LBJ, I think about all of the things you have been sharing with us in this thread. And I always wonder how I will feel when my time comes. Your sharing your experience as you go through this journey is the rarest of gifts. Gifts to a bunch of people, most of whom you have never met.

You've begun to answer some of the many questions I've always had about coming to terms with the end of one's life. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

LBJ your courage is inspiring.

For me, I would say that for my whole life, it was (and is) to be comfortable in my own head.
If you can be comfortable with the thoughts inside your head when no one is around, you are halfway there.

Words fail me right now, maybe if I give myself some time to think and I can post a better description.

The comfortable with your own thoughts is telling however.
I think we all know a person here and there who just cannot be alone for even a second.
They call you up, want to go do something.
If you say no, they call someone else until they are with other people.

I have always though that people who cannot be alone for any length of time, are not comfortable with their own thoughts.

I really believe that and it must bite the biggest moose ever to be that way.
I feel for them.

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:

And all of the above is my philosophy regarding life, death and our Creator.

It's a beautiful thing and I mean every word of it.

Thanks

Roy

I do not pretend that my philosophy is a good fit for everyone.
That said though, I just do not want to exit this world kicking and screaming with anger.
So far so good, but who knows the future.

I think I will go to the range at the national park today and shoot Big Green my AR-10.
It's therapeutic you know.

I was thinking today of something I heard or read somewhere many years ago.
That is that one should love themselves.

I have never ascribed to that saying. It seems a bit too arrogant.
I may like myself in a general sense, and figure I do the best I can for who I am.
I think most of us do the best we can.

Being comfortable with one's own thoughts and doing the best we can given who were are, meaning our limitations, are two of the many things that have helped me for my whole life and they still help me today face the situation at hand.

I am reminded of a quote of WC Fields I have been carrying around with me since I was about ten years old.
"Sometimes you have to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation."

It's me again, go figure.

I was taking a trip down memory lane just now about the times I cheated death.

Back in the summer of 1975, I took a backpack and flew down to the Yucatan. I was 20 years old at the time.
I ended up hitchhiking all over the peninsula for a month, including taking a train northward to see the ruins at Palenque and even ended up taking a shower in a waterfall in the rain forest with a female ghost, but that's another story for another day.

Cancun at that time was just being built with only about 6 hotels completed at the time.

There was public beach with a lifeguard, though I forget his name right now.
Anyway, he was this scrawny kid of about 4'10" and he and I became friends.
He spoke no english but I knew enough spanish to just get by and when ever I came into Cancun, I would stop by and sit in the tower with him and we would hang out together.

That day, there was a very bad undertow that went out to sea, and it was fierce. I had gone swimming a little early that day and as the advanced competitive swimmer I was at that time (55.5 seconds 100 yards), it was tough, even on me.

The lifeguard and I were relaxing enjoying the day when we were altered to the fact of a swimmer about 250 yards off shore waving and screaming. It was readily apparent he was going to drown.
We both take off and hit the water. I am swimming almost as fast as I can (saving energy for the rescue) and in the 3 or 4 minutes it took to get out there, here was this scrawny lifeguard keeping pace with me. I found it incredible. Stay tuned for this to pop up later.

We get to the guy who is in trouble and I grabbed the guy under his left armpit and the lifeguard did the same on the right.
Then we began to fight the undertow trying to get back to shore. The swimmer was coherent enough to do a free kick to help with his rescue.

As I say, it was about 250 yards but we just weren't making much progress. If memory serves, it took us twenty minutes to just to advance about 50 yards.
We were tired, very tired and the lifeguard and I discussed letting the swimmer go as we thought all three of us were goners.
I was even thinking that even if we let the swimmer go, I might not make it back in.

The swimmer began crying as we discussed this and eventually we decided to stay the course for little while.

