The day after

6/9/08 Monday
It’s the day after my birthday. The depression I fight so much has sunk in again. It has nothing to do with me being another year older. Fact is every year I get is a blessing just like every day I wake up, so these are things I appreciate and rejoice about. Just yesterday Cherie and I talked about what our lives would have been like if we hadn’t once again found each other. It wouldn’t have been good for either of us. So our lives are a miracle of providence. Providence? I’m not sure if that’s the right word but it seems to fit everything that has happened since I woke from the coma.

My son Bruce in Iraq

So what is the source of this depression? Cherie says it’s connected with the birthday and perhaps that is partially true. My mind has been dwelling on the two boys I raised from the second marriage. There has been little contact with them and that is mostly my fault. I keep thinking of sending them emails but it never happens. I only get to go online once or sometimes twice a week and am usually rushed as we are over at Steve and Janie’s when I do. There I have work to do and always need to get back here to the farm where I am always behind. So in the rush I consistently forget not just emailing Bruce and Adam (My two boys) but many other things I want to do. When we get our satellite service hooked up that will help for I can go online and do things when I think about it. In addition to my boys I’ve been worrying about Eileen, my former secretary and good friend. What I heard from her daughter was disturbing to say the least. So I’ve been thinking about Eileen and several other friends in Toledo who I’ve lost contact with because they moved or something. It would be so good to be able to go to Toledo and spend a couple of weeks visiting with them. I know Texas is home now but Toledo is where I spent twenty five years of my life so I miss it. Up until I married Cherie and moved to Toledo my life had always been on the move, growing up military where we moved around the world never staying in one place more than two or three years. Then my early adult years were also on the move but that’s another book.

Then I suppose there is the frustration of getting this farm going and the constant fight to overcome the problems that come with this brain injury. I am surrounded by my failures to follow through and the consequences of it. Every where there are piles of unfinished projects laying around but speaking to me, reminding me I didn’t accomplish another goal. And there is the constant wind, a hundred plus degree heat, and no rain that wreaks havoc with so much we are doing around here. And no money, that doesn’t help either. I’ll pull out of this as I always do but it’s no fun when this depression hits.

It’s so strange to just wake up like this and not be able to make it go away despite logic telling me there is no good in allowing this to continue. If I could blow some of these gophers a hundred feet into the air that would lift my spirits I suppose. But that requires oxygen and getting oxygen requires money. Someone in Sunday school said that castor beans will get rid of them. He worked for the telephone or power company and said they used them where the gophers would be eating the underground lines. Said they killed the gophers and worked real good. I don’t know where we can get them but I remember seeing them in seed catalogs so we can grow them for next year.