Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

Love has no beginnings or endings, yet there are times in life when to find peace before any extreme ordeal we discover again the roots of love. We express our thoughts about leaving and living. Mostly, though, we tell others about our love for them. It is just in case you are not around later to tell them in person. As I said to those I love, “I tumbled into love- not walked or stepped or stumbled-it was a tumble.” There is a peace that is found when “we are free to love and live.”

Letter to Anne and the family, on the eve of quintuple heart by-pass surgery, March 13-16, 1998, written from Hillcrest Baptist Medical Hospital, Room 524, waiting for the operation with tubes in my arms and hands:

11:10 p.m. March 14, 1998

In two more days, the operation on my heart will happen. I must go into the shop for some major repairs. It is either that or scrap this body but that option is not a selection to be made. To be honest an operation on my heart happened over 40 years ago. I tumbled into love-not walked or stepped or stumbled- it was a tumble. I fell for a young nurse and this love is the one constant of my living. I love Anne today more than then only because we have worked on placing muscle and structure to our love. We are free to love and live.

6:00 a.m. March 15, 1998

It is good to see the concern on the faces of your children. If I had a choice, it would not be there but at my age "it is not what will happen- it is when". Somehow I am calm. I do not believe this is the time of my death. Actually I feel lucky to find out what this pain has been. It could have gone on more years. Doctors have told me that it was chest muscle cramps from spending too much time hunched over the computer writing. I have had this condition for years. It is just recently that it has gotten more frequent. It is time to fix the mechanism- this body that I inhabit. It have always separated the body from the spirit of “self”. This is the housing for that free spirit that uses this body for a home. I have often wondered if at some distant time medical science will learn to take this “spirit of self” and occupy another housing- another body. Maybe an Oriental female body with my spirit. I have that now in one sense in the mirror of Samantha's face- not Oriental but all female. I could be my son and daughter, allowing the scientist to split my spirit in two.

Sometimes these strange thoughts take front stage. That is how I deal with pain or this kind of major operation. I separate the source of the pain and my inner "self'. It is as if I watch the scene from some great distance. I see the players on a stage and I float outside, not having any control but also not having any immediate dread.

No intelligent person wants to die. Any intelligent person knows that it is part of life. I see living in a humorous spirit. I see the situation of death as a joke that living plays upon us all. It is the joke that has life as the storyline and death as the punch line. It is the period at the end of our sentence structure. Just for the hell of it, I would like this sentence to end with a question, "What more could he have accomplished? How has the spirit of his life, his art, spread to the world?"

In terms of the deep love, there is nothing more that I could give. Our family is the circle-the most inner circle- around my spirit of life and love. My mother used to say (even if she never said it), "Keep it simple, stupid" or K.I.S.S. and that is the motto of my life, my love and my work."

I know that Samantha is disappointed with her scores on her graduate school exam but I also know that she will, in time, separate her shortfalls like this from her commanding spirit. This is not the end of anything but a bump in the road of a longer journey. We all have bumps. Life's joke is that the vehicle (this body and mind) is not perfect. When one accepts the imperfections, it is a beginning to living one's own life. It is more than just existing. It frees that inner spirit we call "self'.

I talked with a young man whose job was to extract my blood; making sure that the blood thinner was the right dose. He is a young man in an Afro-American skin and I wondered what it would be like to live in his skin. You don't know until you are there. He talked with me of wishing to reach out and stop his wife's pain. She is pregnant and having troubles.

As a poet who I admire said, "It all depends on the skin-you're-livin'-in." He ran the words together as if it were "skinyourlivinin, skin-you're-living-in, etc." and repeated it to a jazz combo behind him. I have never felt what it feels to be in someone else's skin except that I separate the skin from the spirit. I am sure that an Afro-American skin would color my spirit a little unlike the skin I was given at birth.

Hopefully, I would still separate the skin-you're-livin'-in from the spirit which grows and changes. When your children are young, you as a parent try to shape that spirit- to give it tools to combat a society that can be spiritless but it works only to a small degree.

Anne and I are lucky. We have accepted who we are in this deepest chamber of being. And what is left? Just love! It is the one force that joins spirits- love of love, love of life, love of art.

The operation will be harder for those I love than for me. They will see the pain of the outside shell of this body. I will be in a safe center inside where all that is there is observation, creative imagining and my own strange sense of humor.

