time to have him ‘put down’.  Poor guy.

The problem though is the same I see with the death penality.  I believe it’s right. There are limits to rehabilitation despite what some would argue. I know that ‘God’ works miracles but there are countless examples where a community can’t ensure a person who offends won’t reoffend. It’s the same issue that soldiers face with the inability to take prisoners where the prisoners could give away their positions behind enemy lines , the result being that the platoon is killed for not.  Historically communities banished those who were re offenders.  It’s the reoffenders that are the real challenge. 

If we think about the worst crime of murder then perhaps there can be extenuating circumstances and a guy killed his ex wife or mother in law.  I’m just suggesting these as example.  Someone else might think of murdering the boss. I’m not speaking to the idea of deterring others. No one would have thought about murdering my ex wife or mother in law.  They might think of murdering their boss so historically the whole idea of murder was a costly issue.  In the village you had to pay the cost of the loss of that person to the family or tribe. Like with a lot of things and the law, the rich could get away with murder easier than the poor. But the murderer might alternatively become the slave to the family.  

The whole idea of the jail industry, with people kept at huge cost to society is a type of evil that is driven by greed and the ability to tax people with little accountability.  Historically law was mostly about recompense, not this weird ‘punishment’ idea.  My principle problem with the death penalty is the State. The State is so intrinsically flawed and biased with a long history of mass murder that it should not have the power to kill individuals ‘legally’ given it’s history of errors. Even in a democracy total idiots get elected and these people and the media can influence judges and innoscent men and women can be killed for profit.  I believe in the death penalty but don’t know who should do the killing. Hence the historical value of banishment.  I think branding people with the Scarlet Letter or a big M for murderer or T for Thief ,  might be an alternative. I’ve not really thought it through but know that the STATE should not have the right to kill and that the whole ‘Life’ sentence issue would only make sense if it were cheap. What we really need is for Australia to become a prison colony again. Ultimately  the moon or mars will suffice. Space exploration if only for the sake of penal colonies for workers is a grand idea. 

Now what about MAiD. Again the State is the problem. I’ve always held that I have the right to end my life. I admire my Christian and Catholic friends who believe suicide would lead to hell but I’ve always maintained that I personally have the right and a loving God would not condemn me. At most I’d be a teenager who crashed the family car and the loving father would be miffed but still love me.  I don’t ‘own’ this body. It’s a vehicle I inherited. I have too known so many individuals who use ‘suicide’ as a weapon of threat and extortion. Then there are those who want attention and the others who would suicide if they broke their fingernail. I love that the Buddhists and Hindus to a large extent like I , consider it a personal choice, that they discourage. I certainly don’t admire the STATE and it’s Jihad Suicide bombers. I”ve always felt leaders should be willing to do whatever they ask their men and women to do so know that Jihad is invariably left to the grunts. The guys with the virgins here on earth aren’t about to blow themselves up for a speculative proposition.  All propaganda.

But if I was Gilbert and couldn’t get my breath and faced that terror alone I would be glad for a ‘magic pill’. Bring on the cyanide.  In the spring for the first time in my life I was ‘unable to get my breath’.  That’s when I believe I may have had SARS. I was coughing like Gilbert, crying and praying and more desperate than I can recall for two days. I’d have these ‘spells’ when I simply could not take air in and my body, normally a twin, to my self became one with myself and together we felt utter abandonment. I understood then in that instant the cry of Jesus on the cross. “Eli, Eli, lama sabaqtani!”  My God, my god , why hasn’t thou forsaken me!

Last night I thought Gilbert would die and I felt that again there was nothing I could do but pray. I have cried by bedsides too many times to remember. I have pleaded with God to save patients and been rewarded by hard work and miracles but in my own life I’ve not had success. Wife’s have gone on to be ex wife’s, family members have remained sick. Loved ones have died. Dogs and cats have died.  I’ve known terrible pain.

