Today I got to visit with two wonderful ladies. The first was Beth, a nurse practitioner for the local VA clinic. She conducted my annual physical and in my opinion is better than a doctor. What makes her great is her soul, it glows and you can see she is truly a healer. You should see what the soul of a killer looks like…It glows too,  but not in a peaceful way.

Beth went over my labs and we ‘chit chatted’. She told me about her dead grandmother who lived in Kentucky and how she wished she could have asked her more questions about hill folk medicine. I told her about the Foxfire books. The books are something you should learn about if you’re interested in a part now lost in this world.

Yes, it was great having a physical done by her and I complimented on how I appreciated her work.

After Beth I was sitting in a waiting room at the hospital and noticed another glowing soul, this time coming from a woman born in 1923. I watched as she checked in with the receptionist. I watched how she walked and looked around her world. She was alert and very bright.

When this women sat down I struck up a conversation with her by starting with: So, 94 years old, I bet you have seen a lot.

She smiled and we talked and laughed as if we had known each other for a very long time (in a way, we have…) I learned she was born in Colorado and hated fishing. She had lived in many places and now lived in Grangeville Idaho.

She told me about one of her relatives who had lived in Alaska for 30 years after have had worked in a uranium mine in New Mexico where he received severe lung damage and skin damage.

She told me how he had fallen off a roof in Alaska and a crazy neighbor would come over, look at him, and walk off. Finally on the third day the neighbor walked to a telephone and made an anonymous call to the authorities. She said her relative had a broken back and legs and that it was a miracle he had survived. As a footnote, the man moved out of Alaska to finally finish his life in a vet home where he lived for five years before dying.

We talked of moose, of dead animals on the highway, of how her son was on the hood wiping the window as she drove them through a snow storm… It was wonderful.

Today was indeed a good day to live and to have had the privilege of talking to two good souls was indeed, a pleasure.

As I left the waiting room I asked her name of which I will not share but I will share that she said, “I will see you again…” and I said, yes, yes you will.