My mother lost her 14 year battle with cancer in June of 1988. I can still remember walking out of the hospital that early morning and being amazed at what a beautiful day it was. I thought to myself “This can’t be right, it’s supposed to be gloomy, cloudy, rainy and miserable on the day your mother dies.”
But that’s not the way she lived her life and, in my opinion, that is the kind of day she would want us to remember. Sunny, blue skies and a few fluffy white clouds meandering by.
When we first moved out to Utah, she and my dad discovered this huge tree out in the middle of nowhere, (just past Notom, Utah) 4 or 5 miles down a dirt road just outside of Capitol Reef National Park. It became a family destination, for years friends and family would meet at “the tree”.
Just west of the tree, the creek that ran past it had dug out a huge natural amphitheater, bordered by a straight cliff several hundred feet high. After the memorial, all 4 of her kids, their spouses and her grandchildren (at the time) drove down to the tree and early the next morning had our own small memorial and threw her ashes to the wind from atop the cliff overlooking the amphitheater. (Did you know that you can, and should, get an actual BLM permit for this?)
That day there were tears, but the night before we were joking around, debating on where mom was going to spend the night (in the front seat of my car) and whether we should leave the keys in the ignition or not (she might have headed into town for a few drinks).
Her granddaughter, my niece, will be running in the 2012 Provo City Marathon on May 5th, to help raise funds for the Huntsman Cancer Foundation. This is a cause close to my heart, and I usually don’t solicit donations on my blog, so I’m just saying that if you are so inclined, if you already donate to Cancer Research and want to do it in my mother’s name, click on the picture below.
