Chinook

My weekend adventure is over. Once again I am back in my little apartment, looking out over the parking lot and mall across the street. Once again my life has moved from fairy tale to reality, with household chores and busy tasks lined up for me to attend. Once again I am living my daily life having traded the silence of the surrounding forest for the hum of traffic, and the chatter of surrounding friends for the silence of my living room.

It's not that being here is bad. In fact living here in my apartment is a good thing for me. It is well situated for my life needs, well placed in terms of daily activity. The stores I need are across the street or nearby. I can get there with my power wheelchair when necessary. Access to the building is simple and easy, with ready parking at hand and completely undercover, a must have here in Calgary for someone in a wheelchair. Things are alive around me, just differently alive than the woods and trees that I love so.

The scene here is ever changing too. It moves from day to day, snow to sun, blue sky to grey. When the Chinooks roll in over the Rockies, driving warmth before them in westerly winds, causing the temperatures to shoot up from below freezing to almost springlike, the snows melt and the grass shows through. Then, only a day or two later, the snows return and winter is once again ensconced in my world. These changing scenes, the ever moving vista of life around me, once again reminds me that life is a busy, active thing. Like that life, I need to be busy and active.

I need to do something with my life; I am not yet finished with it. I have more to accomplish, more to change, more lives and people to impact. My work here is not yet done, yet the very effort of it wears upon me moreso than one might expect. This disease is aging me early, forcing the impact of failing life forces into me, stealing away my ability to have my body do what my mind would will. Like the forests sleeping under the winter snow, somewhere deep inside me there is yet life. Like the Chinook over the mountain, all it needs is the smallest warmth to bring it forth, to let it be nourished.

ALS steals my Chinook. ALS is winter, never to be followed by spring. ALS is the unchanging, unremitting march of a destiny too soon for me. I am not done yet, no matter what this disease does to me. Listen to me! I am still here!