13 February, 2007
Sitting at my desk, I glance outside... The wind howls. It is starting to the snow. Tiny flakes momentarily appear, only to be wisked away by the frigid wind. Nature has a way of speaking to us. To our very soul. The conditions outside reflect how I feel deep down inside. Cold, unsettled... In a transitional state somewhere between celebrating life and mourning death.
Death itself is not new to me, it made itself very real in the combat zones of Southeast Asia. But it is different now. Closer and more real than ever. Inevitable. I was told in late December (2006) that my mother's cancer had returned. This time in the brain stem. Virtually untreatable. They gave her less than a year... In January, her condition worsened. Affecting her sight and sense of balance she became unable to walk unassisted or care for herself. Just months before, when I was home for Thanksgiving she was so full of life.
Thinking back from this moment, it is amazing how very fast our lives can change... I left Colorado in mid January(2007). It wasn't a choice for me really. I remember knowing what I needed to do. In fact, the week before I left there I had known. There was a strange feeling somewhere deep down inside... It told me I needed to be home in Missouri. My cousin, who lived nearby in Silt, Colorado, had called saying he really needed to talk to me. I didn't think alot of it. When I saw him he told me he felt like my family at home in Missouri needed me and he felt that I needed to go home. At the time, that seemed rather odd comming from him... Still I pushed the feeling away. That week I found out why...
It was a cold snowy Tuesday morning. I was on the Beaver Creek Landing jobsite in Vail, Colorado. Something had not felt right that day... I spoke to my mother on the phone... Standing in the living room of an unfinished condo on the third floor, looking down upon the construction going on below... My mom told me that she had been in Springfield to see her doctor... They said the cancer was winning... And gave her a month to live. At that moment the world seemed to stop for me. The sounds of construction faded away and I was alone. Not sure what to think or how to feel....