I’ve been writing this week about mortality and death, and this morning, I got a message about it from my friend Ed Gulley, a dairy farmer I sometimes call the “ugly bearded old man.” I wanted to share his very Gulley-ish ideas about mortality. Ed is a doer, not a brooder, he is an action man, not a keyboard man. As he moves to become a writer and blogger and artist, he will learn to take stuff to a whole new level – he already does spin it at a very high level.

“This is from the ugly boarded old man!,” he wrote this morning (Ed doesn’t type yet, his fingers are too numb and cold, he dictates to the long-suffering Carol). “Jon my boy! Listen. Dying is the last thing you’re going to do so suck it up! Be a tough sonabitch. Go out and slop the hogs – collect the eggs – to go the pond, chop some ice and put it next to the wood stove for bathin’ and don’t forget to bring in more wood for the stove while you are at it. Bad heart my ass!! Love ya man!”

I love this message from the bearded old man, and I know he will die chopping wood or slopping hogs. As for me,  I hope to die with my Iphone in my lap, a border collie under my right arm, and my left touching some part of Maria’s wonderful body. I have an idea which.

My last act will be to reflect on the nature of death, and undoubtedly, to annoy some people in the process. They will send me some nasty messages, but by then, I will be beyond the messages of the mortals, talking instead to angels and cherubim.

I will tell the bearded old ugly man when I see him, which I hope is soon, that we are all farmers in our own way, we just grow different things. Although he and I do grow the same crop – organic bullshit. I grow stories, and if I have my way, I’ll post my last message to the world on my blog, take a deep sigh and move on to glory, where I will write books and blog some more from there.

I love you too, man.