While I am blowing you away with the beautiful place where we live, I thought I would add a few more photos of our area. Rich’s brother and his wife came to visit us a couple of weeks ago. We showed them around the area….went down to Big Fork and showed them the Flathead Lake. We then went to Glacier National Park and spent time on the west side and the east side. We saw a black bear and a beaver…several deer and some American bald eagles. The water and the mountains were the stars of the show though. Here are a few of the photos from their trip here:

I am forever playing catch up with my photos. I went to an EMS symposium on October 31, November 1st and 2nd. It is one of the larger EMS symposiums in the state of Montana. Billings is about 7 hours away by car. I stopped a few times and took some photos along the way there and on the way back. I learned a lot while I was there, met some wonderful people from across the state, and saw some fabulous views on the way there and back. Here are some of the photos I took across our state.

Thanksgiving is a bit of a hard day for me. Three years ago we all got together for Thanksgiving at my parents’ house in Houston. It was the last time the 6 of us were together as a family. I took a ton of family photos during that trip and I cherish each and every one of them now. We attempted to have a family Thanksgiving the year Joe died and it was just too hard. We decided that we would go to wherever Tim’s basketball team was playing a tournament. Last year, they were at home so we all flew to San Diego. We spent Thanksgiving at the San Diego Zoo and ate at Denny’s. It worked out pretty well. This year, Tim’s team was playing out of town and only for one day, so it didn’t make sense to head out to California for one day. Rich and I few down to Denver last week and spent 4 days in the Colorado Springs and Denver area. Tim’s team was in the area playing the Air Force Academy and then Denver University. We were able to watch Tim do his thing with his team and even got a few hours here and there to spend some time with him. We have so many friends who have retired in that area and we were able to get together with several of them, which was wonderful.

Lily flew up to Montana from Kansas City late on Tuesday night. She’ll be here until Monday morning. We went to our neighbor’s house today for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small but wonderful gathering and the Lions even won, although they tried their best to lose in the last few minutes of the game (old habits die hard).

I did meet with the Mayo Clinic sarcoma team this week. They agreed that I continue to be stable. The biggest news is that I may not be able to continue to do the telemedicine meetings via zoom anymore. They are tightening up the regulations on telemedicine starting January 2025. My Mayo doctor has to have a license to practice in Montana and he does not. Therefore, I will have to travel to Rochester, MN every 6 months for my appointments. Not incredibly convenient, but it is do-able. I had a treatment last week and here is my photo from that day:

Here are a couple of photos from today. One of Lily and then one of her “meat flowers” she made at our neighbor’s house today to make a charcuterie board look festive.

Here are some photos from our time in Colorado. So photos of Tim doing his thing and some hikes we went on in Colorado Springs and Denver and in-between. Both games went into overtime, so they were great games, but Tim’s team didn’t pull out the W on either game. That makes 3 out of 4 live games we have seen going into overtime. We’ll be seeing them play another game on the road in January.

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all have had a wonderful time with family and friends. Take the photos….play the games….eat the pie.

On Wednesday, November 13, our Joe would have been 30 years old. There would have been lots of jokes and teasing about his age. I remember when he turned 25. It was a pretty big deal to him. He was my Peter Pan….never wanted to get old. I just wish it would have been a bit longer.

Joe made his presence known to his dad and I all day on Wednesday. Before I could even squeeze out a tear that morning, our fire alarms went off for a call. Rich and I always feel closer to Joe when we are with the fire department in training or on a call. He made sure he was not forgotten on his birthday as I responded to 4 calls that day, little turkey! I called him that often when he was growing up and sure enough, on the first call, I literally had to shoo about 2 dozen turkeys away from the house to get inside. The ambulance almost took out part of the flock leaving. Yes, Joe was with us all day. Just so you know, 4 calls in one day (and then there was a board meeting as well I attended), is unusual for this time of year. We went almost a week without a call about a week ago. So yes, I know he is making his presence known when we need it most.

