A Cup Of Joe

I am thoroughly convinced that there are principally two different kinds of Canadians, those who drink Tim Hortons and those who drink Starbucks. All right, before you get too excited, there are those weirdos in that third category, the teetotallers, tree huggers and hippies who are too sensitive to drink coffee. But for those real Canadians, real people, with real lives. We drink coffee, hot black, steaming nasty, smells good tastes horrible, coffee! Fix it how you will. Black, white, sugar, no sugar. Double double Double triple. Latte, Mocha chino whatever! COFFEE! We don't drink it because we want to we drink it because we have to. You know the first of the twelve steps is admitting we have a problem. My name is Greg T. and I am a Coffaholic! You really think you aren't hooked, especially to one or the other of the big chains? Try this spend some time in a foreign country.


I just got back from three weeks in the British Isles (I include Ireland in this so my sincerest apologies to the Irish as they are definitely not British). The first thing I noticed was the nasty black liquid that greeted me when the waitress finally arrived with two stainless steel decanters. I am sure she asked me if I wanted coffee. What was in my cup when she was finished pouring was a complete surprise to me. I picked up a small pitcher that contained a white fluid. I always pour a little cream into my coffee then wait. The dream slides down the side of my cup then swirls upwards magically turning the dark brown liquid a wonderful golden color. It changes the smell too, I think. It seems to soften to fill the nostrils with that cafe au lait smell that I love so much. However when the white liquid hit this stuff it was as if it had vanished. The volume in my cup increased but the color and odor did not change one iota. Milk, I reasoned. Then a second realisation hit me, Man this must be strong coffee the color is the same. I added more milk with no effect. I poured until my cup brimmed and I dared not stir as it would have sloshed. I ended up with a liquid the color of a Panther tank model I once painted. Flat battle grey I think the label on the paint bottle had read. As I was horribly jet-lagged and sleep deprived I raised the cup to my lips and took a strong pull at the now lukewarm mess. It was appalling. I have drunk some bad cups of coffee in my time, in college dorm rooms, cooked over an open fire, reheated day old Joe in a microwave at three in the morning, but this one beat all.

A couple at the next table to us were also on the same tour. He raised his mug in a morning salute and said cheerily, "Good stuff, just like Starbucks, eh?" He emphasized the "eh" as a reference to the fact that we were Canadian, they were from Oklahoma. I suppressed a grimace and waved, too appalled to speak. I am a Double Double man myself. A medium double double to be exact. You cannot be human nowadays without having a coffee Identity. I suppose to be honest I am now a double double sweetener as a concession to my diabetes. In actual fact, (no body's listening right? I mean, you can keep a secret?) I don't really like coffee. I drink a cup or so a day, more as required, but mostly for medicinal purposes. In other words I drink it to get awake or to stay awake. I add milk and sweetener so I can get the stuff down. To me it is the Buckley's Cough Syrup of the beverage world, It tastes awful but it works. That's why I like Tim Horton's, you can doctor it up and make it passable with caution. I believe that most Canadians, if the truth were told, love the smell of coffee but the taste is somewhat less appealing. Starbucks people are different. They love the taste so much they want you to slap them with it. No, harder, like you mean it! They are masochistic sorts. Tim's people like to be awoken with a gentle word or a nudge in a mug. Starbucks people want to be grabbed by the ankles and inverted, and shaken awake by a seven foot drill instructor of a coffee. No subtle nuances here, just pure, raw savage power. Well folks if this is you, you'll love England, Strong coffee without a trace of cream. No wonder the English drink so much tea. They do Tea very well, hot fresh and sweet. Sublime. By the end of our tour, when the waitress arrived with the two gleaming carafes, I said, "Tea, Please!" When in Rome... Hey, did you see that tree, let's see if I can get my arms around it...

That's Not The Way It Feels

This September 20th will mark the thirty fifth year since Pop Singer/Songwriter Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash. In the summer of 1973 I was fourteen years old and had just bought my first record album, ever. "Life and Times" By you guessed it Jim Croce. I sat in my old room in the second story of my parents house in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and played that album until I wore it out (It wouldn't be my last copy, I have owned it in Vinyl, 8 Track, Cassette CD and MP3). Little did I know as I listened and sang along that his life would be brought to such a sudden and tragic end just a few months later.

Croce was born in the south side of Philadelphia, in a rough part of town. His love of music started early and he joined numerous musical groups. He attended Villanova University where he met his wife Ingrid at a Hootenanny. He was a member of the Villanova singers and formed a number of bands. Jim played in coffee houses and at neighboring Universities. After graduating in 1965 he and his wife toured and performed mostly folk music doing covers of Ian & Sylvia Tyson tunes, he also emulated Gordon Lightfoot and Woody Guthry. He would continue to do thoughtful covers and interpretations of the works of other artists such as Sam Cook when he made it big. It wasn't an easy life and after having moved to New York, and lost everything he owned except one guitar he left the business and went to work driving truck. He would later chalk this up to "Character Development" but it must have hurt, a lot. But like most things that do not kill us, it made him stronger.

While they were struggling he and Ingrid wrote many fine tunes, such as "Spin, Spin, Spin" and "Age". These folksy tunes stand up well and are worth a listen. While playing some very tough bars Jim developed a style of talking between songs that endeared him to his audience and doubtless saved him from a lot of abuse and perhaps a few stitches from flying beer bottles. His style was funny, if a bit bawdy, pithy and studded with the experiences of someone who had worked for a living,The kind of humor that he used so well in his "Character Songs" about people like Leroy Brown and a roller derby queen who "Was built like a fridgerator, with a head.".

Life is often a series of fortunate accidents and in 1970 Jim met Maury Muehleisen through a mutual friend. Maury was a classically trained guitarist and initially it was Jim who backed up Maury. It was a match made in heaven, they complimented each other beautifully. Eventually Jim would take the lead but always, Maury was there with his crystal clear tones and haunting chord structures. Jim's diamond would not have shone so bright, nor had so many facets without Maury, his brilliance and Jim's were symbiotic.

When fame came it was meteoric. Croce was your typical overnight success that was ten years in the making. In 1972 he released "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Life & Times". "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" went to #1 on the Charts in the summer of 1973. Jim was at the very zenith of his career. He was having success with "Operator that's not The way it Feels" and only one day before the release of his third album under the ABC label "I Got A Name"it literally all came crashing down, when the small plane he was riding crashed on takeoff, killing all aboard. Jim was just 30 years old. Like so many music stars he had been taken In the prime of life in a plane crash, the bitter news was heightened by the death of Maury Muelheisen who was only 24. In that summer of hope in 1973 when I was so young and the world seemed so endless and vast, I learned something of what it was to feel loss and sorrow. Jim will be forever young as he joins those whom time has frozen, like fruit picked at the peak of the harvest. To paraphrase what I once heard about Stan Rogers, what Jim did with the first thirty years of his life leaves you to wonder what he would have done with another thirty years.

I recently downloaded a video of Jim singing "Operator" with, of course, Maury at his side, not in the back but sitting side by side, playing so beautifully. The video was sublime. It also opened an old wound that I did not think would be so close to the surface some 35 years later. Jim has been gone longer than he was on this earth. His music holds up so well, though. Especially for me anyways, his ballads and love songs. Give them a listen and I know you will agree. After his death I was left with only his older music, and some very bad recordings of his coffee house and barroom days. The talent was still there, a diamond in the rough. As I listened to Operator" it occurred to me how appropriate were his own words to the reaction of his millions of fans on the September morn....

I've overcome the blow-
I've learned to take it well-
I only wish my words could just convince myself-
That it just wasn't real.... But that's not the way it feels...


No,NO,No,NO.... That's not the way it feels...

