The Last December

For the past few months, I have been rereading Tony's blog posts from past years. In October, I read the posts from the previous Octobers, etc.

Since December 2015 is a few days old, I recently read the December posts. The early ones were filled with good memories. But last year's were very hard to read.

One of our closest friends in our ALS world died last December, and Tony wrote about him several times. He wrote about the idea of the end. And it wasn't long before his own came. It brought last year back to me very vividly. ALS is a disease of incremental losses, and I was unable to see how much they had piled up last December. Now, I can; and I can't describe how awful it was.

Tony wrote about the Charge of the Light Brigade last year, so I'll continue the battle analogies. Last year, I was deep in the trenches, just fighting for the next foot and the next hour... unable to see beyond that. This year, my battle pales in comparison.

There is always a battle of sorts to wage in life. We should always battle to do the right thing, be the best we can be, insert motivational message here... It's hard to say, but I will admit that I'm so relieved I'm not fighting ALS anymore.

Here's to those still in the saddle.