Who Am I?

What kind of person am I? Who am I? For some it may seem hard to believe, but I am fairly introspective. These days it becomes more than just something I do every once in a while. As my life progresses towards its inevitable end, I think more and more about the kind of life I've had and the kind of man I am. There are a few things about me that really set the stage for my life, only a very few things that are my true identity.

If you had asked me, five years ago, "who are you", I would have responded with "a husband and a father". If you had asked me, five years ago, what I liked to do, I would have said "I divide my life into three seasons, sailing, hunting, and work". The summer was for sailing, the fall was for hunting and fishing, while winter and spring were for work. Somehow my life made sense; it worked. As a family we spent summers exploring on the boat. Hunting trips were with my Dad, my daughter, my cousins, my in-laws. Work was simply the way I paid the bills; it was the least important thing on my list of things to do.

For much of my life I tried to keep a work/life balance where I did not identify myself by the work that I did, but more by the life that I lead. My role as a father was central to that life. I loved having my children around, having an active and lively home, filled with kids and conversation, laughter and life. I lived for my children and my marriage. This feeling is strong in me still, so strong in fact that one of my friends recently said "I think you are more broken up about the loss of your marriage than you are about dying from ALS". I had to agree; this is true.

In the last two years I have had to let go of all that I felt identified me. I am still a father but my children are scattered. Ricky lives with me, filled with the resentment and anger of a young man. Mary, Meaghan and Kate all live far away. My only contact is online although Kate makes sure to call me every week. Still, my days as a Dad appear to be over and it doesn't look like I will get to be much of a Grandpa. I can no longer spend time on my boat; ALS has taken that from me. Fishing and hunting are near impossibilities. I have even lost my work.

I am no longer a husband, and that feels more like a complete loss of family than anything else. The heart and soul of a family is the two people at the core of it. The loss of that core, of that foundation, has left me bereft. To have been so pushed out as to be irrelevant in the home, to have been so ignored as to be pointless, this was the most damaging loss of all. I liked being married. I loved having a family. Now I feel so much like I am alone, without identity, simply leaving, stripped of all that was me.