leafwalker
Trail Wise!
peace on earth and good will toward all - om shanti
Posts: 526
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Post by leafwalker on Mar 23, 2024 15:02:45 GMT -8
Wow! Listening to Dylan and he has a song, " Let Me Die In My Footsteps." I guess I could be selfish and put that as let me die as such when hiking. Good way to go, but selfish as my wife would be walking beside me as she always is and has. So many miles with her. Maybe a thousand a year for many years. Spring flowers in the woods, open land flowers in the summer, asters in the fall, and hope in the winter. Just turned 75. My goodness, I was just watching my wife walk down the aisle a few years ago. Forty six years ago. Yesterday has gone quickly. Yesterday and more so now then before one thinks about going. Nothing, in my thinking, exists beyond what I see, is. I guess I needed to vent as the reality of a future becomes even more foggy. Oh, with two young grandkids I'll devour every moment with them, but things are coming I don't want. Future is limited.
peace and love
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Post by Sleeping Bag Man! on Mar 23, 2024 15:41:37 GMT -8
Good way to go, but selfish as my wife would be walking beside me as she always is and has. Selfish? Maybe...maybe not. Perhaps it is also selfish to cling to life too long, slowly breaking our loved one's hearts with our suffering. My mother is going slowly, painfully, and without dignity. I am utterly devoted and would endure anything to ease her journey on this path......she doesn't want to place that burden on me, but she's also not ready to give up. Could there be anything more difficult in life than balancing these scales? You are so fortunate. Take some unsolicited advice from a caregiver son: when those foggy times come, don't waste one minute on shame, embarrassment, or pride. Don't succumb to our absurd cultural mythology of self-reliance, or the idea that needing help is some personal failure or lack of virtue. We need each other, and we need to be there for each other. Peace & love backatcha
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rebeccad
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Writing like a maniac
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Post by rebeccad on Mar 23, 2024 15:59:18 GMT -8
Good thoughts from both of you. I think that Zeke and I have talked enough to agree: being with your spouse when they die sucks. Not being with them also sucks (between us we've tried both). There's no good way to lose the one you love most. Logistics of dropping dead on the trail are more complex than dying at home.
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gabby
Trail Wise!
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Post by gabby on Mar 23, 2024 19:25:37 GMT -8
Oh, man!
To be 75 again! ;^D
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ErnieW
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I want to backpack
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Post by ErnieW on Mar 23, 2024 20:25:08 GMT -8
Some background on the song from Wikipedia: According to Dylan, the song was inspired by the construction of fallout shelters, a widespread practice in the U.S. during the Cold War political climate of the 1950s when he was growing up.
In 1963, Dylan gave this account of how he came to write "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" to critic Nat Hentoff, who wrote the liner notes for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan:
I was going through some town and they were making this bomb shelter right outside of town, one of these sort of Coliseum-type things and there were construction workers and everything. I was there for about an hour, just looking at them build, and I just wrote the song in my head back then, but I carried it with me for two years until I finally wrote it down. As I watched them building, it struck me sort of funny that they would concentrate so much on digging a hole underground when there were so many other things they should do in life. If nothing else, they could look at the sky, and walk around and live a little bit, instead of doing this immoral thing. The liner notes to Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 included this comment on the song:[This is] Bob Dylan's blunt answer to the yawping of Madison Avenue Pitchmen trying to sell fallout shelters. He shines a light into the murky darkness of our age and shows us in one bright instant what it might have taken a less impatient philosopher a lifetime to discover: namely that instead of learning to live, we are learning to die. What he says was never more evident than in the recent crisis over Cuba, when millions of Americans sought desperately to think of some dignified way to meet death in an obscene atomic holocaust.
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BigLoad
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Pancakes!
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Post by BigLoad on Mar 23, 2024 21:08:59 GMT -8
Good thoughts from both of you. I think that Zeke and I have talked enough to agree: being with your spouse when they die sucks. Not being with them also sucks (between us we've tried both). There's no good way to lose the one you love most. Logistics of dropping dead on the trail are more complex than dying at home.
That's why I get to die first.
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Post by cweston on Mar 24, 2024 13:42:25 GMT -8
There's no good way to lose the one you love most. This is unquestionably true. I've informed my family that I would want to explore planned suicide were I to be terminally ill or suffering from Alzheimer's/Dementia. However, this is a very complex legal issue, and my desire NOT to put any of them in legal trouble is my top priority. And even in states that HAVE "death with dignity" laws (mine does not), they typically exclude Alzheimer's/Dementia as a qualifying condition.
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Post by trinity on Mar 24, 2024 13:56:19 GMT -8
Love the sentiments expressed here, and love the song. In my younger days, this was an obscure outtake that was only available on hard to find bootlegs, such as Ten of Swords. For those of us who came of age during the Cold War in fear of nuclear armageddon, this was a powerful song.
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