We did finally make it to shore and the three of us laid on the sand unable to get up for a few minutes. My guess is the entire rescue took 40 minutes, that's a long time in the ocean fighting a severe undertow.
I remember looking over at my friend the lifeguard and then it dawned on me why he could keep up with me in the water...
he had been using scuba fins on his feet.
That made me kind of laugh inside.
Odd isn't it?
I mean, here I was after saving a man's life, and all I seemed to be concerned about at that moment was the joy I received knowing the only way my friend could keep up with me was because of swim fins.

I keep telling you all I am off the wall.
I was back then and some things never change.

Quite a crowd had gathered and an applause broke out for us. I remember thinking that rather than clap, someone in the crowd should have been able to help as we got closer to shore.

The above is a true story, and the only life I have ever directly saved I think.
I have to say that to this day it creeps me out when I think about when we may have had to let the swimmer go to save ourselves but didn't.
It really made no sense to continue to stick it out and by rights, we probably should have let him go to save ourselves.
I am still not sure why we didn't. It was probably that invincible feeling one has when young, and I am smarter than that now.
At least the outcome was favorable.

I have never been as tired as when we got to shore even to this day. The tiredness told me something, I had battled death and won.

There was another time I cheated death but that is for another day, and besides, it was just plain luck I lived.
And there is that story about taking a shower in a waterfall in the rain forest with a female ghost, but no one wants to hear about that.
It's just so common and happens every day.

I post the story I have told because death is ever present to me these days and remembering when I cheated death made me feel better.

But it wasn't just me and it wasn't just the lifeguard either. I was a very good swimmer back then, but there is no way I should have survived.
It was the hand of God.

Keep those stories coming! That's incredible!

Praying for you

LBJ, Congrats on your induction into the IFL Hall of Fame and Yes we take the time to read your posts. Thank you for your time and God Bless you and your family.

It was pretty cool and thanks.

One of the nice things about this thread is that friends and relatives have the link and check in on me from time to time.
It's an easy way for them to see how I am doing, just like the membership here does.

I don't do BookFace or Chat Snap so this works well.

In that sense, and though I posted this current photo of me in a different thread, I post it here.

Here is me with my former head coach Heron O'Neal taken yesterday.
I think I look pretty decent, considering.

I agree that you look good in fact you look healthier than a horse. I had a doctor tell me that one time.

Wilbuuuuuur.

One of the problems I am having is keeping weight on.
I did OK last month and was up to 163-164, but I lost 4 or 5lbs when we were in Cedar Point.

After I got home, I lost a little more.
Right now I am around 155-156lbs.

I do feel OK except for the constant pain in my left side. That is the side where they removed my kidney and fixed the hernia. The pain is in the rib cage bones on the inside of my body cavity as opposed to outside.
So far, the scans have never shown anything there in the rib cage bones that is of concern to my doctor... so far anyway.

That said though, I am way more active than I have been since January. That may explain the weight loss.
I can physically do a lot of things and can do many tasks per day. But they need to be of short duration as my stamina is poor.

The pain is unexplained to this point.

However, I have always been the sprinter type, as opposed to the long distance type.

Thank you for your words and thoughts, God bless you.

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:
Wilbuuuuuur.

One of the problems I am having is keeping weight on.
I did OK last month and was up to 163-164, but I lost 4 or 5lbs when we were in Cedar Point.

After I got home, I lost a little more.
Right now I am around 155-156lbs.

That said though, I am way more active than I have been since January. That may explain the weight loss.
I can physically do a lot of things and can do many tasks per day.

Weight loss probably due to the junk food being away from home cooking like them Burgers.

Me in my treatment at 160 soaking wet - see top of page five.
https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...0601935/m/5870074804

Your activity is up which is real good.

I can remember those aches and pains when I was deep into Chemo and Radiation.

Prayers sent

Roy

I am going to need to edit my philosophy of life on page 51 and add a bit of a treatise ragarding unfinished business:


Life is always unfinished business.
There is no way to see and do it all.
I don't have a bucket list because it represents unfinished business.
Besides, even if I had one, once finished I'd start another one.
So I don't have one.

