My Journey

It was 20 years ago today.  Well, actually, tomorrow:  February 8th, 2006.  But I'm posting it today.  It was one of those times in my life that was forever altered. And it was unlike any other trauma and recovery that I’ve experienced in my life.  As the sun rose about 7:00am on a clear, crisp February morning, my first wife, Kim, passed away in our front room on a hospital bed which was delivered to our home the day prior. She had suffered from metastatic breast cancer for 14 months, first diagnosed just prior to Christmas 2004. At the time of her diagnosis, we had been together for three years. And we just got engaged four months earlier.  Ok, here we go. Initial diagnosis was Stage IIB .  What that means is essentially "concerning, but possible to eradicate." The physician’s advice was a radical mastectomy (removal of the affected breast) followed by a months-long regimen of chemotherapy. The surgery occurred right after the holidays, in mid-Januar...

 Anyone who knows me well, knows what a history nerd I am.  I earned my undergraduate degree in it years ago, but that only springboarded me to a lifetime of keen interest and study. And though that interest has propelled me to study and read about history worldwide and from time periods from ancient Rome to today, the study of the founding of our country - particularly the Revolutionary War and the birthing of our Republic - is of particular and acute interest. So it's no surprise that today, the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord - often stated as the "first shots fired" in that tumultuous and epic period of American  history - is quite the reflective day. If this day had occurred in years past - and I'm thinking of the bicentennial of 1976, for example - the country collectively would be celebrating, and preparing for the big event, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, next July 4th, 2026. Instead, we live ...

 (The Last Drops of Lyons) I had just gotten fired the day before.  I clearly hadn't done my research quite enough when I accepted the job in February of 2014 at a small, inner-city trades school.  Seemed like it 'could' have been a good decision at the time, but oh boy.  Working for a what I would best describe as a boatload of serial misfits led by a humorless sociopath, when I let HR know about two weeks' earlier that I was to have a change of address, my misanthropic supervisor took the opportunity to 'let me go' the day before our move.  Great. But, man, I was still excited and optimistic about the move itself!  After 11.5 years in the 'old house', I saw the move in many ways as a restart for my family and I; so many things had occurred in our former house, most notably was the fact that my first wife, Kim, after waging war against a cancer for over a year, died in our front room two days after bringing her home from the hospital.  We had only bee...

                                                                    It likely started as a small kid when we took trips to Tennessee and Kentucky each summer from our home in Kansas City.  Something about packing clothes, then often leaving pre-dawn, smelling the fumes of the diesel trucks on the highway, watching the Stuckey billboards go by.  Or, maybe it was when I was the 'navigator' of our big 2-week trip out west when I was 13.  Dad often would have me scour the Rand-McNally atlas, or the smaller, accordion-like folded state maps, for the next highway junction as we drove our Champion motorhome from Chicago to Montana, hitting iconic sites along the way:  The Great Corn Palace in South Dakota; Deadwood and Mount Rushmore, SD; swimming in the KOA campground pools (often eyeing and chatting up ot...

Well, as per usual, life and other priorities circumvent my otherwise desire to blog a little more frequently.   What, pray tell, accounts for the delay of about a year?   Good question(s). ------------------ 2023 was a busy year for my family and me.   It started out on our first-ever adventure to stay for a week in a theme park resort.   Yep, a year ago at this time we stayed at Universal Orlando.   It was quite a fun and unique experience for us.   We probably walked more in the 5 days we were there than at any other give 5-day stretch in our lives.   We mitigated that with ice cream.   Sure, why not?   I also joined a band a year ago at this time.   We cover the classic hitmakers of rock, pop, Motown, psychedelia from the vintage era of the 1960s and 1970s (peppered with some 80s and 90s).   Much of this material was what I grew up listening to as a child in the 1970s, but by the 80s and 90s it seemed to me “very uncool”. ...

My mind works in strange and interesting ways. 17 years ago today, my life utterly changed forever.  At about 7:00am on a bright and sunny Wednesday morning, February 8th, 2006, my first wife, Kim, took her final breath and slowly, quietly, seemingly peacefully died in our living room on a hospital bed we'd just arranged to have delivered as she ended her 14-month ordeal with breast cancer.  Aged 39.  I was 36. 17 years prior to that, I was barely out of high school; in fact, just in my freshman year of college.  That thought sort of blew my mind.  How much life had changed from 1989 to 2006 for me! And so it goes.   And 17 years after Kim has died, my life has indeed changed greater still.  I'm reminded of those changes, subconsciously or consciously, every day of my life.  My wife, Erika, our two lovely children, our critters, our fears, our hopes, our lives...all our own. And yet, I couldn't have conceived of any of that 17 years ago today...