6 June

The Return Of The Gulleys

by Jon Katz

I think of my friend Ed Gulley often these days, and it’s  hard not to think of him here at home, his populist  farm art is all over the farm. Maria spotted his artistic gifts a few years ago, and that transformed a part of his life. He and I became friends.

His Goose, one of his earliest works, stands out by the front of the house near the road. We have Ed Gulley wind chimes, flowers and the now famous Tin Man. There is a lot of Ed Gulley in permanent residence on our farm.

Ed is all around us. We were just talking the other day about the night he was here when a big beautiful black bear was hit by a truck and crawled into our pasture. We had to call the police and state wildlife officials to come, and they had to shoot the poor bear, who was severely injured. We will always remember his cries of pain and fear.

I was horrified when the police asked if I wanted the body, but Ed was eager to take it back in his truck where he skinned the bear and put him in his freezer, where I suspect he still is.

We don’t have too many friends like that.

Ed has brain cancer, and is returning today from a week -long drive across much of the country with Carol, who is devoted to giving him whatever  experience he wants. He wanted to see the Badlands of South Dakota, and he did.

He has refused extreme treatment for the tumor – actually 10 tumors – now in his brain. The cancer is one of the most aggressive, and is not treatable.

We’ve been following their trip most days, as many people have, on the  Bejosh Farm Journal.

Ed has chosen to be open about the illness, and the trip, and he and Carol have been faithful to that.  From the blogs, I see that Ed is experiencing some anxiety and sadness and also some weakness all along his left side – sight, hand, arm, leg. Carol writes he is getting more emotional. The cancer seems to be advancing.

Lots of people are messaging and texting the Gulleys, and they both welcome that.  Ed  seems to draw much comfort and support from all those messages, and from the people he meets along the way.

People are asking about the trip, but I’m afraid I can’t offer anything more than Carol has in her almost daily blogging. I talked to Ed once early on, and not since, Carol and I have texted some days, just to say hi and good wishes.

I had this feeling that I needed to back away from them on this trip and leave them to experience it in whatever way they need to. I am always shy of crowds.

My instincts told me not to call or  send e-mails or long messages to them. They know we are there if they need us, and I see their  trip as a private experience between the two of them, no matter how many messages they get, or people they see.

Ed and Carol have been married for more than 40 years, and have rarely had a lot of time to talk to one another. They are making up for it, and they have important things to talk about.

I would not feel comfortable invading this or intruding upon it, and they are not asking me or Maria to do that. The one advice I gave  Carol was to feel free to take a few days off from the blog so they could just focus on themselves. I don’t know if she decided to do that or not.

This stage of our friendship with Ed and Carol are ending, another one is beginning. We will be what they need us to be. I don’t make any assumptions. Ed has given up his art, it is already too difficult for him to manipulate his tools the way he did. Watching him change and suffer is, of course, an emotional experience for me as well.

I’m  trying to figure out how to  deal with it. I’ve seen many people die in my life, but I was close to few of them.

Ed has a powerful community around him, farm and family. He has more friends than I will ever know. He has been surrounded by caring people from the first.

I love sharing my life, it is liberating, but some things just feel to private for me to wade into, even in the digital age and even with social media.

People wonder all the time about my sharing so much of my life, but I always tell them they don’t see what I don’t share, and that is much of my life, the guts of it in some ways. If I had a cancer of the brain, of course, I have no idea what I would do. That is so personal a thing.

My feeling is that the trip gave the two of them a chance to figure out how to move  forward with this very shocking new realization, this understanding that alters the very nature of life. That is a mind-bender. Ed wants to do it well, and he will.

Before he left, he told me of his great expectations for this trip, the spirits he hoped to meet. I hope these expectations have been met. In a few days, I’ll invite him out to lunch, and see if he wants to go.

I don’t need to know everything he’s doing, I just need to know what he and Carol want me to know.

Ed’s illness, so sudden and so all encompassing,  sharpens perspective, underscores community, and tests the boundaries of friendship. I welcome them both back, and am eager to give them both the journals we didn’t get a chance to give them when they set out on the trip.

I am learning about  friendship. Sometimes you can do the most by doing nothing.

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