Living Free

Living Free

May 5, 2020

I found this on Facebook. It came as a shock. 

I may have interpreted this wrong, but it hits me on a personal level.

“If Grampa and Gramma weren’t so afraid of dying, they would just sacrifice themselves so the rest of us younger people could go back to partying at the beach, getting tattoos and crowding into a booth at a restaurant and stuffing ourselves.”

I remember when I stopped living the life I had in California and getting on a troopship and going to the other side of the earth where President Johnson had decided to go to war to fight for “freedom.” 

I had a good friend and close relative who gave up his life with his family in Oklahoma to go to Greenland for a long lonely year for “freedom.”

I see the protesters parading around government buildings with their rifles now, fighting for “freedom” to go to the store without wearing a face mask, and I think of my friends who went to places where people shot back at you with rifles, and some of whom found bullets or bombs and didn’t come back among the living.

Afraid of dying?!

I used to race Corvairs, the car Ralph Nader claimed was “Unsafe at any speed.” I loved it and survived.

I flew a Grumman Yankee, the plane with the worst record of spinning in and crashing on final approach to landing, and which had stall characteristics that scared hell out of some flight instructors I knew. I learned where the dragons hung out and didn’t go there. One of my instructors would finish each successfulI landing by saying,“Well, we’re back safe on the ground. Cheated death once again!” I loved it and survived.

I rode a motorcycle for several years on Los Angeles freeways commuting to work in some of the craziest traffic you ever saw. I loved it and survived.

I have climbed the trail to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. Twice. Not for the faint of heart; pulling yourself up hundreds of feet of nearly vertical smooth granite on cables. I loved it and survived.

Stop living?!

Not by choice. My wife Carolyn and I lived to travel all over the country, see nature up close, and square dance in most of the western states for nearly fifty years. I don’t have that option anymore.

I love to ride racing and mountain bicycles. I used to be able to ride a hundred miles before noon. I can’t do that anymore. But I can still ride twenty miles in the morning, and love every minute.

In the last year I’ve changed the timing chain set on my motor home, and while doing that, overhauling the water pump, carburetor and distributor. Not a lot of fun, but I love the challenge.

Sure, I carry sanitary wipes in my car, along with medical gloves. I wear a bandana when with company. But those are not for my safety. They are for those around me. People can carry this virus for days, infecting those around them, before they show any symptoms. I don’t want to be the one who gives somebody a fatal disease, when it is so easy and simple to not spread it.

What am I afraid of?

I am afraid of the shame and guilt I would have for the rest of my life if one of my friends died because of my carelessness.