But pain is bearable.  Breathlessness is not.  The greatest torture known isn’t being eaten alive by ants or staked through ass by Count Vlad. It’s water boarding.  Obviously I can’t speak from experience. I’ve not had my face eaten by ants though this weekend the mosquitoes tried my patience and I have had a hemorrhoid that drove me to distraction. None were like that experience this spring of not being able to breath.  Asphyxiation is intimately tied to panic.  Panic attacks are experiences of inability to breathe.  Covid 19 is all about that breathlessness.  I can’t imagine a worse death. But all death is breathlessness and eventually it passes and you die.

I thought Gilbert might die last night. His enlarged heart might give out or he’d just choke and seizure. He lived.  

This morning I thought of suicide. I was angry at Gilbert for yet another night disrupting my sleep. It’s been weeks, this being the worst, but I’ve risen with his coughing for months . What’s changed is that he doesn’t settle. It used to be I just held him and he stopped coughing.  Then I could take him for a pee and a short walk and he’d settle and sleep through the night. But now I’ve been taking him out every few hours and he settles and then it repeats. I’m so thankful we’re on holidays. 

Which brings me to the point. If I had to work and was raising a family without support of my village eventually I’d want to kill the person I was caring for. If I was the person unable to care for myself I’d want to die. My mother told me she was ready to go when she was bed ridden. “It was okay when I could sit up in a chair, Bill, but now all I have is a ceiling.I’m not going to get any better.”  I’d rescuscitated her twice. I only resuscitated my father once. I’ve resuscitated countless people. It’s a skill and a ‘gift’. I’ve watched spirits rise from bodies and called them back. Not alone.  The trouble is that it’s only temporary.  It’s a wrestle with death. Death is inevitable.  

Gilbert is an inconvenience. I was annoyed with him this morning when he wouldn’t take his medication and I felt like slapping him.  I was crying too.  I remember others caring for their parents, the people I know caring for disabled people. My brother put up with my ornery father’s cricitisms and moods right to the end. My brother is a better man than me.  My mother cared for my grandmother till I found her cold one morning in the sun room. I have a disabled friend who is really demanding at times but we all humor him. He is in the most severe chronic pain and disability known and yet our society , the STATE, has no heart dealing with him. Indeed girls are taking advantage of him because he is frail and they are the psychopaths of the world. I witnessed caregivers hurting him myself.  Now the STATE and the COURTS are punishing him for his weakness.

I felt like killing Gilbert ‘for his own good’ because he ‘was suffering’. He was suffering but I was kidding myself. I’m a contemptible selfish jerk whose sleep has been disrupted and this is my best friend and loved one and I’m thinking murder. The fact is he’s loving his life when he’s not coughing. Yesterday he was cuddling with the love of his life Laura for hours. She’s giving him treats and sitting with him on the lawn listening to the ducklings that are walking by each day. I’ve been playing ball with him which he loves despite being blind. He loves going for walks. I remember my mom loving being pushed around in her wheelchair outside by my father. She lived for those hours until she was permanently bed ridden and stared at the ceiling bored to death.  

I’m not going to die well. I’m a coward. I love a loving God but I’m the first to tell him what I need and it’s really hard to accept ‘thy will be done not my will’. I’m not a masochist. I don’t enjoy pain or risk or discomfort.  I’m not very impressive to myself. Others seem to see me well but within myself I’m rarely measuring up,. How can I be a lover and think of killing my little love because he can’t breathe and is suffering and I don’t want to be bothered by it any more.

The fact remains that is what I learn from so many.It’s not the thoughts or the words but the actions. I didn’t kill Gilbert or myself yesterday and he’s now sleeping at my foot and I’m just so sad.  Aging now is a matter of loss. But I’ve been blessed beyond what anyone deserves to know this little guy.  Better to have loved and lost then never to have loved. 

Thank you God for another day. When I was at sea in hurricanes and storms and it was night and I was near despair it would always be better in the light. The sun is wonderful this morning. St. John’s latest ‘long dark night of the soul’ has passed. I’ve another day to learn to be more loving like my dog who trusts and loves unconditionally.  Gilbert has another day of play. Thank you Jesus. 