The Turnbulls in the British Isles

Day one; Lina and I worked up until time to go. I was greatly relieved that the weather held and we were able to board the single engine Caravan for the 18 minute flight to Norman Wells. We flew over the murky MacKenzie its waters the color of coffee whitened with skim milk, a sort of grey brown compared to the green blue waters of the Bear river as the two merge at the base of Bear Rock.
In Norman Wells we were met at the airport By Dee Opperman, Store Manager . She took us on a tour of The area around D.O.T.(Department of Transportation) lake where the float planes that take hunters into the wilderness fly from. We then had lunch at the hotel and killed a few rainy hours by visiting the staff of the Northern Store. We got on the much larger Canadian North jet and flew to Yellowknife. YK was not as rainy and within the hour we were enjoying the hospitality of the flight staff and enjoyed a hot meal, a rarity on a plane in Canada in 2008. Soon the fields of Northern Alberta stretched out below us as we approached Edmonton International. The patchwork fields were a quilt of yellow, greenand brown. The plane hit the ground hard and soon we were waiting for luggage and boarding the shuttle for the 45 minute drive to our hotel at the West Edmonton Mall. The room is huge and I marvel at the endless blanket of lights that stretch to the vast horizon. There are more people within

a few blocks of here than are in the NWT the Yukon and Nunavut, combined! We are exhausted after a long day and soon we will sleep. Tomorrow we have errands to do, so goodnight all...

The Quilt

In 1999 it became necessary to have my Father institutionalized. It was a very trying time for my Mother as it was for the whole family. The decision to do so was inevitable, the question of where Dad would end up was the real issue. In the end we were very fortunate to place Dad in the VMB Halifax's Camp Hill Veterans Memorial building. It had all the facilities and wonderful programs to keep the veterans busy. Still it was an institution; they can be very cold places. The staff is what saved us, they breathed life and warmth into the cold sterile walls. Within weeks of his arriving they asked us to put together a memory book for my Dad. It didn't have to be anything fancy, just a collection of family pictures and mementos of the life that each veteran head lived prior to coming here. It served a couple of purposes, it was a way to keep the men and women in touch with home and their former world. Many suffered from Dementia or Alzheimer's and the book could be therapeutic. It also served another purpose, it humanized or perhaps more correctly re humanized the patients. In such an institution it would be easy for staff to see the patients as faceless, their personality and voices largely wiped clean by the scourges of time and disease.They had become symptoms. The books breathed life back into these men and women who had served our country so well under the most horrible circumstances. I guess in a Veterans building you would expect this, but it also showed that they had lives after the service, they worked, they raised families and they contributed to their church and communities. Over the years we have all seen horrible videos and heard horror stories of nursing home staff who have abused patients. The VMB was taking measures to see that this did not happen.


My brother undertook the project with his usual zeal. He used his computer skills and his skills as a writer of training manuals to put together an impressive volume, outlining the life of my father before he found himself in Camp Hill. It was shown to staff and visitors. It was very popular and definitely helped humanize my Dad to those who had only known the shell of a man left by the progress of his condition. As well as the book, there were shadow boxes outside of each door that allowed the vets to put some personal items in that would make a statement about what kind of person lived there. These were sensible remedies for the almost inevitable dehumanization of these types of institutions. There was one other very visible project that was undertaken by the staff and the vets shortly after my father arrived. It was a quilt, seven columns of five squares. Thirty five Vets, each square contained the name of one Vet and a few stitched on pieces of cloth to represent something about the man. There were musical instruments, fishing rods, pets, flowers, sports equipment, favorite books and much more. Each square summed up something about the individual, something of his character. These icons gave you a feel for the person, often an opening gambit for a conversation. I have had conversations about fishing, hunting, sports and other hobbies I have shared with one of the men on the quilt.

Over time some of the men on the quilt passed away. "None of them will ever leave here." My Mother remarked sadly one day as we read of yet another Veteran who had left us. As the years went by the number of men on the quilt who were still alive began to dwindle. I began to look on the quilt with a different eye. It began to become like a death knell. I started to have reservations about the quilt, looking at it as a list of the fallen. A thing of sadness. I live in the NWT and so my visits were restricted to my annual holidays. Each year the quilters thinned until finally I looked at my Mother and remarked "He's the only one left." It was so for nearly two years. Dad had been in the VMB for eight years when he too passed away.

True to form the wonderful staff of Six West turned out in force at my Father's funeral. Over ten of them were there, nearly all of the regular staff. "Who's holding down the Fort?" I asked one of the nurses. She informed me that they had all made special arrangements for other staff from different floors to cover their shifts. Our family was greatly touched. "You must come see us when you come home on holidays." she insisted. I promised that I would. When summer came my wife and I made our way up to the sixth floor. It was hard to walk past Dad's room. It had been his home for so long. To see someone else's picture in the Shadow box and to see different decorations on the wall brought a lump to my throat. Lina and I approached the nursing station and were greeted by hugs and handshakes. We had sent a fruit basket the day before as a small token of our gratitude for the love that these people had shared with the Vets. After a few minutes we wandered into the lounge where the quilt still hung on the wall. I was a bit taken aback. I don't know why but I had assumed that since mt Dad was the last one to go that they would take it down. My eyes scanned the squares, line by line. As I read each name, I pictured each of them. I remembered something special about them all. A tear crept down my cheek and I wiped away, but not before my Wife had noticed and tenderly squeezed my hand. I hadn't been prepared for this. "I never thought it would still be here." I said in a thick and unsteady voice. "They are all gone now. I thought they might take it down." "I hope they never do." She said. "It's like they are still here." I hadn't thought of it quite that way. To me it had been a reminder of death. It had been made by caring hands to capture something of the humanity of those who time and ill health had robbed of their individuality. It had been meant to give voice to the silent. To allow someone who knew nothing of each of the thirty five rugged individualists to have a key to unlock the silence between strangers and give them the material to build bonds. It was still serving a purpose. It wasn't a reminder of death, it was a reminder of life. It was a way of saying "We were here, don't forget us." I too hope they never take it down. I hope that it continues to memorialize those thirty five special men.

Nostalgia, it aint what it used to be...

Today is Hockey Day in Canada. Much is made of how central hockey is to the Canadian soul. It IS absolutely central to our understanding of what it means to be Canadian. Who of us does not remember where he or she was when Paul Henderson scored that mythic goal that won the summit series? Who over forty anyways? For our parents generation it was the Richard riot. Canadians are hockey mad! That Americans are not is blatantly obvious. They call it "Ice Hockey"! Hockey does not need a qualifier. Do they play 'Grass Baseball"? Of course not. Field hockey, underwater hockey, air hockey, street hockey, and roller hockey all require their qualifiers, but not good old hockey.
When we were kids we knew the names and numbers of every player on our favorite team. For me it was the Montreal Canadiens. The Habs.To me the world was unfolding as it should when, the Habs were the Stanley Cup Champs, Ali was the heavyweight champ and Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister. When these factors were in alignment then the forces of good were winning. Well the Habs haven't won since '93, Pierre is gone and Ali, alas has been silenced by Parkinson's. Today players in the NHL are like chips on a poker table. They are traded and spent like plastic counters. They seldom stay with one team long enough for the fans to build allegiances. Players make staggering sums of money that distance them from the fans. Performance enhancing drugs call into question the prowess of athletes. The longer seasons make the new records they create a devalued commodity. One wonders if they should have asterisks after them.
Some days I wish that Guy Lafleur (#10) and Yvan Cornoyea (#12) were streaking down the ice, backed up by big Ken Dryden (#29). The good old days... Nostalgia nowadays sucks, when I was young we had real nostalgia...

Why would anyone live here?

It was time for winter road. Rather more than time actually., the road was late this year. For the uninitiated, winter roads are not actually roads at all, they interconnected series of flat wooded areas, frozen lakes, rivers and swamps. They don't look like much in the summer and only a bit more in the winter. But they are the arteries of the north; through them flows the lifeblood of a hundred Northern communities. Everything comes in on them, quite literally from soup to nuts. If the roads are the veins then the truckers are the heart, pumping the lifeblood down a hundred snaking, winding trails that are little more than a pair of snowbanks twenty five feet apart.