     I do not believe in organized religion. I find it an oxymoron. I think that understanding the "spirit of self' and releasing it to the cosmos is too complex for the human mind and spirit to grasp. I do believe that the spirit is released at some point to become the Monet lights on a water lily landscape, the passion of violence that Goya saw in Saturn Devouring His Children, the calm on the face of the Mona Lisa, the love in Picasso's Mother With Child, and the new tranquility of Robert Wilson's Waco Door. Artists have seen glimpses of this universal spirit- so have others, but to name it, to try to explain it in organized religion is the highest of conceits. It has so many forms-repeat in so many religions that it is foolish to believe that one sect; one set of rules gets someone to freedom (another word for salvation).  The Chinese say, “There are words the word is unspoken". I do believe that the spirit is free when the separation between body/spirit is recognized. I have been free much of my bodily living. I expect to stay free.

     There is an essence to life- it is K.I.S.S. and therefore I look for the simple in all things. I see simple love as the most complex and wondrous thing that anyone can imagine. I love lines and colors. I love the simple act of jumping into the unknown and trusting the spirit to emerge. I would be surprised if it did not emerge.

9:30 a.m. March 15, 1998

From the hospital window, outside my prison-like room, the day is ghost-filled which gray shapes emerging from the mists. It has never been my practice to choose days. "Oh, I wish it were sunny" or "I wish the rain would stop." What I do as a human being and an artist is look out upon the day and find the wonder which each variation brings. Days are days. They are the ticks on a life clock which are to be devoured and relished. Days with mists are the Chinese scroll of Northern Sung in my life. They are, in the best sense, romantic.

     Even the bleak, International style of the exterior hospital walls and windows can be

reshaped by the decisions of the hand and the mind. Junctures of lines are the control centers of decisions. I can see them as society has ordained or see them as decision focal points. I choose the freedom of the latter. What is hard is that you lose others in the personal choices. Society's realism is a common language which I know and can speak through my drawing but it is not the vehicle of choice for me. There is no freedom in the seeing- but there is a common language. I do not communicate in that language.  I choose the language of the 20^th and 21^st century and find that only a few understand it (even though it has been around for over 100 years).  Nature makes my sight easy-sky mass, horizon line and ground area.  The details are complex but not the big picture of sky, line, and dark green. Man tries to enter the scene with a complex mixture to confuse the eye but always returns to the pyramid, the cube and some rounded shapes.

    The sky begins darker at the surface of the ground than in the higher view. It is a reversal of the light and dark on sunny days. I must consider this later, although I think that I know why now!

     It is time to put aside words and draw. Oh hello, nurse, my blood pressure is 123 over 64- whatever that means to the next few days before the operation. I have never had the signs for quintuple heart by-pass surgery.

4:00 a.m. March 16, 1998

The machinery woke me up with its assortment of beeps and buzzes. One bag was getting love on the "stuff' that thins my blood. No, not empty, just low so that the machine told the nurse to begin to consider replacing it. Therefore I am awake and thinking again. As the time approaches, I think of the operation and how it will change my life, how it will impact those I love so deeply. Anne and I have had so much together. Neither of us wishes any endings to happen but if not now- someday! I cannot believe how fortunate we are. In all the world we found each other. As if the gods agree, a clap of thunder sounds outside and the heavy rain begins to come down. I have always loved rain. It is the one sound that brings an inner smile to my being. And I have no idea why! It is just that I love the sound and the inner peace that it brings. Anita, my sister, knows that when I was young in Pittsburgh I would break off what I was doing and run to my room on the third floor to listen to the rain on our tin roof Even now the sound is washing of my spirit and one my back I feel the chill, the warm comforting chill that comes with the rain. If I had a choice of a real downpour and a sunlit day, I would choose the rain. It makes me feel safe and good inside the cell that I inhabit.

But getting back to fortunate, Anne and I are blessed. Yes, Anita, I use that word again but I do not attribute it to any specific manifestation of "God". It is a universal blessed which can be translated to "lucky". Yet I know, believe too, that luck comes to those prepared to receive it. We all have "luck time" in life. Some of us know that it is coming sometime and plan to use it when it happens.

