A Summer of Drought, Extreme Heat, Loss and Grief, and Transitioning to the Fall Season of Embracing What Really Matters
The summer is finally winding down, and with it will go the heat waves and high heat index days, the lack of rain and lack of prime season pasture growth, and the fear and worry and anxiety of this very dark season. As our planet experienced the hottest July temperatures ever recorded, my father's cancer spread throughout his body and his life wound down to its final days. As the West experienced a seemingly never-ending heat dome, and Canadian wildfires burned out of control causing air quality to plummet even here in the Midwest U.S., my father began receiving hospice care back home in Michigan. While thunderstorms and extreme humidity repeatedly battered my childhood stomping grounds in Southeast Michigan, my father's conditioned worsened. Back in Central Illinois, I battled heat indexes and dry pasture grasses, a sheep down with extreme heat stress and respiratory distress, all the while worrying about my father as I saw him slowly become less and less of his old self dur