,

Horse Lake, Wednesday Morning

It was a combination of heavy rain on the roof, bursting bladder and Gilbert whimpering to be let up on the bed with his love Laura. I had to pee.  The rain was like someone running a tap.  I let Gilbert up.  Then I peed. Then I was awake. Not happy. Awake. It’s pissing rain outside.

I know the fish are most likely biting.  I just don’t want to get wet and love the cozy comfort of my Adventurer camper.  

I’ve had two cups of espresso coffee but my mood isn’t improved.  It’s pretty now outside. All green and happy grass and forest looking. I walked the dog and it was squishy but smelled lovely. I am thankful to be back inside.  Laura says that it’s supposed to be sunny later.  If I go back to sleep I might wake up  less crotchety. I used to go hunting and fishing or assist in surgery in this state of mind.  Functional.  But why. I’ve got steaks in the fridge. It’s warm inside. I didn’t bring foul weather gear. This is my summer vacation. I have bathing suits and sun tan lotion. I’ve done my share of winter sailing. I’ve gone through the ice twice in the north, one on a skidoo and once on snowshoes.  I don’t like cold and wet. I’ve caught hundreds of fish and shoot moose. I’ve nothing to prove. 

I just don’t like on one hand that I’ve become a whimp and on the other hand I revel in it.  Apparently this is  allowed in older folk. It’s part of being older. 

I understand why the gods went into nursing homes for the clean sheets in  Douglas Adam’s, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.  I’ve become a hedonist or epicurean with age. I was such a good Stoic when I was younger. I so admired Marcus Aurelius 

Yesterday I made it out on the lake with my new skookum Colorado XT pontoon boat.  I had the Motorguide Energy  electric motor on and was trolling but couldn’t keep the rudderless boat going straight so was doing S curves ,passing my rod back and forth, such that other fisherman later laughed about the Slalom Trolling Technique.  Theoretically it would work, but it wasn’t intentional. I did a lot of donuts too trying to sort out the rudderless boat. Finally I ran out of battery power and had to row myself back at noon with winds coming up.  A few hours of entertainment and some fishing even.   

I rode the KTM 690 enduro motorcycle into town to get a battery charger from Lordco. I’d bought the  the battery the day before without thinking I’d need to recharge it.   Sometimes I don’t think things through. 

This morning I saw that my battery charger had recharged my battery. The instruction manual said the green light was ‘good to go’.  It took hours.  I’d thought of getting an electric quad for hunting but I’d only get a few hours use then with my generator needing to charge it all night. I don’t have the high speed generators that folk plug into in the city.  So I’m still loving gas.  I could have brought my Honda 2.5 outboard but I thought this lake only allowed electric.  Not true. I love my little Honda and all I’d have needed yesterday was a little tank like we always take when we go fishing for back up.  The oars worked.  I needed the exercise. But my shoulder’s are still hurting today.  

What I really want to do is ride my motorcycle into the back woods to try out my new Chiappa Double Badger, a 2 barrel, over under 22 LR and 20 Guage shot gun. 2 separate triggers for the single shots.  It’s folding so I can carry it on my motorcycle on the back trails. I usually see the grouse in the woods and shoot them with a head shot with the 22 but if I miss, it flies up or a second flies up ,I have the 20 guage.  Nothing I love more than grouse hunting.  Delicious little chickens. I cube the breast and slow fry it in butter and marmalade. Mmmmm.

I also bought Merrel waterproof sandals. They are like the Teva’s I had white water canoeing.  I’ve Keen’s leather sandals which I love but they’re not suited for the wet as much as the Merrell and Teva.  I bought Laura a pink Swiss Army Knife and Gilbert some pepperoni. For a guy who wanted to be in the wilds I’ve sure enjoyed the exhilarating high speed back roads motorcycle rides to and from 100 mile House. I love 100 mile House.  Great town. Great people. Everything a person could want in the middle of God’s country.  

