We Should Be At the Lake

We should be at the lake this morning, just getting up, brewing some coffee, taking Viggo out to chase the chipmunks off the deck. We should be reading and listening to music on the Boombox while Scott takes pictures as the mist rolls off the hills in this little slice of heaven.

But we’re not. My husband’s health took this away from us.

He fell the other day, so that ended any dream of loading up the Forester and rollicking through the Gatineau Hills toward this place that we have called home for almost 15 years. There is no way we’re taking the chance that he might fall again before he goes back to work.

We are beyond sad. We are resigned.

Will there be another summer at Tobacco Lake, another chance to build a fire, and cocktail with the neighbors? Will Scott ever be able to swim in the lake again, that lake he spent hours exploring in a canoe in the early days?

Will Viggo ever again chase minnows, and drench me while he towels off coming out of the water? That is our hope. We have to hold onto our hope.

Right now, I am sitting in my office which is fully pulled apart because I’m rearranging our life right now. Life on one floor instead of two, life in a diminished state involving video games and Netflix instead of immersing ourselves in nature. For Scott, it’s life now navigated with one hand instead of two, with walking aids and diabetic sandals instead of flip flops, with a sense of doom instead of high spirits.

His problems this summer are with his knees, the ones Dr. A replaced. He’s still getting used to them, and hoping that Big Lou is not the culprit. That’s it with ALS, you just never know where the disease ends and your life begins to get smaller.

ALS a mind-fucker and a dream sucker.

Like Michael Myers in Hallowe’en it is always waiting around the corner.

So I sit here flipping through photographers of cottage days long past, of dogs dispatched over the Rainbow Bridge, friends made and lost, and drinks well drunk.

We may not get there this year but we can still remember the good times.

Sometimes that’s all we can hope for.

I still hold onto the promise of the future and another date with Tobacco Lake.

We will hold onto that promise with every fiber of our lives together. ALS can take away the physical but it can never break our spirit. Or take away our memories of lives well lived, and love always cherished.

I have a message for Big Lou.

ALS, get off my porch!