The small Hamlet of Tulita on the banks of the MacKenzie River 624 Kilometers Northwest Of Yellowknife was waiting for the winter road. The store I run was out of some of the heavier items, items too heavy to fly in on the vintage WW II DC3s that keep the community supplied with perishables the rest of the year. As the store manager I was watching the road wondering where the truck was.Supposedly it had left Edmonton on Friday. Day After day, nothing. It takes a while to get here from Edmonton at the best of times. The first trip of the year on a new road, in the middle of one of the coldest weeks of the year was not the best of times. I stood on the steps of the store staring at the horizon as if I could see something. when my Grocery Manager Danny asked "Who is driving?" "I don't know." I answered. I would've felt better had I known it was one of our veteran drivers. "I'm calling Edmonton!" I talked to Jim Cameron at the trucking company. Jim worked for us, organizing freight and keeping us informed. I've known Jim for more than twenty years. "I don't know who's driving , but I wouldn't worry yet." he said reassuringly.

We went back to work but the truck was never far from our mind. By dusk on Monday I was starting to get concerned. i called Edmonton again, they had little more to offer other than that there were two trucks. There is safety in numbers so that was some relief.The bad news was that they were both new drivers and there had been some trouble, details were lacking. I took some solace in the fact that some other trucks were rolling by, there is an unwritten rule of the road up here, no one and I mean No One passes a stranded driver. This is not out of courtesy, this is a matter of life and death. Monday night came and went . Tuesday dawned even colder the mercury had dropped below minus fifty. I canvassed any drivers I saw, filling their insulated mugs with steaming coffee in the store. Word was that there were two rookie drivers who were limping along nursing problems with both rigs. They were sticking together and that is what the buddy system was for. Tuesday came and went. Wednesday was nearly as cold as the day before. I was sitting in my living room, it was about the hour that you take your first yawn and look at the clock. Then I heard the familiar rattle of a diesel engine. I looked out in the yard to see a rig with a trailer. I called Danny and told him I would meet him at the store. A shiver went down my spine as I pulled on my big winter boots, I dreaded leaving my nice warm living room, for what would surely be hours of cold, back breaking work. A tall lean figure was swinging down from the steps of the Volvo tractor as I walked toward the cab. "Who would live in a place like this?" he said in a thick English accent. "Midlands?" i said trying to peg down the accent " East Anglia actually." He said extending a badly blistered hand. I shook it carefully, turning the wound over and saying "Frostbite?" more a statement than a question. I've lived up north long enough to recognise it. "Tire chains." he said sardonically. It was late and we all wanted to be done so we showed him where to back up and began unloading the truck. We finished up just short of midnight. We retired to the staff room and I asked Kevin (the driver) if he wanted a cup of coffee. "I I would love a cup!" he replied eagerly, " I haven't eaten a since Sunday." My jaw must have hit the floor. "Why didn't you say something?" My Nova Scotia upbringing meant that feeding guests was in my blood. We put together a care package to get him through the night. "Meet me back here in the morning for a hot breakfast."
The next morning we enjoyed a full breakfast, with the rest of my staff, it's not everyday the boss cooks breakfast. I offered Kevin the use of a shower. Afterwards he told me the sad story of their journey, which was a nightmare from the get go. The other driver, Kevin's assigned buddy, was late. Kevin waited for him as long as he could but eventually he set out, waiting a while at every stop for the other driver to catch up. By the time the other driver caught up they were in Ft Simpson just a short distance from where the highway becomes a winter road. The other driver wanted to make up time so he wanted to push on through without going in to town for food. He insisted it was only a ten hour drive to Tulita and they would get something to eat there. Those ten hours turned in to four very long days. The hills between Simpson and Tulita tore the air bags on the rigs, leaving the trucks suspension flat and the trucks hard to handle. The snow proved too much for the treads on the trucks tires and putting on chains in minus fifty taught them the hard lesson of not taking your gloves off at those temperature, Their fingers were frozen and frostbitten in less than one minute. You can lose fingers that way. Very soon they were worn, tires, wounded and very hungry. "The road ate me up!" Kevin said in frustration. "I've driven all over Europe from North Africa to Poland, but nothing prepared me for this!" The deep dark circles under his bloodshot eyes confirmed this. " I don't know how I am going to get my rig fixed! I still have to go back over that road."
I set him up with a local owned company that owned heavy equipment and our grizzled mechanic. who could have retired years ago, stared quizzically at thee stranger with the odd accent and his "City Rig!" . "You can't drive that thing up here!" he spoke from decades of experience and I didn't doubt him for a second. I left Kevin in his very capable hands, they made an odd pair, grizzled veteran and stunned novice, still shy from having been dealt so harsh a backhand by raw cold mother nature. Life is like that up here we live on the edge, only a slip away from freezing to death on the side of a road, five hundred kilometers from the next human being. Kevin had lost the first round to the road but he was determined if a bit gun shy. I left them to it and returned to my work. We kept Kevin fed during the week. He soon learned that things move at a slower pace up here. I watched the stunned look turn from awe and shock to respect. You learn quickly up here to treat Old Mother Nature with respect, she Can turn on you and kill you in a heartbeat. The line between life and death is a fine one up here, we soon learn that you can't always make it alone. We look out for one another, it's the code of the north. It is a lesson that has been taught to outsiders since Henry Hudson, I had to learn it too, it was now Kevin's turn. It took a week before his rig, and more importantly his nerves were ready to face the road again. His hands were already healing. He came to say good bye before he left. He leaned out the window of his rig almost oblivious now to the biting cold. "I've done nothing this past week but say thank you to a whole lot of people who were complete strangers when I got here. I don't think I would have made it without all of you!" he said his voice thick with feeling. "I think I answered me own question." He said in that now familiar accent. "What question's that?" I asked. "I think I know now why people would live in a place like this. It's exactly because of the people who live here!" I agree, enough said!