I’ve been enjoying photography.  Bonaparte Gulls, Bank Swallows, Mallard Ducklings and Greater Scaup family.  The Nikon Coolpix P1000 is turning out to be the best little bird camera I’ve ever had.  I loved the iPhone camera for city, people and architecture photography in India last year.  I remember my first Nikon 500 telephoto lens.  At the time I liked writing and sitting in outdoor cafe’s in foreign countries snapping pictures surreptitiously of people going about their normal routines.  I have some especially memorable shots from Mexico, a group of children getting water in a bucket from the village wel. .  Another memorable shot was in south France, a man shoeing a donkey attached to a cart beside a new black mercedes.  That was when I was interested in publishing photography and stories nationally and internationally. 

 That was before I joined the Canadian Author’s Association and discovered the blog. I enjoy this writing and putting photographs up on the same day. It’s like the crack cocaine experience for writers and photographers. I’ve joined photographs together with my thoughts, a journal of sorts mostly. It’s in someway reminiscent of the  newspaper column my mom wrote, her thoughts on gardening, raising kids, community events.  She wrote. Dad took pictures and the sons and grandson’s continue to be photographers. 

I really have enjoyed the bird photography here.  I just take my camera along when I’m walking Gilbert. He’s enjoying it here and loves our walks together.  It’s peaceful.  Even today, a rainy overcast day, it’s beautiful. I love looking out the window of the camper at all the green and nature.  The mist is rising over the lake and clouds are hanging in the hills. I’ve begun an exciting western and figure I’ll climb back in bed with Laura and Gilbert to read, maybe even nap.  Gilbert got me up, made me walk him and now he’s back in bed asleep.  Typical dog.  

Horse Lake, Tuesday

Yesterday was a cool overcast day with showers. Today there’s blue sky and white fluffy clouds. It’s already warm.  I’ve just returned from a long walk with Gilbert. He was so excited this morning when I lifted him up on the bed to be with Laura. He’s had his medications wrapped in bits of roast beef.

I have nothing to say but will speak anyway. Everyday is a relationship with God. I’m talking with God, listening for God, watching synchronicities.  In my dreams I was with lovers, long conversations, like we had as adolescents. Now we are careful as adults. Offence is easy. The world is in rage.  As youth we sought commonality. Now they look for differences to pounce upon. 

I saw a deer crossing the road this morning and a lone mallard drake in the playing field. Fishermen were heading out in their boats. I was thinking of coffee. No real plans in my heavily unscheduled day.  Fishing I believe. Target practice perhaps. Drinking coffee and reading for sure.  This vacation is rapidly returning me to those idyllic days on the boat in the Sea of Cortez. Nothing happening. Or the times on the homestead when feeding the chickens was so grounding and uplifting.  I was so fortunate to know pet geese as guard geese. 

When I was young I wore names like champion, genius, intellectual, husband, professor. Today I look around the park at all the old guys and know they’ve had their collection of names. Mostly they tell me their favourite is father or grandfather. Yesterday was Father’s Day.  BLM didn’t even acknowledge it. All the fatherless son’s afraid of their mothers. 

I miss my Dad. We’d be out fishing by now. He was a pragmatist. A William James of the 20th Century.  Wisdom came with doing. As kids we followed behind him climbing hills, trekking through forests. I never cease to wonder at the foods he’d give us to eat as we struggled to keep up. ‘Rosehips,’ he said and we dutifully chewed on them as we walked.

My favourite time was catching pickerel in Northern Saskatchewan. After we’d caught our limit,  he beached  the aluminum boat wit the 5 hp Johnson outboard on the sand, cleaned the fish, filleted them and in the pan he always seemed to have fried them up in butter. They tasted so good that to this day some 60 years later my mouth waters with the memory.  Sunny days sitting in boats or on the sides of a lake with my Dad.  Endless blue skies.

When we drove long distances, he’d sing the one song he seemed to know,  “Home, home on the Range, where the deer and the antelope roam, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.”  Mom would always be laughing.

The coffee tastes especially good this morning. I’ve switched from a machine espresso to a stove top espresso maker. There’s an art in grinding the Ethiopian coffee beans just right.

