Here are a few of the lessons we have learned to try to live by during our "long haul" phase. The most important belief to cherish is that there will always be people to walk along with you, even if they are on a parallel track to the one you must walk alone.  Look up and feel their presence.

* Be open to the potential for good and happiness and laughter in each day. Good that may come your way through the others, the good embrace of nature, the good that you can do for self and others.

* Articulate what the phrase "Quality of Life" means to you now. Be very specific about what matters most. Articulate the circumstances under which you would no longer want to live. Make both aspects known to those who love and treat you. It will help all of you with difficult choices and decisions.

* Make the time to grieve, cry, scream, fall down, feel miserable whenever you need to. We can't live fully without tending to the very real mourning and rage. We have learned that grieving deserves time and energy, and then opens us to a new day. There's so much to mourn in order to appreciate who we are and the life we're living. Grieve in your heart, alone, together. Make noise wailing, keening, drumming, laughing.

* Expect things to change for better and for worse. Plan for what scares you the most. Rejoice when something turns out better than expected.

* If you can help it at all, do not let yourself become immobilized by depression, anxiety, or pain if it can be treated in any way. You owe it to your spirit to let it be as alive as possible. Janet has found therapy and antidepressants very helpful. Alan has benefited from medications as well.

Well dear friends, thank you for the opportunity to think about this subject and put a little of what we know into words. I trust that we will all developed more ways of living the Long Haul as we talk and share life together.

Much love and many blessings.

You are the future, the immense morning sky
turning red over the prairies of eternity.
You are the rooster-crow after the night of time,
The dew, the early devotions, and the Daughter,
the Guest, the Ancient Mother, and Death.

You are the shape that changes its own shape,
that climbs out of fate, towering,
that which is never shouted for, and never mourned for,
And no more explored than a savage wood.

You are the meaning deepest inside things,
that never reveals the secret of its owner.
And how you look depends on where we are:
from a boat you are shore, from the shore a boat.

There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,

That "love" is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,

Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,

Others are far, far too deep
For that.

A mouse once gnawed a hole in a basket
In which a famished snake lay sleeping.
The mouse fell into the snake’s open mouth.
Then the snake, revived by his meal,
Crawled out through the same hole
By which the mouse entered.
Friends, be satisfied with your life!
You’ll never understand why
One person rises and another falls.

The
Difference
Between a good artist
And great one is:
The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush
Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table
And helplessly smash the easels
And Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone
And keeps on sculpting…Light.

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.

And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun’s mouth
And dissolve.

And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for conference table,
Start passing their cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.

And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!

Today is Saturday, February 1st, 2003.
It is the beginning of the shortest -yet in some ways the longest- month of the year.
Today and yesterday are the first "thaw days" in what seems at least a month. It’s 
        rainy and icy, but mostly sloppy out there. I’ll probably stay in today.
Maybe we’ll go out to a movie.

Sitting in my chair right now I cannot tell which side of me is stronger. I mean my
sides. Sitting up straight, it does not feel like I am sitting up straight.

I can tell you which arm is stronger.
I can tell you about my legs -the toes on both feet still move.
My toes and the ball of my foot on my left side still move.
The right side is so much in pain or so numb -but it still moves, but I cannot tell
you    how much.

Sometimes I cannot feel where my foot is. My right foot.
Sometimes it feels like it's standing out straight when it is resting on the footrest.

Right now it feels as if it is solidly put on the footrest.

My left foot feels a little freer today. I can lift the toes and feel the muscles in my
calf, ankle and heel all working to lift the front part of my foot.

I cannot lift my heel, try as I might.

My left arm is now becoming very weak. I can barely raise it above my 
            shoulder. It is difficult for me to lift anything heavier than a very 
light plastic glass with half a     cup of water in it. Anything heavier is too 
much for me to lift. When I have to     drink a full glass of water I cannot empty 
the whole thing in my mouth as I cannot lift the glass "bottoms-up".

There are twitches and small cramps and shooting pains and sometimes prickly 
pins-     and-needles feelings and sometimes hot and cold –mostly hot– throughout 
my       arms and legs, though lately mostly my arms.

Typing on the computer has become a two-index-digit process, but mostly one 
because         when I use my right hand if I am not leaning down on my elbow, I 
tend to fall towards the keyboard and the desk. My pinky finger and my ring 
finger on the left hand are particularly bothersome because I cannot straighten 
them out     easily. They’re not yet curled under.

