I'm Not Dead... Yet! (46 page)

The stress was gone and the birds were singing. Whoa, did you hear that? The birds are really singing! Bird watching became my new hobby.

Yes, the guy who lives for football season, now lives to bird-watch. (Okay, I still ordered DirecTV sports...I couldn’t go cold turkey)

They sang to me.

They came to me. It was as if they knew I would never, ever hurt them and they trusted me!

I began to make friends with them.

The star of the bird show was ‘my’ cardinal.

He had

a habit of showing up whenever I was down.

Somehow he knew, and he would drop by. I would have to feed my new friend.

When I was feeling a bit… blue (ennui? Screw it:
depressed
), I’d just look out the window and my cardinal would show up.

I learned how to imitate his call and he would come when I would whistle and sing his song.

If this life isn’t good for the heart, I don’t know what is.

Karla and I were riding on a carousel of love. If you don’t believe me, listen to this!

I learned how to use the ‘bush-hog’
(attached to the back of my tractor with
the large blades that cut acres of grass
) so well that I was able to create my own ‘tractor art’: I wrote Karla’s name copying the way she signs her signature using the Earth as my canvas! And I could do it ‘freehand’ with the bush-hog as my brush.

In the fall:

In the winter:

All year round. For everyone, every small plane that flew overhead, and even for the passenger flying on a big jet who happened to look down, I wanted them to see what Karla (and The Beatles) meant to me: