HAP

Dear friends, My father came out to Pittsburgh last weekend with one of my brothers to see my Aunt Jo in New Castle. Yesterday, I got a brief email from my brother to say my father is in the hospital following a TIA--a small stroke. I have had another email overnight that he has been moved from the small hospital in New Castle to Allegheny General in Pittsburgh and that he seems to be improving, though an MRI says this is not the first of these to have happened. There is minor damage to the area of the brain affecting speech and balance--he's had balance issues for a couple of years. The good news is AG is one of the best regional hospitals in the country and has a top-flight neurology department. They are working to get his blood pressure stable and may release him at some point today or tomorrow. The plan is to get him back to Seattle on their scheduled flight on Sunday, but that will depend on what happens the next couple of days. Once back in Seattle, I'm sure his doctors at Virginia Mason will do another bunch of tests and we'll go from there. When my mother died I was so busy with Jane's situation--her feet were beginning to swell and she was having "fainting" episodes where she did not actually pass out but felt like the world was getting distant--and my mother had been in an Alzheimer's facility so long, that it did not hit me for a long time. This stroke is really bothering me. Depending on what happens today, I may be on my way to Pittsburgh sometime this weekend. Or to Seattle. It's hard to know what is going to happen here, but I am not sure he has as much time left as some of us thought. I do know he misses my mother to the same degree I miss Jane. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, One of my former students has published a book on beer--Crafty Bastards. She sent me anautographed copy inscribed with a quote I gave her when she was a sophomore about God and camels. As busy as I was last week, I got no further than that until last night. That's when I discovered she had dedicated the book to her mother, her father--and me. Talk about a positive and uplifting moment... I've read about half the book and it is a lot of fun. She has a nice light style and a dry sense of humor that suit the topic well. And she has really done her homework. That, too, is a moment that made me happy. Peace, Harry

