Life and Friends

Last Sunday we went to the Vikings game. That was pretty cool and also a little emotional. Brian's dad was a huge football fan who had season tickets all the time. Brian, his dad and his brother were all always big Vikings fans. Brian talked about going to the old Met Stadium for the first time as a kid and here he was in this big beautiful new shiny thing. Yes, I laughed they sure gave us one hellava stadium for all those tax dollars spent. I loved it too though, the place is amazing, the game was a Vikings mega victory, the fans were so much fun too. Brian said something, just one thing that day that reminded me of our situation: "I am glad I lived to see this". I teared up a little but quickly sucked it back up. I can't "hang the crepe" now. Stay in the moment, it's the only place any of us really live. Besides, we don't know if we will be seeing games for years to come, or not. We truly do not know that and never did. You can't fight much about ALS, but dammit we can keep it from hijacking the present.


There was a woman named Darcy Whitfield who wrote a book called "I Remember Running". I actually read it a long while before Brian was diagnosed. Not sure all why, but an odd fact is I got interested in ALS a few years back and read some things about it. Darcy was 33 at diagnosis, 35 when she died. Yet somehow she managed to find a buy a house, have a baby, move in with her life partner and write a book in that time. I am still not sure how she did all of that, even reading the book. I consider her an almost mind boggling example of not letting the disease hijack the present, keep living and doing. She did all that with a much more rapid physical progression than Brian has experienced thus far.


Brian's spirits are by and large pretty amazing. He enjoys me, our animals, his assorted tasks and choirs (he still does almost too many of them because he is after all Brian). The guy has a knack for living, absolutely.


Last night, I had a now rare dinner with a good friend. It was so nice but it made me think about how rarely I do that now. I spend all my non working time with Brian because we have all these things to do together and time we want to be together. I thought about how you will often hear with ALS that friends have gone "poof", even right after diagnosis. Generally, the friends are blamed for disappearing. I think there might be another angle to this though. What if a big diagnosis makes you spend less time with friends and they just wander away because they feel ignored? I am sorry for the lunches I am not having right now, for being distracted sometimes. I work a lot and when I am not at work I just treasure this healthy time that Brian and I have together. We still love our friends.