Samantha is so tough and yet so tender. I know how much she loves me- nothing needs said or done. We play the game of separation. She wants to carve out her own existence and place in life. We are too much alike and that makes her nervous. She wants to do her own carving. Seeing me in a mirror, she is not sure she wants the reflection. What she is beginning to know is that she is so much more than a reflection of someone else. She is her own unique self with her own spirit to nurture. She sees the similarities but the differences are what make her so strong.

I will love her long after this shell is shed. It is a force in the world which my spirit inhabits. Love and art outlive bodily death. Anita, using her religion as a vehicle, know this with Jim, dying now of chest disease. I just destruct her vehicle, organized religion, but not her certainty. My love for Anne will live in us and our children long after the shells are shed. Spirit goes out into the world long after reflections fade.

I prepared myself for some ending long ago in Phoenix, Arizona when I created "Death Is All The Time", a book painting of 2500 drawings about death. The dark presence has never frightened me since. Of course, I am selfish and want as much time to use as I can get but the end of the body is the one sure thing about living. Just as there is no end to love and art.

                         I guess that I am writing this to leave those I love the spirit of my thought because it

                 can happen any moment, death, period, end. I want those I love to use our time together as  

                piece of the luck which we had together. I know that I am "blessed" with knowing some  

                 unique, fine spirits- our family.

The night time is punctuated by the rain- the wonderful rain. I will stop writing because my hand is tired and I wish to turn off the light and listen in the dark when my imagination can fly.

 As a child I learned:

"The rain she cometh all around.

She falls on trees and ground.

A                                                                   She falls on the flowers here (in school back then, it was "umbrellas")

 And on the ships at sea."

Aren't we all ships at sea?

7:40 a.m. March 16, 1998

                        They came in mass, starting at 6:00 a.m. Vampires taking blood, ladies taking vital signs, interns changing bags on the pole which is not part of my costume for this masquerade. Samantha was right. As it comes closer to the moment of surgery, it is harder to separate the body and the spirit. The rain helps. It wings me back to a simpler child-like time in my life. I do not believe, have never believed in a linear approach to life- beginning, middle and end, starting at one point and ending in another. If anything, it is circular- a perpetual middle which has no beginning and no end. We must figure out this middle where we exist. We must make sense of our spirit which can use all time to fly within. My right hand and arm are sore since it has been used as a dart board for the vampires. I wonder if they take my blood and sell it in the parking lot. Oh I know that it is

essential to this process of monitoring the body but it a pain in the ass for the spirit.

I want to have the surgery soon- in one way I look forward to it. The decision is easy. I have the surgery, recover, take care of this shell of a body, and extend my creative time with those I love and with my creative work or I don't and die- sooner. Dying is not an option. I want all the time that I can squeeze from existence so that I can live each moment to the full. Life is short enough. I want all that I can get. Death does not frighten me. It is what all of us must accept but our time of living is the deciding factor. Have you (meaning all of us) uses the time to the full? So far I can say, "Yes!" In fact, right now, my art work is the best that it has been. I am so sure that it will come out even thought I have no idea what it will look like. It is like living life. Most of the process is courage or stupidity to just "do it".

I know that Samantha was upset about her score on the GRE test but it took me years to figure that tests are made to tell us what we can't do. At my best, I work from my strength, my can do, and hire others to supply the knowledge for my weaknesses. Sam has so many strengths that she will succeed- and she can hire her husband, Jay, to do the math.

     As we move into the 21st century, no one needs to be all things. Even as an artist, I no

longer must have all the skills to make a work of art. In the 15th and 16th century Renaissance, unskilled workers were the majority- even in the 19th century unskilled outweighed skilled, but that is not true now. You can find, you can hire the skills that you need. Robert Wilson is the best example. He has the idea and then has a skilled artisan on the West Coast make his creation, New York markets it, and a legend of assistants are his arms, ears, hands and voice. The world has changed since my father's time. It has changed since I was born in 1932. The difference for me is that I always live in the present, not the past- and when I can envision it, the future.    

     This operation is the present. My future is filled with better habits of eating and exercise. I cannot live in the mind of young moments. This vehicle I inhabit has seen wear, like a used car which needs overhauling. That I accept but the spirit is ever fresh, ever young, ever learning and growing. Only love is constant but even that grows and deepens. Art too grows and deepens. Now I must fuel the vehicle. My breakfast is here.

