It's been four months since Paula and I last posted to this blog, our ongoing unstructured slice-of-life journal. I guess it's both tragic and typical that the more significant the time of life, the less disciplined I am about keeping a record of it. The last four months were certainly that ... significant.
A few days after our last post, last November, during the first weekend of Paula's Vespers, we got the news that my mother had bladder cancer. Shortly after that, we travelled to Florida to spend Christmas and New Year's at her house, as we do every year. The weeks that followed were easily the most stressful & meaningful of my life. Each day was a struggle, talking with doctors & family, trying to safeguard Mom's right to make her own decisions, doing my best to make sure all the right questions got asked. Less than two months after first hearing the news, on January 23rd, my mom died. I could write volumes about last January.
Today is her birthday. She would have been 72. To celebrate, Paula and I will be releasing a geocaching Travel Bug named "Rosie Brady". We'll put a photo of Rosie in a keychain and attach it to a special metal tag with a serial number. People around the country will find it in secret stashes in the woods, then log their find at the geocaching.com website. They will then carry the keychain to the next "cache" along the way.
Each traveller can have it's own quest. For the "Rosie Brady" keychain, we're gonna ask people to bring it to every place Mom lived, each in turn:
1) Lacrosse, Wisconsin
2) Des Plaines, Illinois
3) Hermosa Beach, California
4) Alpine, New Jersey
5) Bonita Springs, Florida
When it gets to Florida, it'll then go back to Wisconsin, starting the cycle again, over and over.
Happy Birthday Mom. I hope lots of new people get to see your smiling face.
Posted by timothy at May 15, 2003 10:25 AM | TrackBack