In the dash...

I am a boomer I guess, although maybe an echo of the boom. I was born in 1959 after most of the boomers were already born. Still my folks were part of what Tom Brocaw labeled "The Greatest Generation" they survived the depression and the war. Over the years fate had been pretty kind to me. I hadn't lost any of the people who were closest to me. My Grandparents were gone but the closest people to me were still intact. We all have a sense that we are invincible and this served to reinforce that. Then in the fall of 2005 I had a heart attack. Living in an isolated northern community there would be a four hour wait for a medevac plane to take me to hospital in Yellowknife. Suddenly I did not feel so invincible. The bubble had burst and having reached middle age I began to loose some of the people I cherished most. Family and friends.

A few years ago one of my closest childhood friends, Mike got a call from his Father. His Dad had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He rushed over to the house and found his father seated in front of the bay window which faced the lake. He sat beside him in the chair his Mother would normally sit in. For a time nothing was said, the two men sat side by side in silence. Then his Father turned to him in a calm level voice that was typical of him he said "This is not the worst thing that could happen to me.". Mystified Mike said "What do you mean, you've just been told that you are going to die.". "No, his Dad replied "the worst thing that could happen to me was if you were dying!". Sons bury Fathers, it is not easy but it is the natural order of life. In a further twist Mike lost his Mother to cancer just six weeks before his Father. They were both just seventy.

Shortly after this I lost a man I always thought of as my second Father. Clarence was married to my Mother's cousin. I used to spend summers with them working the family's dairy farm. Clarence was a good christian who loved God and loved life. His smile lit up a room, he was full of life and full of fun. He had a mischievous sense of humor and loved a bit of harmless fun, often teasing me when I was younger. He and his wife Gertrude attended my college graduation. In later years Clarence had contracted cancer. It was his heart that took him, in the end. His son and I discussed his death and he said "It's how Dad would have wanted to go, he wouldn't have wanted the cancer to come back." It was a peaceful end and for that I was grateful. There was a sense again that the natural order of life was intact.