My mind is like a ping pong game sometimes.  This morning coffee was playing against fishing and coffee won. Sometimes it’s a pin ball machine with a pinball of thought bouncing off all the barriers.  Each day I’m here the cacophony of the city’s anthill of intruding thought stills. I’m so conscious of the pressure of congregated sentience in the city and how in the country self is freer.  I feel the expansion and safety in looseness. I remembered that feeling living on the acreage.  Now it’s returning.  I love that feeling. Expanding and contracting consciousness.  I love flying dreams as well.  I love the freedom of movement in dreams and imagine those in wheel chairs and confined to bed love to dream if their conscience is clear.  My grandmother loved to sleep in  her final years in our home. She loved the warmth of the sunshine. Little things.  Learning to pay attention to detail and appreciate the nuances.  I loved the subtleties. When life moves from the solid colours to the pastels. I remember that day I felt the pastels return after the months of reds and blacks. I am so thankful to friends and family.  

Across the way a young mother is playing with some kids, aged three to 6 by appearances. She is blowing bubbles and the kids are chasing them trying to break them.  They are as precious as the god kids or my nephews when they were small.  I knew my nephews as rug rats and now they are amazing men and one has a child with the loveliest lass alive.  When I was young I was so keen to climb mountains, see distant lands, sail across oceans, build igloos, spear fish beneath the sea. It was different then. Not better or worse just so different. The stages of life. I love watching the young today.  My brother coached his kids in soccer and loved watching them grow from stumbling to gangly then to the adult men today whose limbs work like professionals even if they wind much sooner.   Out walking the dog I passed a stooped older guy and enjoyed our few words. . His young  dog was a little boston bull dog that jumped straight up and down on stiff legs when he met Gilbert.  

I once lived in libraries, spent hours exploring old book stores, then the churches and religious art.  The sacred spaces in the city that felt proximate to the  serenity among trees or watching northern lights on the Tundra.

God is all. I am living in the mind stuff and star stuff of collective thought and the programs of God who wrote the language. “In the beginning was the Word.” I so loved John so many years.  The mystical resonated. Like love making without the sweat and grunts.  Moments of distraction and being.  The ‘aha’ times. The days she gave herself to me. Opening like a blossom.  The unequivocal invitations. 

Today’s reading, so applicable,  1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints”

Monday Morning, Horse Lake

Hard to believe I don’t have work. I dreamed of shooting a field howitzer, aiming and shooting it, much like a rifle.  Don’t know what that was about.  Gilbert was coughing. I’d wake and go back to sleep.  Eventually I got up to walk Gilbert.  Only when I climbed down from the camper bed, he was there trying to climb up. He wanted to be with his mommy. Laura spoils him by giving him morning massages. I’m woken by the dog so he can get his massage. It’s 6 am. I’m glad for the time to make espresso.

My aunt would call the temperature ‘brisk’.  A keen fisherman would head out now to catch a big one. I’ll sip my coffee with honey and cream and write.

I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer. I begin my day thinking of God.  I meditate at home before work. Here I’d planned to walk the dog.  Now I’m writing. God is everywhere, the fabric of creation, the thought and word.  

Yesterday was Father’s Day .  The devotional that day was from Deuteronomy in the OT, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’

I certainly learned “honor thy father and thy mother’ as a child.  I don’t remember the rest but when I read it to day ‘that it may go well with thee’ , my mind says ‘or else’ and I heard my mother’s voice.  She taught us kids the rules.  Dad was there to back her up. As boys we were little ‘hellyons’.  When I see the riots and see so many children disrespectful of people and property I can only think that their mothers failed them the most, and likely the fathers weren’t there to back them up.  