8:45 a.m. March 16, 1998

Everyone wants to turn on the lights. I like the natural light filtering through the window. Frustration is here. I cannot remember how to fold cranes. I have books on all kinds of animals to fold but no cranes and cranes are all that I wish to fold. The Japanese believe that if you fold a thousand cranes you will live a thousand years. Who am I to argue with Japanese tradition but I cannot remember the final folds. I taught Origami, a skill I had to learn so that I could make money one summer in Massachusetts. Now the skill is gone. I have not folded cranes for ten years. You lose skills like that if you do not practice them. It will not ruin my day. I will wait until Sarah comes and ask her. I taught her and her son how to fold cranes. Now I am asking them to refresh my skills. There is a lesson there. OK, Samantha, I can learn things from you which I might have started but now forget. We all learn from our children if we are open to learn!

I really dislike hospital rooms. After this stay is over, I am going to make a written proposal to the hospital administration on how to add a simple element which might give this cell some variety, some element of wonder, some spirit. How about a stuffed moose head? It sure would give this sterile room some character. Maybe just one diagonal painted line on one wall or a bronze frog behind the "pottie"- something to break the monotony of this cell, this square box which is a functional sick machine for getting well.

The not-my-son Chris came to visit- the Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center pastor. He asked if I wanted to talk. Since he had already interrupted my writing, I consented. He asked if I believed in the soul. I told him that I called it "Spirit" and saw it everywhere, even in the writings of all religions. "Do you believe in Jesus as the son of God?” he asked. "One of them," I answered, "with Buddha, Mohammed, Ni-Tsan, Allah and a multitude of others." "You do not believe he is your only Savior?" "No, but he is a man I can learn a great deal from!" "Do you believe in heaven?" he asked. "You mean Pilgrim's Progress with streets paved with gold and winged beings called "angels"?", I answered. "No, I don't. I believe we make heaven here for ourselves. It is not a treat that is dangled for the good life. It is not a place but a style of living. You live the good life because it is right, not because some "Big Someone in the Sky", some "Big          Daddy Upstairs" is playing dice with my life. If I believed that, it would be easier to believe in the Greek's three sisters who weave the fabric of our lives and decide by chance to cut our thread."

     He asked, "Do you believe in organized religion?" I said, "Yes, and it is the worse part of religion! I see people who think that living the good life is a Sunday event. I try to do it all the time because of a sugar plum as a reward. Sure, I have cheated but I try." "Are you a Christian?" By that question, I figured he meant a Baptist but I took it at face value. "No, but I find great lessons to learn in Christianity but I also learn from many other sources, many other religions!"

     As he left, he asked, "Do you pray?"

    "Sometimes," was my answer, "particularly in the hospital. I cover my bets!"

   "Do you wish to pray with me?"

   "No, I will do it in my own way, my own fashion; my own time."

    As he closed the door to the room, he smiled and said, "You are an interesting man. I will come and visit you again if I may."

                       Please do," I smiled back, "the door is always open." And I thought again of the

                  writings of the ancient Chinese: "There are roads but the road is unknown." (translation:

                  untaken)

      How do we know what is right, what is the right decision, path? We make an educated guess from our small storehouse of data. Is "Chris" the Baptist minister's storehouse more filled than mine, than yours, than George Bernard Shaw, than Shakespeare, then anyone anyone's who I  wishes to choose.

     "Chris" said, "Some say that the only freedom is death." I said, "They are fools. Death is

the end of decision-making. It is the most primitive of belief." And I added, "But so are all

theories of existence which turn into real struggles with living." Later, all alone, I thought that if religion is primitive, then I should look into it more closely since I believe in K.I.S.S., the simple in life. No, I tried that before.

      The hospital brings out the child in me-that inner circle of playful wonder. I don't know if "Chris"-the-Baptist-pastor wanted my truth but I was prepared to give it. And my truth is relative only to me. I will not push it upon anyone else. They- you- must find their- your own.

       And also, I believe, my truth can be a useful lie, used for the moment and then discarded as more information is known. But don't come into my world, room 524, and expect me to accept your truth, "Chris". No one has the answer to living an individual life, and don't try to push your truth upon me when you think that I am vulnerable. My spirit never is. Baby, I got love. What can you offer? You, the hospital pastor, so-called universal love? Isn't all love universal? Isn't that the definition of love? No religion has a corner on truth or love. We need to shop around and not accept the messages of con artists and hustlers! That said, I need to remember to learn from all sources that can teach me anything.