A while later A good friend of mine got up early one morning as was his custom. His wife was tired and she turned over and went back to sleep. After a busy morning he returned home and asked the kids where their mother was. "Still sleeping." They said. He checked on her and found her dead of an aneurysm. She was 39. The couple had been role models for the entire community. They took leadership roles in the church, organized family events, Mother's Day brunches, sliding parties for the kids. Her husband was active in the volunteer Fire Department. No one could believe that such an active and productive life had ended so early. Least of all another lady who was a mutual friend and the wife's best friend. She took the news very hard. She suffered a life crisis, she lost her faith and soon separated from her husband. "If there was a Gad he would never take her of all people!" she insisted. She was inconsolable. I felt helpless in the wake of such a tragedy. How could a loving God allow such a thing? Death seemed to be stalking me. I felt surrounded by it. In no way could this be interpreted as the natural order of life, a healthy vibrant Mother snatched from her family in the prime of life. How could you reconcile that with any natural order?

Then in March of this year I lost my very best friend of all when my Father passed away at the age of 87. I miss him terribly. In his last years he had suffered from Dementia and had deteriorated to the point where he seldom recognized me anymore. Still he knew we were there to see him and he responded to our conversation. I would catch flashes of his former self and was delighted when he would, out of the blue, call me by name. I accepted his death with the consolation that again, a son was burying a Father. That this also fit the natural order of things. I would not have forced him to stay beyond his time but I would not have wished for him to go one moment sooner either.

As if I needed it, life dealt me another reminder of my mortality when I was again medevacced and hospitalized with heart problems. I ended up in Edmonton and was given a second angioplasty. I was left with a lot more time on my hands than I normally get and was given some time to think about death and life. I have had a number of realizations perhaps even an Epiphany. I thought about one of the funerals I attended not so long ago where the Priest talked about the dash that comes between the year we are born and the year we died on a person's headstone. "It's all there..." He said "In that dash. Your whole life summed up by a dash." That's it, that's all you get. No more, no less. That dash sums up all you were, all you did. In Mitch Albom's book Tuesdays With Morrie Mitch's beloved professor is dying of ALS and he tells Mitch about the Buddhist belief that a little bird sits on our shoulder and we should ask that bird "Is today the day?" "Is today the day when I shall die?" That we should live every day as if it were our last. One thing I have learned is that life is way too short for anger, there is nothing heavier to carry than a grudge. I never hesitate to tell the people I love that I love them. What harm can it do? Who ever gets tired of hearing it? I have a friend who told me that his parents have never told him that they love him and he has never said it to them. "It's understood." he says. What nonsense. Is saying it going to confuse matters? Of course not! Say it! Say it often! Send them a card, call them. Don't spend years regretting what would only take seconds to do.

Act like there is no tomorrow because for certain one day you will be right. Think of that little bird on your shoulder. We have no control over that dash on our headstone. We can't control how long our lives can be. It is not only important to live the length of our lives but to live the width of our lives. Spread ourselves out live as widely as possible, touch as many people as you can. Be a leader, be a volunteer. Change the lives of others, touch everyone in the center of your life, friends and family, but also touch those on the edges of your life, your community, your country, your fellow man. They too are your brothers and sisters. Let them know you love them too. Raise money for charity, give of your time. Help a shut in. Shovel a neighbors walk, mow an elderly neighbor's lawn. Be as wide as you can.

I have not lost my faith, no tragedy will shake it. My friend Marilyn may have died at 39 but she lived not just the entire length of her life but the width of it as well. She did more in her 39 years than many people do in 80 years. My Bible tells me that God is love. I know that love exists, I saw it in everything that Marilyn, Clarence, John and Dad did. God is very much alive so long as there are people willing to love others and not be afraid to let it show. How wide are you living?