Life Goes On

The past few months have been a blur. From the moment, in February, when we found out Tim's mom had a brain tumor, everyone was focused on her treatment. Little did we know that by the time her treatment ended in April, her bone marrow would be annihilated by it, and she would spend most of the rest of her days in the hospital, fighting infections and slowly slipping away.

She died on Monday, Sept. 23, at around 5 p.m., and we celebrated her life at a service at her church a week later.

We did manage to have a family vacation this summer, just the three of us, but much of our time was spent traveling back and forth to St. Louis to visit her in the hospital. I'm not sure where the time went, but it flew past. Hobby projects were put aside. So was most housework. Most noticeably to our neighbors, I'm sure, we did very little to our yard.

By the time we came back from the funeral, massive weeds had overtaken the flower beds, which never got planted with annuals last spring. The grass was dry and brittle in the yard, yet had sprung up in an unsightly manner in cracks in the driveway and sidewalks.

Everything looked crispy and brown, except . . .

The mums next to the mailbox, which are perennials I always seem to forget that I ever planted, exploded with blooms--vibrant yellow bursts of color in an otherwise sorrowful-looking landscape. If ever we needed such warm, sunny foliage, it's now.