September

I have not always loved September.

Not until I met Rob and he introduced me to bow hunting and elk in Montana’s mountains. 

It was magical.  The elk were magical.  The golden aspen leaves quaking in the breeze.  The bugling bulls and talking cows.  The frosty mornings and dry afternoons.  The grasshoppers flipping through the air while making one last mad dash for the summer.  The scorching sun, the drifting fog, the powerful thunderstorms and the sideways snow as the weather moves across the mountains.  The dust in my teeth and grit in my eyes.  And the smells of September – dry grass, dust, pines, and (most importantly) the musky smell of elk.  The hunger, the sore thighs, burning calves, the blistered feet, the insatiable thirst…and the joy of the stalk.  The thrill of following Rob around the wilderness, dodging grizzlies, following elk, getting chased by moose and freezing stock still while a bull stands over you dripping snot and shredding trees.  After falling in love with Rob, it was only natural to instantly fell in love with September.   It is what he did.  It was who he was…and he encouraged me to be a part of it.  I couldn’t count the bulls he did not shoot over the years while he tried to help me get my first elk with a bow.  He could have shot several each day, but he worked tirelessly to get me on an elk instead.

But…now….here we are…in my favorite month…when we should be in the mountains, but we are not. 

I think about how much has changed since that first newly-loved September.  We used to be intense, back country hunters – he with years of experience, trying to teach me – a total rookie.  We would hunt for 2-3 weeks straight plus every weekend the rest of the season.  We would become part of the mountain and part of the elk’s habitat.  We could go from 2 am to midnight, hike 15-20 miles of rugged terrain a day, stalk through the deep dark timber or across a grassy meadow at 9,000 feet.  We went all out.  Rob could walk through the woods like a cat, silent and deadly.  He routinely called in other hunters with his bugling.  He had an internal GPS that was amazing.

It was September 2012 when we hunted the Elkhorns on coveted bull tags. 

I had an indescribable, overwhelming feeling that hunt would be my “last hurrah” for getting an elk with my bow…for many reasons…and now, three years later, it seems I was right.

Leading up to that hunt, Rob had become noticeably forgetful and often his reaction time was lagging.  I tried brushing it off as we all get older and convinced myself that I didn’t need to be concerned.  Although there were many, many days, when I had doubts about his health.  For the most part, however, he seemed fine.  And then…well….then September came.

Our hunt was glorious, awesome, amazing and blessed.  It felt like a marriage retreat and a spiritual retreat rolled into one.  I loved it…every single second of that hunt…but…that hunt also gave me some real reasons to fear our future.  For it was that September, as I followed him through the mountains, that I was shocked by several obvious warning signs.  Most people would not have noticed them, or probably would not have been concerned, but I knew what was on the line for our future, and I was surprised by many things as I followed Rob around the woods that September.

This was my mountain man, who had extremely fast reflexes and reactions, who was like a cat on his feet, who could walk deadly silent while stalking through the trees or grass (I always felt 10 times louder than him no matter how hard I tried!), and who had an insanely accurate innate sense of direction.  I swear, you could blind fold him and drop him out of a helicopter in a mountain range in the pitch black of night, and not only could he tell you which way was North, South East and West, but he would walk out in a few hours exactly where he expected he would be.  He made Bear Grylls, Rambo, McGuyver and Jeremiah Johnson look like a bunch of city slicker pansies. 

But here we were chasing elk three years ago in September, and he walked very noisy.  He stumbled a lot.  Small twigs and deadfall were a problem for him, and what was worse, he seemed oblivious to that fact.  Oh, he wasn’t incredibly noisy and clumsy, and most people probably wouldn’t have even noticed, but he was noisy and stumbled enough that I really took notice, and started to worry.  There were a few times when his sense of direction was completely wrong.  I had to try to correct his course repeatedly and steer him in the correct direction.  I have always been the one who spooks the elk, but Rob spooked several bulls away from me, and generally made poor decisions throughout the hunt.  Over the course of the hunt, I began to make the majority of the decisions as we hunted, and began to feel like he was following me around the woods more than I was following him.  That frightened me more than anything.  He just had a lot of behaviors and movements that really scared me.  I felt like the handwriting was on the wall and I was seeing the beginning of a future that I had spent the last 16 years praying about.

I have spent a lot of time praying for God’s will to be done, and that He help me (and us) to accept His will regardless of what it is, and to give me the strength and peace to get through it when it comes.  There on the mountain in September 2012, I realized that I would need a lot more prayers.  Because in reality…I knew….

Now, here we are.  It is September 2015.  And I don’t know how Rob stays employed.  How has he not been fired?  Repeatedly!?! Now, instead of glimpses of “what might come someday” I only see glimpses of the old Rob, the normal Rob.  He has good days and bad days, so on good days, I talk myself out of pointing out all of his symptoms to him.  On bad days…I know we are being called to walk a road and path through life that I would prefer to avoid.  Now…now…now it is my September, and I know that He is very sick, and I need to convince him that there is a problem, and he needs to be tested for Huntington’s.  I live each day in fear that he will be fired or have a major accident at work.  I know his boss has to be extremely frustrated with his job performance.  If I can see the things that I see in the few hours that I see Rob in the evenings, then I wonder what on earth his boss or co-workers see in the 8-12 hours a day they are with him!  Maybe they just think that is who he is…but this is not Rob…this is the new Rob, plagued by mental and physical symptoms.

Laying all my stress and worry aside, we return to the mountains with our bows in hand, for it is September.  Instead of being there for weeks, we will be there for a matter of hours.  It seems that I see symptoms everywhere I look, and the guys in hunting camp notice immediately.  Grown men do not make it a point to talk about their feelings very often.  But they have spent many, many Septembers with us.  And they have known the real Rob, and they know that this is not him.  They call me the day after we left camp, specifically to tell me that they are very worried and concerned for him, and that I am not imagining things.  I love them all dearly for caring enough to say something.  It has been 5 years since George has seen Rob, and he told me it was immediately obvious that he has something very, very wrong.  He notices mental failings, movement and mobility issues, speech problems, unusual eye movement and all around physical and mental declines.  Immediately obvious.  Ouch. 

I must find the perfect time to break the news to Rob.  I am praying that God will provide an opportunity where he is mentally capable of having a conversation.  He needs to be able to focus on the conversation and be lucid and responsive in order to have a discussion.  It is impossible to have a conversation when his brain is not functioning.  He has so many bad days now, and is so exhausted, crabby and depressed after a day of work, that it is very difficult to find an opportunity to talk to him when he is mentally capable of having a conversation.  But, I will talk to him before September is gone.  I have a lot of anxiety and stress trying to find just the right chance to talk to him when he will understand what I am saying, and not knowing how exactly to tell him that one of his fears has come true. I pray, and I pray, and I pray, that God’s will and God’s timing and His good and perfect plan for our lives will fall into place.  I pray that HE provides the moment when Rob is capable to have a discussion, and to give me the strength and peace and words that I need.  Oh, how I miss my Rob, and all of those September days we spent chasing elk across the mountains.  But, now it is time to crush him with the news…

I am running out of September, and Septembers, with him.

(September 2015)