I look at my life as the bucket and what has been put in it. Because it is impossible to see and do it all in life, I am focused on what filled my life.
What has filled my life makes me feel complete and whole. I am comfortable with it. It's been an amazing ride.

Perhaps the above is why I am happy with my life and life in general.

Certainly I have made many mistakes over the years, even hurt of lot of people knowingly and unknowingly. Yes, I have regrets.
I could have done some things in my life better.
Did I waste some of the times of my life, yes, I have.

But in the end all of those mistakes made me who I am, so apparently they were needed for me to grow.

Therefore, everything I said about the philosophy of my life still holds, and nothing has changed.

quote:

taking a shower in a waterfall in the rain forest with a female ghost, but no one wants to hear about that.

any time, standing by with considerable interest....

Let me say this before going further and posting about the ghost I took a shower with.

I have seen ghosts all my life. I cannot remember at what age it started but I have always had this gift.
These ghosts or whatever one wishes to call them can be human or animal. It's not like they look exactly like the living, with total clarity of focus and such.
They come to me in many forms like a shadow, maybe a quick voice in my head occasionally. They typically stay in the peripherals of my vision.
Sometimes they have color, sometimes a type of black and white shading. Some speak to me in my mind, though it's always just a very few words and usually not even a complete sentence.

These ghosts do not haunt me in anyway. Sometimes I know who they are, especially when it's an animal. But most times they are total strangers.

Now some people might creeped out when a ghost appears, but it doesn't work that way for me.
First off, the ghosts' presence is very fleeting, from milliseconds to a few seconds at most.

What I can tell you, the reader, is something I never figured on.
When the experience happens to me, I am not freaked out. It is as normal as anything in this life as it unfolds.
It is only after the encounter is over that I'm like, what was that, man it happened again, boy that was odd, OK I'm officially creeped out now.

Isn't that odd? I mean, it's perfectly normal while it happens. I would have thought when they happen, I should be hitting the roof at the moment it begins, but it just isn't that way, it feels normal. Even when I say something to them.

Let me state the following:
I do not believe in psychics. I never seek them out and never believe what they say if they talk to me.

There was one exception. I had a girlfriend Ginny back in the early 1980s who was really into the psychic things.
She had this friend who claimed to be psychic. She was in her 60s at that time. I would sit there and let the two of them rattle on about whatever nonsense they would come up with.
At one point, this psychic woman says to me "You see them, don't you?"
I said, "Yeah, I do and all the time."
Then she said, "You have the gift."
I answered in the affirmative and that was the end of our conversation then and forever.
I don't think I ever saw her again.

She was right of course, I do see them, a lot IMO, or enough for my taste anyway.


There is no other way to describe it.

I don't summon them, they don't give advice or tell me to do anything. It is never a "conversation" back and forth, and 99% of the time or more, they don't say anything.

I post this figuring I will be the subject of ridicule, whether here publicly through posts or privately scoffed at my members sitting at their computers reading this.

Fine, go ahead.
But let me say this:
I never lie to you all, I am telling you these things are true. Hey, It's The World According to Wigley, of course it's a bit different, and off the wall too. I agree, but it's how I am built, for better or worse. I find it a plus and fascinating. It is a mystery of my life I have never gotten a handle on. And I never will.

But it's me and my life and it's real.
It's a Gift from God, and I have been happy to have had it all these years.

After reading the above, do you still want to hear about the time I took a shower with a female ghost under a waterfall in the rain forest?

Cuz if you don't believe in ghosts, you won't believe the story. So why bother.

I figure I am getting a lot of WTFs right about now.

Oh well, it cannot be helped, I am who I am.

Lets hear it! I'm game. I always enjoy reading your stories.

Fruit basket in-coming at Mauna Kea

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:


I post this figuring I will be the subject of ridicule, whether here publicly through posts or privately scoffed at my members sitting at their computers reading this.

As Shakespeare said 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then in your little sensibilities'.

The Bible tells us that we are surrounded by angels, both seen and unseen. I have no trouble accepting that, either.