Ed Gulley is not someone to lie around and mope, brain cancer or not.

I pride myself on getting Ed to laugh, especially when I’m doing a portrait. It isn’t  hard. Today it was when I called him a Grumpy Old Windbag, it just cracked him up, mostly because he knows it’s the truth. Ed has not list a flick of his great laugh and smile, he can light up a room whenever he wants.

Ed doesn’t do sad or  self-pity, so most of my portraits show him smiling or watching closely. When I need to, I always know how to get  him to laugh. Ed laughs as hard on himself as he does on anything else. Ed will comfortably talk about his cancer, but we don’t dwell on it.

He no longer believes he is going to die soon and and is busy setting about living, transferring his farm to his children, talking farm talk all day to anyone or anything who will listen to his ranting about milk prices, tractors, feed and  farming. He is comfortable with his desk and sofa, curling up with his big Australian Shepherds and cats when he wants to take a nap.

His dogs form a circle around him and watch him all day, they do not ever seem to want to go out these days, many of us know this story. Ed has given me several research projects to check out for him. One was the side effects of steroids, which he is now taking.

Ed is a very unusual man, a kind of ebullient schizophrenic, he is one part dairy farmer and one part creative. That is not a common thing. He loves to tell farming and old family stories. He is good at it.

The other was yesterday when he asked me if it was possible to smell cancer, he thought he could smell it when he got excited. I did some homework, and the answer, I told him, is yes, he can smell cancer. His dogs can certainly smell cancer, they have a sense of smell that is 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than humans, it seems clear the dogs sense what is happening to Ed and stay with him day and night.

I’ve also researched how  he might best be able to stay at home during his illness and what bed and other equipment he might need and told him about hospice and what it does. He and Carol take all of this in, they are thinking about things and talking about things and will make their own decisions.

I hope to take regular portraits of Ed for as long as he will permit it. I want to chronicle his face no matter what happens.