Thanks Fae and Anne. I worried about this post--especially because it so flies in the face of what people advised me after the first one. I really am looking forward to a break in early July and then two weeks of teaching journalism later in the month that will take my mind off cancer, as well, for several hours a day. I'm spending as much time as I can in the garden the last week or two because weeding and constructing beds are forms of meditation that real do calm me down and take me away from troubled times. There is nothing like moving tons of sand or rock to straighten the bent and broken steel of my mind--and I've been moving lots of both. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I'm going to post my sad news here because it explains why taking Fae's advice about taking six months to a year to focus on healing myself is not really something I can do. I got a note this morning from one of the people I know in the carcinoid/NETS community that Lindsey Miller, a young woman who writes a blog called "I am a liver" about her battles with the disease, died on Wednesday. I was among the first to read her blog, which started at about the same time I started mine. Her writing became increasingly difficult to handle because she reminded me so much of Jane, despite the fact there is a 35+ year difference in their ages. Lindsey, like me, was trained as a journalist. She had recently finished her master's degree--despite her illness--and had fallen in love. She and her boyfriend had a "commitment" ceremony a day and a half before she died. There is a picture of her in her wheelchair in her wedding gown on her blog today from that ceremony. Her face is so thin and her legs are huge--the same way Jane looked at the end. It took me right back to when Jane was in the hospital. I was at a conference on carcinoid/NETS at MIT in Cambridge on Thursday. We are now diagnosing 41 cases a day--about 15,000 a year--up from the 33 a day when Jane was diagnosed. We are getting better at finding it--just not better at curing it. We're raising more money than ever, but it is still a pittance compared to what we need. Jane's death and my efforts since have had a significant impact, people tell me, in changing the environment in the carcinoid research and fundraising communities. But the fight is far from over. This morning, I received another post online from someone else I know. His mother died yesterday after a four year stint in the hell that is carcinoid cancer. People are going to keep dying at a 33-34 person a day clip--a pace I expect will accelerate in the same way the number of diagnoses is accelerating. More cases means more deaths when cures are really not available yet. I made Jane a promise that we would kill this thing. I made myself that same promise. But I also know this is a long steep trail up a very tall mountain. I know I'll have to take the occasional breather on the way; but if I am going to reach the top before darkness falls, those breaks have to be short ones. People's lives depend on it. I feel like the little boy on the beach with all the starfish dying on it. I keep picking them up and throwing them in the water. I know I can't save them all--or even most of them--but I'll keep trying. Lindsey didn't deserve what happened to her. Jane did not deserve what happened to her. I could not save either of them--or any of the 33 others that died today or the 34 that will die tomorrow. But maybe a year from now what I do today will make a positive difference in someone's life. Or maybe it will be ten years from now. It doesn't matter. We all live in a world where too often people say one person can't make a difference--and that becomes the excuse for not acting. A few months ago, Marty made a decision to keep this sacred place going. That single action by one individual has had a real impact on all our lives. Almost four years ago, Jane and I made a series of decisions about fighting her cancer--decisions I have followed through on even after her death, despite her mind screaming at me not to. I can't walk away from this fight because doing so would mean more people would die the death Jane died. Yes, Death comes for all of us--and I have seen it in many different forms. None of those forms is pretty to watch. But the death this disease brings is particularly heinous. I'd prefer we find a way for people not to die in this particular way. This is an arrow I do not want Death to have in its quiver anymore. But taking something from Death is not an easy task under the best of circumstances. And these circumstances are not the best of circumstances. Still, it is a task that needs doing. I'm sure people told Sidney Farber when he started trying to find a cure for childhood leukemia that he was nuts--that what he was doing would not work and that even if it did it would cost him large chunks of his soul. In reality, it did cost him a great deal. But he did not walk away regardless of what it cost him. Nor did Marty walk away from us. Nor will I walk away from the people who are fighting this disease--regardless of what it may cost me personally. Jane and I had a simple philosophy that took us into teaching and guided our lives: "The good of the many outweighs the good of the one." The good of the many is the price of my life--and the price of my soul. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, The good news for the last few days: The rock arrived and I shoveled it into place. I still have some landscaping to finish around it, but the really heavy lifting on that is done; the sand around the garden fence is 60 percent finished--I just have the back stretch left before it is ready for the mulch; I figured out how to do the gating on that project today and got one of those finished. Tomorrow I have to go up to Boston in the morning to meet with some people about a summer program for high school students I am doing for two weeks this summer with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. They wanted me for six weeks but I have some other things already on the docket for some of the time they are in session. We are talking about me doing six weeks next year. We'll see. I had Jane's sister and father over yesterday for a cookout. I'd have preferred to do it today, but this is his dialysis day and that leaves him exhausted. Nothing fancy--hot dogs and corn on the cob on the grill and potato salad followed by chocolate cream pie for dessert. We raised $2362 with the dinner Thursday night. I may have posted that already. The last few days would be uplifting, were it not for the death of another carcinoid/NETS patient I have become close to emotionally--but this is not the place/thread to talk about that. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I am very happy to see all the good news blossoming here today. Karen's house news, Jo's courses, Fae's night on the patio, QMary's rehearsals... And I will add a bit of my own: 1.) the carcinoid conference was fascinating today and has supplied me with some interesting things to do some research on for some new articles and 2.) our dinner tonight raised $2362 for our American Cancer Society Relay for Life team. One of our board members is a talented young artist whose most recent series of experiments have produced a number of striking works I'd really like on my wall. She's donated one of those new works to us and we are auctioning it off as another Relay fundraiser. It already has a $75 bid on it. I'll try to get it posted below. Shortly off to bed for some sleep. I hope to finish the seating area project tomorrow and will post before and after pictures when it is done. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, To add to the positives of this morning: Sometime in the last hour, walkingwithjane.org reached 25,000 views. That means, given a rough average of views per visitor, that about 12,500 people have been to our website in less than three years--about the same number of people who are diagnosed with carcinoid/NETs each year. On the whole, I'd rather have Kay's news about the ramp--or QMary's about the SS--but one takes what one can. The stone arrived this morning for under the deck. I hope to get that job finished this weekend--but today and tomorrow are going to be insanely busy: I have to get everything ready for our dinner fundraiser tomorrow night today. Tomorrow I also have a research event about 60 miles north of here during the morning and the dinner to run that night. And a former student's wife is making her singing debut later that night. We'll see if I get there. Talk to you all on Friday. Be well. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, My niece graduated from medical school today. She leaves to start her residency north of San Francisco next week. We had a nice party for her afterward in Boston. I will miss her, but she needs to move to the next phase of her training. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. I will think on all that you have said. I am gradually returning to my full meditation practice from before Jane's death. Jane and I both spent 24/7 in some form of meditation. It was what allowed us to be the teachers we were. I don't know if Jane lost that during her last days. I know that mine shattered not long after her death and that I have worked daily to get myself back to that level of focus for many months. I am not there yet. On a good day, I am entirely in the moment for 10-12 hours. On a bad day I may only manage the formal meditations of my youth. It is frustrating to know where one has been and not be able to get back there as easily as I once did. Then I remind myself how many years of practice it took to reach that place to begin with--my Grandfather set me on that path when I was five--and feel better about the forward and back nature of meditative progress. Physically, I have largely healed the things Jane's illness did to me. But the mental trauma of her death is still there and that retards the emotional healing. Jane once told me I was the most patient person she had ever met--and that patience is what I need now. Time to spend a few hours contemplating all of the above. The good news is that I had fairly pleasant dreams last night--and no repeat of the night before. Peace, Harry

