The prophets used to say that we all live in two countries, the one we are familiar with, the one where we are very much at home. We know the ways and limits of the Old Country, it’s joys and pains, happiness and despair, expectations and disappointments, are all part of our very chemistry and bones.

At some point in all of our lives, things happen. We got sick, fall, we die.

We  realize we have to leave this country  behind, and we become  refugees of the soul.  We have to enter the New Country. What guided and shaped us in the Old Country  no longer applies, we are challenged to find what we need in completely different  and alien ways.

This week, Ed Gulley and his wife and farm partner Carol left the Old Country  behind forever, and entered this new one. Suddenly, in a shocking and unimaginable few days, everything is different, all those hopes and understanding and guideposts are gone.

They are in a strange land, so am I.

I am struggling and working to understand it, and the boundaries of love and friendship. Today, Ed’s farm and family friends launched a gofundme project to help he and Carol financially through the next months. Ed has inoperable cancer of the brain and has declined treatments like chemotherapy or any kind of surgery.

These funding projects are now a farm tradition, farmers rush to help one another through accidents, natural disasters and financial struggles. It is never easy to be a small farmer in America, it is especially difficult now, when farm prices have just dropped to their levels in 1970. Very few farmers get to save a lot of money.

Ed and Carol will need a lot of help.

In less than 24 hours, the fund has raised more than $4,000 dollars.

The fund is asking for $10,000 but I am pushing for more than that, up to $50,000 for the Gulleys to take what is probably their last trip together and also to help defray the medical costs of these aggressive, ravaging tumors in Ed’s brain. If you are not rich, health care can be cruel.

Ed is already experience problems with his peripheral vision and some balance problems.

I will use my blog and words to work to get the money for Ed and Carol that they will need.

An illness like this tests everyone, it also requires family and friends to define and consider the boundaries of their love. Sometimes, the needs of the people we love overwhelm our boundless, sometimes so are our own boundaries overcome.  In my hospice and therapy work, I’ve seen people who are so overwhelmed by the needs of others that they leave and turn away for their own survival.

Boundaries are simpler to define with people like Ed and Carol Gulley, since they never ask for anything, they are fiercely independent and proud.

Left on their own, Carol and Ed would never have published a gofundmeproject, other farmers know to do it for them.  Carol was reluctant to even mention it on their blog. They have all been there in one way or another. The bond that ties family farms to one another is one of the strongest I’ve ever seen.

The task, as I have learned in recent years, is to claim myself for myself, to meet my own needs and hold them in the presence of those who need my help. Real support requires people in possession of themselves  to give to each holder while holding on to their own identities.

We must know what can do, and what we can’t do.

There are some things I know I can do to help my friend through this chapter of his life.And some things that are beyond me.  I cannot work miracles, or alter fate, or play God. I am not there to cheer them up or lie to them.

They will ask for little or nothing, I hope to offer a great deal.

Ed and Carol are blessed in many ways. They have one another, they have a close and loving family, they have a powerful community around them eager to help. Thanks to their wonderful blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal, there are people from all over the world who care about them.

My task is to do the best I can for them for as long as I can.

Ed and Carol are in the New Country now, there is no going back. We have a lot to learn and adjust to.

And I realized during this painful week that I am in the New Country too, a place I  have never been in this way.

Please consider supporting their gofundme project (one thing I can help them with),  we have $45,000 to go.