The last time I wrote here it was almost Christmas. While waiting for it, I packed for a move back to Denver, and as the days dwindled down to what felt like a crawl, I bravely mapped out good intentions for the next year, and posted them for all to read.

Not only was I eager for a brand new year, I thought I was ready for the next part of my life. Remember an old song that goes something about seasons, then "turn, turn, turn". Perhaps in younger bravery I imagined that described me.

I do understand trouble and pain eventually touches us all. I understand that, and know it's because of our broken places that we become stronger. As a nurse I've seen many people plagued with illneses and diseases that changed how they lived. While I reveled in turning, turning, turning as my years race by, my patients hardly heard the music of their lives anymore, but it goes on.

If you listen you may hear it, in unexpected places. I think I heard a strain of it as each little mountain town disappeared behind the uhaul trailer. I know for sure when I saw the wrap around panorama of the Rockys, notes grew bolder. Emotions tucked safely where they wouldn't allow hurt, broke free and melded. I was turn, turning again, as I've done many times, but this time it was for Denver. Most of me was more than happy, but not all. There was that part that wanted to hug daughter, Barb one more time, and hear the words about leaving we couldn't say.

As I unlocked the door to what would be my new home, notes danced around me. The only sadness or concern was for unanswered questions about a son. He would have surgery soon, and the possibility of Cancer hovered.

A few years ago our family buried another son. I still had the black dress I wore to his funeral. As I upacked it and hung it in my new closet, I looked at it, and wondered who in our family will die next. I hugged the velvety feel of it to my face, and as respectfully as I could say it, told God I'm not ready to lose another son.

Then I straightened the dress on a hanger, and shuddered a little, and shoved it farther down a closet rod. I don't like feeling so morbid, but it was the first time I'd allowed my sadness and fear about my son to turn even slightly in my brain.


Through the holidays I focused on anything happy I could grab hold of. Children playing at the mall. Grownups shopping. Christmas songs pealing out from tapes a daughter sent. A little great grandson tearing into a present, then crawling into the box it came in. Opening a gift and finding a Willlow tree carving.
Looking out the window of my new apartment, and realizing someone had cleared lots of snow off my car.


Grief and heartache has visited this family before, and will again, but tonight there's happiness and thanksgiving. My son had his surgery today, and the doctors say there's no cancer. I have to wonder if some kind of miracle took place. An awful lot of people in various churches prayed for him.


In between the recent storms the snowing stopped, and the roads cleared, more than two hundred miles of it, long enough to get back to Denver. As I write this I suddenly remember Christian friends reminding me, some of them more than once, that they were praying about this trip. Do you suppose........turn, turn.