Life and Love with ALS

Long ago in my Catholic Sunday School days, I heard something no kid could truly understand I suppose, but the memory still stayed with me. Out teacher said "It is much easier to have faith in our Lord when we are happy, than when we are sad, but it's when we are sad that we need him most". I grew up to be something of a heathen, but a spiritual sort of heathen with a somewhat Catholic perspective that pops out here and there. My mom strayed from her Catholic conversion to more general Spiritualism. Though she has in later years stated a stronger Christianity. Since Brian's diagnosis, I don't find it harder to believe in God at all maybe because I do indeed need spirituality more in my life now. I find myself comforted by thoughts of a power greater than myself who wraps me up and helps me cope with this thing I can't carry alone. Thanksgiving and the holidays bring good things and challenges. The comparisons to last year are unavoidable. Things were so ...

Brian, always the political activist could not vote when he turned 18. It was not until March of 1971 that 18 18 year old's could vote. Legal age for voting - as everything was 21 until that time. Brian was born in 1950, and 1971 was not even a midterm election so in 1972 he got to cast his first vote. It was the election Nixon would win, if you want to call it that. What inspired the change of the voting age to 21 was that young men were tired of being marched off to wars by politicians they could not even vote for, and that was hard to argue. Brian did not do the whole lawn signs door knocks fund raising bonanza this year that has filled his every election year since his youth. Instead we hung out and have watched this election, these campaigns in progress. He has been actually sort of relieved NOT to do the drill of these past many decades, but his passion is still evident. He talks to the TV like it's a football game, bites nails on polls, observes strategy. Yup, you c...