This Cowboy's Naked Truth

Laying here at 12:18 in the morning, unable to sleep because the body just hurts to darn much.  Been taking some pain medication tonight to knock the edge off, but these bones are just on fire so I thought I would take the time to try and get my mind off it and type on this here blog.
I was thinking back about my life, where I have been, what I have done, and more importantly, where am I going.  Everyone wants me to finish my memoirs, and I am working on them, but there just stories like anyone else has.  I ask myself, what makes mine any different?  What's the big deal?  Why would anyone want to read them?  Then I thought of what a good friend of mine said.  She told me that I should write them for my children so they would know about my life.  So, I continue to pound away at them, hoping someone will want to read them.
As I travel through this journey I am on, battling this cancer that has just riddled my body and has taken away so much, my goal is to try and help others overcome.  We all have trials and tribulations.  We are all battling something in our lives.  Some people like myself have lived it, breathed it and seen it.  There just isn't much left that I haven't experienced for my life has been that colorful, so perhaps there is another reason to keep writing.  I hope so.  I like to try and make a difference in someones life, just as any decent human being would want to do.  I believe it's in our nature to try and help, put a smile on a face, offer inspiration and hope to a troubling soul.
This past month has been quite adventurous.  After bouncing around a couple of living arrangements I have a place to lay my head that is warm and comfortable.  Sleeping in a truck that is five feet, five inches wide when you're six foot is just not comfortable lol.  I can remember spending many a night sleeping in or under my truck when I was on the rodeo circuit but I was also forty years younger and I could handle it.  It's embarrassing to be in my shoes right now.  I worked all my life and I worked hard.  Never in a million years would I have thought I would be homeless and though I am not living on the street, I am somewhat homeless.  Now, I am not playing a sad violin, but merely trying to make a point.  I spent years trying to keep up with everyone else and I failed miserably.  Had a house, fine cars, beautiful furnishings, pool, pets, dining out, insurance on everything, retirement and health.  Then one day, three months after buying our first home, the housing market collapsed and so did my business.  The dominoes began to fall.  First, all the luxuries were cut from the budget.  I know so many of you have gone through this but let me tell my story.  Then the retirement was being eaten away trying to make it to the next month.  Soon, it was all gone.  Lost the house, cars, life insurance, everything that we had was gone.  Not because of laziness or lack of trying, it just happened and one day you wake up and what was, is no longer.  The stress on the marriage was unmanageable and soon it began to implode.  We moved from a beautiful home to an two bedroom apartment and then the news came that I had this cancer.  When I first learned what I had and the stage it was in, I was shocked.  I refused to believe what I had been told.  There was no way in hell that I had this.  I had taken great care of myself all my life.  I was in the best shape a 60 year old man could have been in, but when my oncologist told me that unless I had a transplant I would only have six to eight months  to live, things began to set in.
I was diagnosed in September of 2012.  Thinking that I only had so much time, I enrolled back into college to finish something that I had started over forty years ago.  Over the next two months my body started going through some hard changes.  I began to lose weight and ended up going from 210 pounds to 145 pounds.  I would spend seven of the next twelve months in the hospital.  We were receiving assistance from my church and from the state.  The stress of everyday living was taking it's toll on my wife at the time, our two beautiful daughters and me.  All my pride was shredded.  I felt like the lowest man God had ever made.  However, there was a bright side to all this.  It's called humility.  I was stripped of all worldly possessions.  Stripped of my physique that I spent years in the making.  Stripped of my health, given cancer, for the second time.  Eventually, lost my wife and not having my daughters come through the door giving me a big hug and a kiss.  Of my five children, I have completely lost two of them for neither of them will have anything to do with me and for why, I really don't know, but if they can't tell me, I can't try to fix it.  So, I move on for I have three left that do have me in their lives.  So, here I lay tonight and you would think I am feeling sorry for myself but I am far from it.
This cancer, it's no big deal!  I could lay around and feel sorry for myself and I would have every right to do so, but I don't.  I haven't complained about it, I haven't let it beat me and by God, I will put this behind me just like the cancer I beat twenty three years ago.  Life is a rodeo.  Each rodeo is different.  Sometimes you win the trophy buckle and sometimes you leave with no money and broken bones, but you know you have to get on down the road to the next one and you know you will have to ride regardless of whether you hurt or not.  You have too!  If you don't, you've given up, laying around like a wounded dog, licking it's wounds and shivering in the corner.  I welcome this opportunity to have this cancer.  I say, bring it on!  This is the best you have?  I don't want to go through the ordeals that I am about to face.  I will readily admit this, but I will walk in that hospital with a smile on my face, some jokes to keep the nurses laughing, an attitude that will be inspirational to my fellow patients and I will walk out, unassisted, so I can rebuild my life.  Everything I had was just stuff and stuff can be replaced.  What can't be replaced are relationships and though it seems that some of my friends have nothing to do with me anymore, I have been blessed to have acquired much more than I lost.  I have nothing to complain about.  Nothing!  Yes, my life might not be going the way I want but I have so much to be thankful for and as y'all say, God has this!
My thanks to all of you that have given or your money, food, items that I will need in the hospital and recovery, support, prayers and love.  Not sure how I can repay the kindness but I will always have your back.  You will always have a cowboy in your life as long as I am alive and I plan on living long.
Goodnight y'all!