When I am in bed at night the covers are generally too heavy for me to lift off my 
        body myself. It is impossible for me to lift my pillow to move it. I can still 
just    barely scoot my head and neck and shoulders over a little bit, maybe half 
an     inch at a time. I cannot lift myself in bed. My legs and my feet are piled 
high   on two stacks of pillows; three or four in each pile to help reduce the 
swelling in     my feet. Usually a full night’s sleep –six hours– helps to move the 
fluid back up,         so to speak, so I can pee it out. But often that does not do 
enough and my      right leg especially is still very swollen. The pain increases 
        during the day as the         leg and foot swell bigger. The medication I 
        take for pain has some side effects         which cause me to constantly be 
tampering with the dosage. I do not like         feeling loopy and tired and I 
often feel as if I’m fighting against a strong force to     keep my energy going.

Sometimes it is a hard to tell what comes from tiredness of the day and     what 
comes         from weakness, new weakness. New loss. For instance today I was 
in the pool, the aquatic pool, doing my exercises. I was feeling weak and 
noticed that I         could not do as much in the         pool as I had the last two 
weeks. When I started     treading water I got very bad pain and tiredness in my 
right arm so I could not     continue.

Now as I type today, I am finding that my left hand is weaker than it was two or 
three days ago. It is very hard for me to control the mouse with my left hand 
(my     usual habit -I am using the voice recognition software to dictate, but I also 
have     to use my hands to correct mistakes and to guide the mouse).

My breathing is more difficult over the last two months or so. As of yet I     have 
not had         trouble swallowing or chewing, but I do have trouble coughing, 
sneezing and taking deep breaths. I do not have breath         for coughing so if 
something gets         caught in my throat it takes a long         time to cough it out. 
I have been lucky not         to get any colds or flues this winter. This week I have 
experienced more labored breathing. For the first time I’m starting to feel that 
talking is an effort.

The pain has been a constant variable in this illness for me. Since about August or 
            September I have had constant pain in my right leg, foot and hand. Now 
it          seems also to be traveling through to my right side in the ribs and 
            sometimes into the left side as well.

For about three months I steadily increased the pain medication till I was taking so 
            much that it made me tired almost all the time. I think it     also had the 
effect of         making me feel crabby and forgetful, spacey and loopy. So now in 
the last           month I have been reducing the medication and trying other 
techniques and         herbal remedies instead. I found at first the pain was 
unbearable. But in the     last two weeks I’m able to deal with it a lot better.

I do not like to admit it, but is seems that fatigue is something I struggle against as 
well. I have good days and I have days and weeks when I am tired and 
exhausted. I’ve found that teaching one 45-minute class in a day exhausts me 
completely.

I never really played very much baseball. I was never on an organized baseball 
team.            But when I was a kid I did like playing with my friends whenever 
we could get one going.
But I’ll tell you, I think I never had so much appreciation for what true "adjusting 
to     new circumstances" really meant until now…
That is what this illness has been all about for me and so far. Adjusting to the 
changes I      have just listed above.

I wanted to write a little bit about "just the body". I wanted to make it a kind of 
          exercise for myself to inform you and remind myself just what changes I 
went   through, without putting in all the emotion or all the spiritual work and all 
the     other stuff that goes along with it. It is difficult for me to write just about 
the     body because I am so much more than that and so much more involved in 
         growing, healing, learning and living in ways that involved me deeper and 
         more expensively than living in "just the body".

But it is important to recognize what the body is going through. And the body 
has     been going through a lot. And all that it has been     going through has 
required     adjustments; adjustments every month, every week, even every day. 
And      sometimes the scariest part of all of this is thinking about the adjustments I 
            have to make in the         future, tomorrow, the next week, the next 
month.

It works out much better when I am able to make the adjustments as I go along, 
as         they are needed, like an ace pitcher does. Then I don’t think about the 
future or the past but I really live in the moment.

So as they say in baseball, let’s do it, let’s "Play Ball".

            -Bob Mendenhall

* Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother but what I asked for was a
        puppy. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.
        Joyce

* Dear God, How did you know you were God? Who told you? Charlene

* Dear God, Is it true my Father won't get in Heaven if he uses his 
        golf words in the house? Anita

* Dear God, I like the story about Chanukah the best of all of
them.  You really made up some good ones. I like walking on water, too. Glenn

(and my favorite)
* Dear God, I am doing the best I can. Really. Frank