The trick to monitoring cancer is to not think for a second that you can fully understand it or know where it will go. Thursday night, I thought Ed was in free fall, today he seemed to bounce back a bit.

Yet there is no doubt that he is failing, a bit more each day. The trajectory of his cancer is clear enough, the larger picture becoming clearer each day.

Tonight, a hospital bed came and he is sleeping in it. Nurses put a catheter in him, so he can sleep, and tomorrow,  there will be an oxygen tank and tubes to help him breathe.

Today a nurse returns to begin the regular administration of anxiety and depression medication.

Today, a commode arrived, and Ed is no longer getting up to go to the bathroom or anywhere else. Yesterday, a wheelchair came to occupy a corner of his room.  Tonight, a hospice nurse arrives to begin regular visits.

I’ve volunteered in hospice. I know what these rooms look like, and what they mean.

Carol’s children are beginning to spell her, so she can rest. Nurses and social workers from hospice are present and unfailingly helpful. It is different now.

Ed can longer take short walks around the farm. There is no more talk of trips to Maine or anywhere else. It more difficult for Ed to smile. His medication has slowed him time and made him sleepier. For the first time, he is in pain, now in his hip. Tonight, a wrenching and tearful video and blog post from Carol Gulley, whose sadness cannot be concealed.

Some days are up, some days are now, but this cancer is a process and Ed is right in the middle of it. He is, by his own words, accepting it and surrendering to it. “It is bigger than me,” he said, “two bulls banging into each other, one is clearly winning.”

I am happy to visit Ed each day, and talk with him, and tell him I love him. It is harder to talk to visit him  each day and see this ravaging intruder chip away at his great spirit and drive.

There are no more platitudes about miracles or interventions, no more false hopes, no one is talking of miracles.

It could be days, or weeks or months, no one claims to know or could know. Today, Ed asked me again to produce a video of the two fo us talking. He said this is very important to him, and therefore, it is important to me. I suggested we talk about his legacy, about his passionate belief that Bejosh Farm should exist, now and well into the future.

Ed hopes his children will commit to managing and running the farm as passionately as he and Carol did. Carol says they will all do their best to honor his wishes. He and I talked about this, and I told him this sometimes made me uneasy.

This puzzled me, and I told him so. He laughed.

I asked him why this was so important to him and why he would want his children to enter a family business that he has always described as brutal and nearly impossible to survive in our current political and economic climate.

For years, I’ve heard Ed grump about milk prices and the decline of the family farm. It is really so that gravel pits and big brown cows can alter the destiny of his farm? If you know Ed, you know it is possible. But still…

Ed and I disagree all of the time, we are different, we are not people who need to hate people who disagree with us, or shout at them or vilify them or put labels on them. Our friendship is a testament to the power of love to triumph over the petty differences and arguments that plague mankind.

He would be the last person on earth to want me to bow to him or hide my feelings.

Ed’s answers surprised, challenged, inspired and also troubled me, and we had an honest talk about this, as usual. I can ask Ed anything, and he can tell me anything. I told him I have never had a family like his, never raised in anything like a family farm. I cannot imagine asking my daughter to be a writer in honor of me and my life. Nor can I imagine her doing it.

But I am not Ed and my family is not a farm family, and there is nothing much like a farm family in the outside world.

I know they will try their damnedest to honor Ed’s request and legacy, and it is not for me to have thing to say about it. If anyone can succeed, they can, and if any farm can survive, Bejosh can. As we talked, I had a much better understanding of how he feels and why, he gave eloquent testimony to the power and meaning of farms and families – the two are linked forever.

I think it was an important conversation. I learned a lot. Our bond is bigger even than cancer.

I left with a heavy heart. This is taking chunks out of me too, I will admit it, and would I be human if it didn’t?

Ed is no longer really mobile, he no longer trusts his body to walk or move as it always has. He knows where he is. He is not likely to ever really get out of that bed.

My heart goes out to he and Carol, they are strong, brave, loving and pure of spirit. I will go see him tomorrow, we will take our conversations one at a time.

You can follow the Gulley’s journey on the Bejosh Farm Journal.