Most children in American Black families don’t have fathers. Boys need fathers. I can’t speak for girls though I’d think that they must be  disadvantaged by the lack of fathers.  ACE, the ongoing Adverse Child Event study concluded that divorce was among the greatest harms for a child but the whole court system is in the Marxist business of divide and conquer, destroying families as Engels and Marx wanted. I was blessed in my Christian home, not that I knew it at the time. Father’s Day I remember my Dad. What a great man. He was there working and supporting Mom. At night over dinner, he’d always ask how we did in school.  On weekends he’d take us camping and fishing. I think of Kevin and Anna and their kids and it’s brings back the fond memories I had of my childhood, weekends and holidays.

Today’s verse is “Psalm 13:5 KJV. “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.”

Salvation.  

It’s hard to imagine a world that ends with death. I live as an immortal spirit. Death is a passage.  I live for today.  I learned that God was in the present, a gift, that was why it was called the “present’. I love the expression ‘just for today’. It began with quitting smoking, and quitting drinking, this AA idea of changing with the idea that one only had to do it ‘one day at a time’.  That became ‘practicing the presence of the lord’, Brother Lawrence.  I’d read ‘Be Here Now’, by Baba Ram Dass/Richard Alpert in the late 60’s and enjoyed Elkhart Tolle’s ‘the Power of Now’.  So here I was in the centre of time, no longer living so much in the past and future.  

If I’m living in the past, I’m stealing from today. It’s usually ‘resentments’ and ‘regrets’ that hold me back. Depression is always about living in the past and not letting go.  Living is the future is also stealing from the day.  It’s tied to worries and fear as much as anything.  I remember the pastor at the Minnesota Treatment centre, he was speaker at IDAA. He said, when people come into recovery they’re only 20 percent in the present. 40 percent of their experience is in the past and another 40 percent is in the future. He felt that by the end of the initial months of the new spiritual journey they were more likely 60 % in the present and only 20 % in the past and future.  

I’m more like 90% in the day now, having fond nostalgia moments mostly about the past, blocking negative thoughts. I was burning papers yesterday from an old war and read a bit of the insanity of the complaint to Laura, “Don’t read it,’ she said.  The government had spent nearly  hundreds of thousand dollars on this psychotic drug addicts complaints against countless people. He threatened to kill my dog and everyone he knew. I wouldn’t see him after he threatened to kill me but the College of Physicans and Surgeons and the Human Rights Commission took a year of my life investigating me and punishing me for doing my job. In the end, these parasites  diverted  hundred thousands dollars of government health care money and countless hours of my time from health care to their own greedy pockets and the fellow continued to do crystal meth and swagger with the power of offence and complaint.  

I burnt the paper copies. Piles of arts student writing. I felt sorry for the lawyers, brilliant men, arguing his psychotic drivel. “Don’t read it.”  She said.  I burnt it. It felt Good. The digital copy is in the computer. I’ve unloaded some weight and look forward to letting go of more of the insanity that was the government.  So often I saw the system supporting criminals and hate. This man hated and he had the full support of the College and the government and they gently abused him with the lie that they would do anything. They did hurt us.  All of us. They were his tool.  The College of Physicians and Surgeons destroyed health care more than they served it.  They once had merit but up close I saw that this was the norm. Terribly sick spiteful people played the legal lottery and attacked good men and women doing their jobs the best they could.  The system was flawed and the College sought scapegoats to assuage their own guilt about their fundamental betrayal of their own oaths.  

When I began medicine, we’d have dealt with a psychotic meth addicts threatening to kill a half dozen people and their dogs, with a meeting. We’d have met, with him and others in a room.  An hour later the meeting would be concluded and he’d be threatening to kill the College administrator and threatening to kill the College administrator’s dog and he’d be put in an asylum or jail till he was off crystal meth.  It would not have gone on for a year with half dozen others like me punished by the smug arrogant self serving useless holier than thou system.  I rue how many patients I could have helped if I’d not been distracted by these administrative  dog and pony shows. 

And there,  I am living in the past. Here is God. Here is the present.  I laugh as I let go of the hook to go back and fight an old war. In the end I was exonerated by people I had no respect for.  We’re all generals in old age. Better to remember the creamy thighs of an ancient lover, how her smooth skin and soft words aroused me to forget everything until my loins were sated and we lay in each other’s embrace.  God those were the days.  Young love, binges of carnal pleasure.  