Thanks, Mary. Worth some thought. Harry

Dear friends, At last I know why no matter how tired I feel I have difficulty dragging myself to bed at night. It is not just that I am sleeping alone. I woke up five times last night and remembered what woke me up all five times: the same dream. In it, Jane is still alive, but in her final months/weeks. We have not gone into the hospital yet but we know what she has and are searching for a cure--or rather I am. She is too weak to get out of bed without help. I'm looking for black raspberry powder--which does help, sometimes, with the diarrhea carcinoid/NETs causes--acacia leaves for a tea of some kind--which has no bearing in reality that I know of, and a couple of other things that are increasingly desperate--ground apricot pit equivalents as far as I know. Ultimately, I fail. Ultimately, I watch her die again and again and again. I suspect this has been going on for months/years. The good news is last night I finally had worked through enough of the trauma to finally remember the dream. Maybe now I can get a grip on those issues and deal with them. And maybe that is part of why I have been so miserable over the last week or so. I started crying in the car on the way back from Chelmsford and the Cystic Fibrosis walk. I've been tearing up with some frequency for several days now. Part of it is the frustration I'm going through with both Relay and the Marathon Walk, I suspect. Part of it is the awful and ongoing sense of isolation--even in groups of people I like. Part of it is working with patients in the support groups and realizing for all the progress we've made, very little of it is reaching the patients--that from the description of some of their symptoms that some of them do not have very long--that they and their doctors are simply managing the end of their lives as gracefully as can be done with this disease. For all the effort we have all put in, the death rate is not declining. We've just gotten marginally better at detecting the disease. Oh, we have some things in the pipeline, but before we can get them into the mainstream, a hideous number of people are going to die the same death Jane did. CAPTEM, a two drug combination that looks really promising in the early trials appears to be a standard treatment in England. But because it uses two generic drugs, getting the FDA trials done here that would lead to its eventual approval are going at a glacial pace: not enough profit in it. And of course its use in England means nothing here. But the major component of my angst is missing Jane--and, looking at those dreams, how much it hurts that I could not do more for her at the time. Not that there was anything I really could have done much differently--there was even less of a cure available here at the time--and even globally we had virtually no understanding of the disease and how it worked. But my subconscious clearly has not yet let that one go either. Thanks for letting me verbalize this stuff. I don't feel much better but I may find sleeping marginally easier to attempt tonight. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I did the Cystic Fibrosis Great Strides Walk this morning: 3.2 miles in about 35 minutes walking. I got to see Bruce's daughter who had a lung transplant right after Jane died. Her husband had the biggest smile on his face. He knows he could as easily be here with us--knows just how fortunate he is. It was a fairly small group--maybe 8 teams and 75-100 walkers. They raised $8000 this morning in just their second year. The rest of what I have to say does not fit the rubric here--nothing positive about much of what went on outside of that event today. I'll start a new thread on that shortly. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Or should I say fellow chickens? Mission accomplished on the deck and the sinkhole. I even got an experimental section of the garden done. Then it started to rain, which told me I'd gone far enough. Very windy here today and tonight. I have to be on the road by 7 a.m. tomorrow to get to the CF walk in Chelmsford. I grew up there, but really haven't been back for more than a quick drive through in nearly 40 years. I won't do much more than that tomorrow, either, I expect. So, why did the chicken go halfway across the road? Peace, Harry