      So ended my morning, with a nurse peeking her head around the door frame, asking me:

"Do you have your shower chair?" I did not even know that it was lost!

11:25 a.m. March 16, 1998

      OK, I have now freaked out the families waiting for other patients in the waiting room. I come out with the core of nurses, my pole holding all my vital fluids, my drawing book, pens, a chair with wheels on it, and my special heart pillow which I will use after the operation. I have devoured all the other window views for sketching and the nurses put up with me to sit in the waiting room for families with my "stuff'. I have been down to the nurse's station several times this morning. I drew all the nurses in their calm, hurried existence. It does not hurt to have them on your side as human beings as I go into this unknown land of the operation. I visited with Jeff, my surgeon. He told me with that twinkle in his voice that we should plan on getting together             sometime, say tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. But not for breakfast. He wants to practice on me. He wants to do an operation. My god, I never thought that they were keeping me here for an operation but I should send work to the poor surgeons. We all need to practice our craft. If I must, I must. I will send him and Dr. Garrido a finished drawing for their office as a present after this is over. You never know when they will be needed again. You never know when you will need specialist who knows you as a person, an individual, a fellow human being, something other than a piece of meat. It is only the Christian thing to do. "Chris" the door to door pastor would be proud of me.

      Mary called. She is doing well working at a museum in Fort Worth and she still remembers our time together and she cares. We all can be a pain in the butt but if you care the rest is tolerable. I am not saying that about Mary- probably about myself. Russell called. John called. He told me about his son's wedding. Susan called and will be bringing bread to us after I get home. Maybe my drawing and wandering around the hospital is a way to get away from the telephone. I like all these people calling now. It shows that people care but Anne and I do not need others now. Just a closed circle of family. We will need them more when the recovery period starts. I have a lot of living to complete. Right now, I need to circle the wagons.

I gave the little girl in the tux and black tie, who brought my lunch, an origami fish. Her mother is really sick. She needs the fish more than I do. A crane is different. I need all the folded cranes that I can hold. I love origami cranes.

      I read again the pamphlet on having sex after surgery. It is like these rooms, very clinical, not sexy at all. Why not just give me a Japanese pillow book of sexual positions? I can take it from there by feel.

      I got my order of priorities in my mind now: heal this shell, give to those I love (a very closed circle of Anne, Samantha and Christopher), begin to reach out that circle as the recovery progresses, begin to mentally exercise and lose weight (long before the actual exercise starts) (this routine of exercise is something that must be done for the rest of my life), and then think about all the others (the community of neighbors).

     I have not allowed the nurses to turn on the lights since 7:00 a.m. I love the natural light coming from the outside, bouncing off the functional, low-bid architecture, the green of Waco. This staying with the natural light for as long as I can is again a symbol of freedom for me. Even the vampires cannot contain my spirit.

     Speaking of a nice vampire, Dr. Garrido came in and we talked briefly about how I felt. I guess that is one way a cardiologist finds some of his information. When I jumped out of bed, hopped on one foot in my tangle of wires and tubes, he said: "That tells me all I need to know about you feel now." We talked at length about being a minority doctor in Waco's elite circle. He talked about coming from Houston (both he and Jeff came from Houston- maybe that means something to me but I do not know what). He has come here to the "old boy" network of elite families. "Old boy" is my term, not his. He is too polite to make that jump of mind aloud. But he did say that it would change. He was surprised that I had defended Robert Mapplethorpe in my article in the Waco Tribune-Herald as one of the Board of Contributors.  He had been in Cincinnati when the national uproar happened there and Jesse Helms got up on the US Senate floor, condemning Mapplethorpe and his supporters to a North Carolina fundamentalist hell. He asked how I stayed on one end of a one-sided attitude in Waco (the wrong side but he did not say that). I told him that anywhere there are allies if you are honest with your beliefs and do not attack people, just ideas. He asked me if I give my daughter "pearls to live by". I said, "Yes, but one of them is if the advise does not fit, don't use it!" I told him Samantha was already sorting out what she wanted to keep what was throwaway. It is a constant cleaning of the house of "self'. It just takes time to sort out all the things we pick up. He has a daughter- poor man. No, lucky man.