I worried about the future, too. When I was at the university, an assistant professor, on the long career path I remember feeling trapped. I had the mortgage , the wife, the position and a day timer that was booked years in advance.  Each day was laid out. I think the mother in law from hell was a blessing. I died each time I attended a family dinner.  Nothing was more stultifying.  I was suicidal then. I’d look at my wife and see she was fully satisfied and I was in utter despair.  I left that nightmare and took my ‘walk about’.  I promised myself I’d never again build a trap for myself.  I have future plans but nothing is written in stone anymore.  If I feel closed in I make changes. There’s illusion in the certainty.  Camus called that ‘the plague’.  It was inside each of us, that belief in our own plans.   With Covid 19, everyone’s plans were changed. But that’s the reminder we really only have this day.

I’ve woken to a Monday and I don’t have work.  I have a blank slate.  The dog defines my day mostly.  Laura told me that as a result of being a mother she wakes thinking of what she’s going to have for dinner.  “It’s what mother’s do.” She said.  “I have to figure what I have to make dinner and what I’ll need to get.”  I laughed.  We had smokies on buns with mustard last night by the fire I’d made.  

My fixed events in the day are Gilbert’s medicine. It’s a challenge to get him to take it. I wrap it in cold cuts of roast beef. Just a bit to hide the pills so he doesn’t spit them out. Then there’s Gilbert’s walk. I told a man taking pride in his goodness that his children were his ‘police’ and that he should acknowledge that he was a good man because he’d chosen a ‘family’.  Family life curbs indulgence. I could more easily wreck havoc without family to contain me. Like the James Taylor, Bartender song, “I’ve the 4 walls to contain me.”  Our love and hate are contained by the constructs of our life we allign ourselves with. 

Today I’ve the dog, demanding, loving little guy, Laura, who really isn’t demanding at all, photography, my latest passion. I’ve done photography all my life since my youth with my darkroom but now I ‘m loving taking pictures of little birds. I’m challenged by the difficulties. My Audubon photographer uncle said it was ‘the ‘shadows’ that made it so difficult. I’m still at the phase of trying to get the picture when they face me. Little birds are constantly moving. I told my photographer nephew Graeme, that they are mooning me and he said, ‘they do that to me too’. 

I’ve the fishing. It was the plan.  I’m more into the platform. The skookum Colorado XT pontoon boat has been like something from IKEA. I  think I’ll ride into town and get the battery connector I need for the electric motor. Yesterday I was really proud, getting the pontoon boat assembled and then actually getting it out on the water. I like the motorcycle too. Yesterday I  explored old logging roads till the wet mud made it too dangerous.  So much to do. And writing.  I have books to write and frankly all I seem to do is this blog. It’s a ramble.  When I think of ‘retirement’ I just think of having the open ended time to do a book. Just like putting together the pontoon boat only occurred because I had a few days open ended. When I’m working, work takes precedence. It can suddenly expand to fill days and weeks. Emergencies eat up evenings and weekends. Patient’s distress derails the plans I’d made.  Projects and books get side tracked.  I know these are excuses and admire those who organize their time better so achieve more.  I’m content.  

The books are ‘travels with gilbert’ a variation of travels with charley, Steinbeck’s inspiration.  Then there’s the Christian history and geographic piece including my photos and travels these last 20 years. There’s the great Canadian novel, of course. I’ve a ‘how to’ book about psychiatry , just a way of playing four dimensional chess. It seems a bit outdated given that reductionism of today.  I think of these things and ‘retirement’ would have these events, but mostly I’d be doing more of what I’m doing today.  Camper, truck, motorcycle, boat, dog and Laura..  I laugh because all around me there are old family men doing much the same.  RV world is a lot of retired folk and young families.  

Now I’ll get on with the next event, walking the dog.  Heavy schedule.  The demands are not that onerous.  I am so thankful for this day. What a wonderful reward. Thank you God. Thank you Mom and Dad for showing me this world . I love that I’m following in your tracks.