[mannythedog]

Hello Neil,
Call it mowing, I wish I had a bush hog. We have has so much rain this summer, that I have not had the chance to mow pop’s horse pastures as often as I could, so it was pretty tall… waist tall. {I’m 6’5”} Pop’s lil’ Steiner tractor was really humping. Pastures make him sound like a land baron, but between the upper 2.5 acres, and the lower 1.5 acres it is really just big enough for 4 horses. Two of which he had up until last summer.

Now, in answer to your question in a way yes. You see, pop and I have had a working relationship all my life. If I wasn’t at his service station in grade school pumping gas, I was at his garage in middle school and high school working on cars. If we weren’t fixing up his sail boat, we were doing a project that required two people. After school I went to the Navy, after that I joined reserves and worked with pop for 3 years, than moved away for about 11. Ten years ago my wife and I moved near them and the working relationship started again. Building his barn, helping care for his and mom’s horses, cutting trees and splitting them for fire wood {heating in winter here} doing side jobs trenching and laying pipe for people we know for gardens and water from their well’s etc. See, when I work, work that we’ve done together, especially when I am on his land working, I am closer to him. The hour and a half I spent on that lower pasture helped me decompress emotionally and allowed me to align my thoughts. Alone time is weep time, think time. If it is a Pop job, IE: his chores I have absorbed, it is our time. It helps me, not just the mowing, but the wood shop, cleaning his gutters, splitting their fire wood and maintenence around their house; it helps me feel closer to him. The winters, go the work shop, throw wood into the stove and work the wood. I will use his tools, ones that he taught me to use, and be with him, think of him. He would joke when I would give him a tool, or router bit’s etc. for a gift “Adding to collection again?” Who would have thought it would be sooner than later.

I guess that this explains what I do, and why I do it. What will I do when he is gone and mom sells and moves? Cross that bridge when I get there. Heck, maybe take a day off.

In a nut shell, as a care giver {part timer} if there is something that makes a connection, work, reading, an old TV show, do it for release and you’ll find it will make things clearer. When I started pop’s chore’s, I looked at as another thing to do. Now I look foreword to doing them. It reminds me of him, what he has taught, what he has said, who he was before he got sick. This man taught me to use my hands and not be ashamed of it when someone that doesn’t looks down at me. “Scott,” he would say,” we all look the same naked, well except for the women. Only worry about yourself and your family, every thing else will come together.” And it does.

Thanks for asking Neil.
Scott
Son Of Bob