     Flowers came when the phone stopped ringing; a plant here, a bouquet there. My illness has put the fear of Joe into the Board of Trustees. How will we make budget without the grants that I get each year? Cynical me. I do know that many of them do care. I place the plants and flowers around the television set. It is the one shrine that the hospital gives us, a sick thing in a sick room.

Chicken again for lunch. I am beginning to scratch the ground in this sterile hen house each time I get up for one of my drawing journeys. Maybe all this chicken will improve my crowing voice? The food fits the room- no flavor.

     It is quiet for the last eight minutes. I may go out and resume drawing some more images of this place, just to center myself. With all the phone calls reaching in, I have had to reach out too much. I want my strength centered on surviving tomorrow. Life first, sociality later, politics last. As I consider those I love, my priorities are: me (get the machine I live in fixed), a narrow circle of love, and then the world. This hand has so many holes in it that it like a tire that is going flat. In the middle of a sentence, a line with ch'i in it, my hand might quit. I will rest for a time.

     Also, feed the machine, I will enjoy my chocolate ice cream.

     Bill and. Doreen came to visit. Bill was in a dark suit and tie. I asked if he had just come from a funeral. He had. We laughed about hospitals and Bill told me his stories about being down the hall in 518. We visited the nurse's station together. At first, they did not recognize him with his clothes on. He offered to undress but they said now it was not necessary. I walked him to the elevator. I was beginning to treat this place as my private condominium. Tomorrow reality sets in but until them I plan to live it up, with appropriate rest of course. I remember my friend in Guam who saw an elevator for the first time when we rode from the first floor to the third of a hotel. He asked with wonder on his face, "Where did it go (meaning the first floor)?" I want to put myself in that kind of position of wonder for this operation. What can I learn here for the first time?

It is interesting that each person on my staff is taking a piece of what I normally do and getting it done. My heart illness may help to solve some internal problems that wellness never could. Still, if it were a choice....

I already have a reputation on the floor as a rebel with a life cause. I cannot change my lifetime of stripes. I called Christopher and told him I would be all right and not to worry. I could tell by his tone and his repeating each thing I said over and over again that he is worried and will be until I get home again. It is so hard for him being mentally retarded to grasp even the simple things of life but it is not hard for him to feel for me through the pain.

3:00 p.m.

Bill in the dark suit talked of dying when he was here earlier. He said that he is close. Aren't we all from the day of birth? But even knowing that, I do not feel that way. It is possible therefore I told him that I wanted to exit this Elizabethan stage someday (not now!) with people saying, "His cup is always full. The beauty he loved is what he did."

6:15p.m.

     Charles the photographer came by and showed me his scars. I wanted to see what I would look like after the operation. Sarah called and will be here tomorrow. She is so close to me after working together for over ten years. Jeff, my surgeon, came by. Charles, he and I talked about the operation. Charles had feed him as a baby.

      My bags of fluid fell off the pole and a host of nurses rushed in to put them back in place.  Some clamp had given away in its appointed job in life, just like the rest of us at times. The nurses were careful to get it back on just right, getting all the bubbles out of the line. Someone wished me luck when I came into the hospital. I said, "Luck hell, I want expertise." These nurses know what they are doing. So does Jeff.

      So let me bring all this to a conclusion. I have written this two major reasons: 1) to occupy my mind and spirit so that I could sort out my thoughts and my feelings as I walk into something, somewhere I have never been (it is the centering of my forces against the darkness) and 2) I wanted to help fill your time, waiting out a long operation. Four and a half hours of waiting is a long time when life is in the balance. So here is some reading material so that you, who are waiting on one end of an unknown connection, know what I think and feel going into this operation.

      This part now needs not be said. We all know it but nothing is sure, even for a procedure that 400,000 Americans went through last you with little or no after-effects.

        Anne, I love you and you will be with me as I walk this unknown path.

        Samantha, I love you and you will be with me as I walk this unknown path.  

        Christopher, I love you and you will be with me as I walk this unknown path.

     I will take the circle of our feelings as a shield into this battle. I do not dread this operation. I am as calm as I can be, not knowing how it will end. All I know is that I have a great attitude for this operation and I love life too much to give it up without a tremendous struggle. Also I have your love and strength to go with me. I expect to be healed and well in a few months. I expect to have you three with me in time of recovery. I love you all. See you when I come out the other end of this adventure. My spirit will always love you!