On the Way Out Series
Vol. 4
Part 7
I met Doc Holliday today.
Well, not really, but the saloon in downtown Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
A short 45-minute drive from my new residence in Parachute.
It's funny. I coughed a bit along the way, coming and going from Glenwood. I have a respiratory problem, which will not go away. I've already had two hospital visits in the past month and I'm hoping the clean Rocky Mountain air will make me a new man.
Legend has it Holliday had his share of coughing as well. I mean the old gunslinger/dentist suffered from tuberculosis. Unable to continue his profession, Holliday left his dental practice and became a card player and a quick draw artist.
Holiday spent his final days in Glenwood Springs and left this world at the age of 36. His gravesite is marked in Linwood Cemetery and is a popular must-see activity for out-of-town visitors. It's a scenic, 0.7 moderate hike, near the downtown area, located at the corner of 12th St Ditch and Bennett Avenue.
One of my favorite Western movies was Tombstone and the great actor Val Kilmer played the legendary gunslinger.
During the emotional deathbed scene, Kilmer had ice cubes planted in the bed in hopes of raising the stakes a bit for his final performance in Tombstone. It worked. Historians documented that Holliday wanted to die with his boots on. It wasn't to be and Kilmer's performance included eyeing his feet at the very end of the final scene and uttering the words: "I'll be damned...this is funny."
As I made my journey back to Parachute, I once again eyed the beautiful Colorado landscape on both sides of the road. I continued to recall the final movie scene of Tombstone with Kilmer and Kurt Russell, who played the famous lawman Wyatt Earp.
What struck me about the performances of the two actors was how they portrayed the close friendship and love they had for each other. As a senior citizen, I have finally discovered that we all are looking for the same thing. To be loved and to be cared about. I've spent so much of my life feeling invisible at times. I've come to realize we all have felt such an emotion during our short stint on this earth. I know now that I'm not alone with such thinking. It goes with the territory. It's part of life.
What we senior citizens have in common, during our retirement years, is to sit back, relax...and enjoy the life we have...and enjoy our final journey.
There's a big world out there. Maybe I've found my spot in the Rocky Mountains.
Along the Western Slope, that is.
As for all my followers and readers on my Senior Center publication on Medium and my blog at Bookemdanosports, you might as well follow along.
So, stay tuned.
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