Beginnings: Part 2 - The Curveball

Ever find yourself in a place you never expected to find yourself in, hearing news you never wished to hear?

August 1st, 2013, landed me in just such a place, in the ER with my parents, expectantly waiting for word from the doctor. Just hours earlier we'd rushed there after my dad began acting strangely. The typical Thursday routine of my parents coming over to help out, my dad working with me on home renovation projects while my mom watched our boys (7 and 4 years old, as well as our newest son, 4 months old), had become anything but routine that day. It started with my dad making uncharacteristic mistakes in his handiwork, then struggling to use the computer (previously never a problem), and then by dinner time, mixing up his words to the point where the rest of us were giving each other quizzical glances. Jason (my husband) had urged us to take my dad to the ER, having the sense about him to realize all these symptoms might be pointing to a stroke.

A stroke seemed scary enough, but when the ER doc came in with word of the test results, we weren't prepared for what he said: my dad had brain cancer.

In the days/weeks that followed there was surgery, hospital stays, multiple doctor's appointments. I watched my dad go from a sharp, active senior to an elderly invalid in the blink of an eye.

And 2 months after his cancer was discovered, he was gone.

Just. like. that.

And although I'd experienced the awful ride of grief when my mother-in-law had passed 7 years earlier, and then again with a miscarriage a few years later, having my dad die was a grief all its own. 

We wouldn't have chosen these losses, but none the less, they were teaching J (Jason) and I that life is fleeting and holds no guarantees. We had a greater sense of not wanting to let it aimlessly pass us by. For J, that meant stepping away from his unfulfilling corporate job, and for me, it meant finally tackling that pile of pickets in our garage (in the header photo, you can see said pickets taking up garage space as my dad & I worked).

Reclaimed wood frames, anyone? 

The curveball had set the ball a-rollin'.