Who am I?

That’s one of the things I keep asking myself on those long walks with Bernie. I’m not who I used be; that sick guy who spent so much time in doctor’s offices and hospitals, who siphoned off so much of my wife’s life. Thank God for that. But I’m not who I was before that, either. To be honest, I hardly remember him. It was almost twenty years ago when I was first diagnosed with C.O.P.D and began the long slide down.

In the beginning of my recovery I was the man who had a double lung transplant. That persona enveloped my life. I wrote a poem about Camellia Rose, the bed and breakfast in Gainesville where I stayed in my first days out of the hospital (that’s it behind me in the photo on this blog). When I got home I ordered several golf shirts and a sweat shirt imprinted with “Transplant Inside” from Café Press on the Internet and wore them religiously. They almost always attracted attention and provoked conversations.

But eventually even the best material wears out – cloth and well as transplant stories. That’s when I started thinking who am I – really? And realized how fortune I was. This new life has given me a new chance to decide. And every day, Bernie and I are working on it.

The real point here is that whether you’ve lived though an extraordinary experience or not, you have a chance everyday to decide who you are.