Dear friends, My legs are speaking to me nicely this morning. I hope to finish under the deck--less the stonework--later today. I'll need to solve a piece of the sinkhole that developed yesterday because I can't bring the stone in until it's stable. The garden, which I'd hoped to start today, will have to keep until Monday. I just don't have that much energy--I do know where my body's limits are, and I have to be able to walk a 5K tomorrow and get to my niece's graduation on Sunday. Must keep my priorities... As to the spring chicken jokes, I may not be a spring chicken--but I'm not quite a winter chicken yet. I prefer to think of myself as a summer chicken... It really is nice to make that train reference and have people get it without further explanation. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Anne, consider yourself well and truly hugged, my friend. I hold you especially closely in my hearts and in my thoughts tonight. Physically, I'm exhausted tonight. The sand for the two yard projects I am working on arrived about noon today and I shoveled for five hours after that. About 90 percent of the seating area under the deck is filled with sand at this point. I'll need to order the stone to finish that off--maybe as early as tomorrow. Unfortunately the truck that delivered it unveiled two new--though small--sinkholes I all have to fill before I can have the stone brought in. It's always something. A friend's Relay team is doing a dinner tomorrow night, I have a cystic fibrosis walk on Saturday, and my niece's graduation on Sunday, so how much I'll be able to get done this weekend out there remains to be seen. But it is nice to see things finally beginning to take shape 10 months after I started them. My body tells me I need to sleep--so I guess I'd best listen to it. My legs--that's where you lift from--are no longer on speaking terms with me. Good night all. Peace, Harry

Anne, you have a beautiful soul. This piece demonstrates that in more ways than there are stars in the sky. Be well. I carry you in my heart and in my mind each day, but especially at this point in the year. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Less productive today, but I got the lawn mowed, a couple bills paid, and the sand ordered. The cancer work is going less well. I'm frustrated because I don't seem to be making the progress I think I should. And people keep telling me I'm accomplishing a lot. I guess I just have really high expectations of what I can do--and should do. My brothers and sisters have decided to ignore my suggestions. From 3000 miles away there is not much I can do. That is frustrating in its own way. But it also reminds me why there are a carefully cultivated 3000 miles and 40 years between us. As widowers, my father and I share a peculiar bond. My youngest brother sees me as somewhat of a father figure, I think. The rest of us did not get along as children--and there is a certain tension to our relationships now that is born out of that. My mother once tried to apologize for abandoning me on the east coast when they went west. I told her, truthfully, that she had not abandoned me--rather that their departure had liberated me--that I had needed to get away from all of them before the dynamics of our family killed me. I was not, in retrospect, very kind in saying that, but it was the truth and I had given up lying to protect others feelings years before. If you don't want to know what I really think, don't ask. I think she understood it--it was the way she lived her life. My father was disgusted by me for years. He was stunned when he and my mother separated for a time in the 1970s that I was the one who looked out for my youngest brother and sister and both of them--and that the brother he most admired abandoned everyone and everything in that crisis. I was 35 before he told me he was proud of what I was doing with my life. He said he had not understood me or what I was doing until my early 30s. And then only really understood when he watched me teaching myself to dive one afternoon. I spent hours on that diving board trying to figure out how it worked and what I had to do with my body to get into the water without a splash. My mother said she saw that determination years earlier when I went out to run a road race with the idea in my head I would medal or die trying. I got the medal but ran so hard I left everything I'd eaten for days at the finish line and needed an IV to rehydrate after it was over. I have no idea what my personal limits are. Tell me something is impossible and I will grind on it until I either solve the riddle or die trying. That's been one of the hard parts of Jane's death: Her illness was a riddle I could not solve in time to save her. It is a riddle I still have not solved--just as fundraising and awareness raising are riddles I have not solved yet. But I keep climbing out on that diving board. I had to write a speech some years ago for a National Honor Society induction. I'd been named teacher of the year and it was one of the duties that went with it. People tell me, periodically, that I am a very intelligent and talented person. I don't see myself that way. As a child, my favorite bed time story was 'The Little Engine that Could." Its chant has become my motto and my life. If I think I can do it, I can do it. It may take some time and effort--sometimes more than another person would think it is worth--but I will get there. If I write well--and enough people have told me I do that I believe it--it is not because I have some great talent as I writer; it is because I have worked at it every day for years. It is the same with everything about me. "The Little Engine that Could" became the theme of my speech that night. It is not enough to have talent--plenty of people have that. Without work ethic--without the belief that one can accomplish anything one sets ones mind to--talent means nothing--is nothing. My one real talent/curse is that I don't know enough to know when to give up. Even when I want to give up, I can't. It just isn't in me. Failure is not an option I allow myself in any permanent way. A failure is simply an attempt that did not work. It provides the information that is necessary to make the next attempt better. That effort may fail as well--but again, the question is what did I learn that will make the next attempt more likely to succeed? Sometimes it is a frustrating and maddening way to live. These last few days have been both. But the positive is I will figure all this stuff out. I'll unravel the puzzle of carcinoid/NETs--or at least help on the money and resources side. I'll figure out how to raise the money and educate the doctors. I'll even figure out how to survive losing Jane--with lots of help from all of you. I think I can--and that means I can. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Another fairly productive day: I walked five miles in 1:10, did the laundry, and wrote a piece for walkingwithjane.org. I also wrote a long note to my brothers and sisters in Seattle. Apparently my father had a fall last week sometime and has been seeing dead people and feeling fuzzy-headed ever since. He told no one about this until he met my brother for lunch. It appears he had an MRI done this week and they found a small bleed in his thalamus--which is buried deep in his brain. I've volunteered to go out there once my own issues are settled--my mouth and my basal cell skin cancer--and stay with him until either he fully recovers or decides it is time to give up the house for an assisted living thing or dies. I don't expect we will sell him on that idea--he likes his independence too much and we wear each other out. But it seems like the right thing to do since everyone else is working. The logistics will be nightmarish--but that is the way the universe works some days. i've been reappointed to the visiting committee for gastrointestinal cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This is my second two-year term. It still feels pretty strange. Time for sleep, methinks. Peace, Harry

Oh, Kay...I mourn with thee. Harry

Dear friends, Neither my mother nor my mother-in-law are on this side of the grass any longer. It makes Mother's Day very strange for me. I spent all day yesterday in the garden cleaning out beds and tilling in compost and manure. I finished the soil prep this afternoon after spending the morning working on cancer stuff. Tomorrow I have to order the sand to finish the fencing project and the seating area under the deck, which is turning into a much more expensive project than when i started it last summer. Still lots of work to do there. The cancer stuff has been making me angry the last few weeks. There is an epidemic in the patient support groups of people with doctors who don't get it--and insurance companies that really don't get it. Imagine having a doctor tell you, "Carcinoid isn't really cancer. It's a minor problem." You've all seen what Fae has been through with this. Major resecting like she has had is no picnic. And the insurance horror shows make what the lunatic doctors say look tame. But the work in the garden has calmed me down some. There I can see real progress at the end of the day. Within a few weeks most of my salads will come from there--and by mid-July every meal will be based on what I grow--all of it organic and better than what I can find in any store. This assumes the fencing keeps the GH out, of course. Last year, they ate more of it than I did. The tulips have begun to fade and the daffodils are done, but the irises and lilies are rising toward June and the jonquils are just coming into their own, as are the columbine. The violets Jane and I planted when we first bought the house have scattered over a good chunk of the lawn and add little spots of cold everywhere. And the birds are glad to be hunting in the fresh turned soil in between songs. There are times I think I would have been wholly content as a farmer, but I mostly know better. By early August, I'll be tired of weeding and plucking bugs. Right now, though, all of it is new again--as it is every spring. The work wears me out though. Time to call it a night and get some sleep. It's supposed to get cool again tomorrow so I don't know how much I will get to do outdoors. But that's tomorrow. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Lawn mowed, hanging baskets built, cemetery basket built and delivered, tears shed, bed clean-up continues, house plants moved to deck. Tired Harry thinking about an early night since he still has a vegetable garden to prep and plant in the morning. Hummers seem less aggressive today. It would appear the war is over for the moment. The smallest male seems to have been the winner, which is somewhat of a surprise.I think I saw a small female late this afternoon. They are still pretty skittish about letting me get very close. And so I'll say good night. Too tired for much writing tonight. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I discovered just how much I am still married to Jane today even 41 months after her death. I had thought I was finally emerging into the new reality of life without her. Then I went to a local greenhouse to look for some annuals for the deck. I got back in the car after putting the plants in the trunk and took out my cell phone to tell someone I was coming by to drop off tickets to sell for the dinner Walking with Jane is doing in a couple of weeks. It was then I discovered my wedding ring was missing. For the last several months I have been moving my ring off of my ring finger for several hours each day. I'd told Jane that when she died I would take her wedding ring off her hand--she did not want to be buried with it--and transfer my ring to my right hand, where it would stay until I died. In the event, I found I could not bring myself to take off my ring, though I did take hers off. When I finally got to the point I was ready to make the swap, I conveniently discovered the finger on my right hand is too big for the ring. I know I could have it resized, but I can't get myself to have it out of my possession for the day or more it would take to safely do that. Instead, as a move toward that, I wear it on my right pinky-finger for several hours each day, swapping it back to its original home when I do yard work or am in some other place it could slip off without me noticing. Today, at the greenhouse, I forgot to do that. And then it was gone and I burst into panic and teared up. But I fought it off and checked the plants in the back--maybe it had slipped off into them or into the blankets I keep in the back of the car. But it wasn't there. I went back into the greenhouse, retraced my steps. Nothing. Finally, I found the person in charge of the greenhouse and explained what had happened. She said they would call if they found it--but I had no hope. My high school class ring had vanished one night in college and I'd never seen it again. My marriage really was over now--the one thing Jane had given me that I never wanted to lose was gone. I'd been depressed to start the day. Tomorrow is the 41 month anniversary of Jane's death and--as is so often the case around the tenth of the month--the weight of that day is dragging me down some. Now, walking back to the car, my mind was shattering. I was back at Day One without the numbness to protect me from the searing pain of loss. I checked the front seat and, finding nothing, decided I would empty the trunk completely before giving up completely. I had started the morning thinking about what I would write about today. The corms and bulbs I had put in the new garden bed I built early last month have finally begun sending up their shoots in the last few days. It seemed the perfect metaphor for how I was beginning to feel after 41 months of mourning and loss. Now it was clear, as I moved toward the back of the car, this was simply another false dawn in this ongoing night without end. There would always be something waiting to destroy whatever progress I thought I had made. Rather than the emerging sprouts of new life, the metaphor was the failed seeds I planted six weeks ago that had not come up and sent me off to the greenhouse to begin with. I opened the trunk and pulled out the single four-pack of zucchini that had been the last thing I put in--and there it was, gleaming like a new-found lost soul. I can't describe my delight in that moment, nor the joy that etches across my face as I recall it. I only know that I have not felt that same peculiar happiness in a very long time. I went back to the greenhouse, told them they could call off the search--that it had fallen into the trunk as I packed away the plants. Tomorrow and Sunday, I will work in the garden. I'll churn the composted cow manure and my own compost into the raised beds. I'll put in the tomatoes, the lettuce, the sweet and hot peppers, the potatoes, the first of the beans, the onions and carrots. I'll plant flower seeds and finish making up the baskets for the deck and the yard. I will do all the things that Jane and I would do at this time in May. And at some point, I will make up a pot of her favorite flowers and take it to the cemetery and place it on her grave. I will stand there and shed the tears that come every tenth of the month. I will mourn losing her and try to make sense out of her death. But I don't think I will mourn the death of our marriage anymore. Today, I discovered it is still there--alive and growing still--despite having reached "'til death do us part." Peace, Harry

Glad i only have one red shirt. I'll have to remember not to wear it. --H.

Dear friends, Hummingbirds may have tiny brains but never let it be said they are not wily. I set my feeders up so that no single bird can keep watch over all of them and control all of them at the same time. Or so I thought. Remember my garden fence project? If a hummer sits on the new fence he can supervise all four at the same time, which he could not do before. And the male hummer territorial wars are in full swing. I nearly got skewered by two of them engaged in aerial combat today. It's an exciting to be to be out in the yard, let me tell you. Peace, Harry

Dear Fae, One of my friends was a nationally ranked rider. She lost her horse shortly before Jane died. She still rides but has said she will likely never ride competitively again--the bond between horse and rider is that close. I know what you mean when you say one more loss is too much. Peace, Harry