I want to thank the handful of people who sent texts, called, or sent a card thinking of us. It was a big birthday, and therefore a big hole was in our hearts. We don’t expect friends to remember, but there were a handful that did and reached out, and that meant the world to us.

I am going to leave you with a poem from my favorite poet, Donna Ashworth. It just makes me think of Joe every time I read it. I also leave you with a photo of Joe that I just adore. He gave me the most precious gift ever – of becoming a mother. Most people think of Joe as an adult…and I do, too, but a momma’s heart remembers her child as that….a child. The time where they adore you and wrap their arms around you with dimpled hands…when they still have all their baby teeth and have never thought of shaving. When they can play all day and want a bedtime story at night. When they aren’t quite stinky yet. I love you, my Joe. You are so very missed. Shine bright, my boy.

Between traveling and training and life in general, cancer is still an underlying current in my life. Stage IV cancer….advanced cancer….terminal cancer – these are all words that are in my medical chart. On Monday, I had CT scans done at the local hospital in the area. I was able to look onto my online chart the next morning and find out that the radiologist here feels I have not had any significant change in the last 6 months. So, stability it is! I am thankful and blessed. I know so many people keep me in their daily prayers, and obviously God is listening to you! So, I thank you so very much. My scans have been sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and they will reread the scans with their expert sarcoma radiologists. I have a telemedicine appointment on November 25th to get the official word. It is all looking good and will probably be asked to continue on the same road I have been on.

I bet you all thought I forgot about you…forgot about finishing up the rest of rest of these Africa photos! I did not! I have been traveling around a bit (again) so I fell a bit behind. Here they are though….the last photos from Tanzania – in Tarangire National Park. This was one of my favorite spots because it is known for the large herds of elephants. I had no shortage of photo opportunities with the elephants. I did get photos of other animals as well….horned bill birds (like Zazu), warthogs (like pumba), giraffes (with oxpecker birds on their necks, eating the bugs off their hides….and even a very pregnant giraffe….you’ll know when you see her photo. Our tour guide was pretty sure she would be delivering within 24 hours. The very colorful bird is a lilac breasted roller. Amazingly beautiful, right? I loved our time in Africa and I am hoping to go back again…to maybe a few different countries and national parks. Until then, enjoy these photos!

Another tribe we went to see was the Datoga tribe. The tribe we met were black smiths. They were super friendly and of course, there was singing and dancing. We had all of the women in our group take pictures with the women of the community we visited. There was a little boy there who was so curious of me. He held my hand for quite a while and did so in the women’s photo. He was fascinated by my gold medallion I wear with Joe’s badge number and really liked my watch. It is a plain field watch that I often wear if I know I am going on a fire call. It is an analog watch that has a second hand that he found mesmerizing to follow going round and round. The photo of their living area has a number spray painted on the outside. It is not an address. It was from when they took the last census a year or so ago, for the count of the people in that community. I told you it got complicated. The Datoga are semi nomadic and are polygamists. They are one of the oldest tribes in Tanzania, along with the Masai and the Hadzabe tribes. The Datoga men who are blacksmiths (there are other Datoga tribes that herd cows and goats) will get any kind of scrap metal to melt down and make into their jewelry to sell. In my photos, they had a garden hose spigot that they hammered down, melted, and poured into a mold to make a stick of metal. They have to stoke the fire by hand, using bellows made from animal skins. There is a picture of Rich trying to do this.

Tanzania is one of the biggest producers of red onions. They are planted by hand, watered by hand, and picked by hand. It is an arduous task. I have a few photos of the onion fields. There were a lot of Kenyan trucks who came in and bought truckloads of red onions, took them back to Kenya, labelled them as Kenyan onions and export them. So if you are in the grocery store and see red onions with a sticker from Kenya, know it is most likely Tanzania. Our guide mentioned several times that Tanzania has yet to figure out how to market itself to the world. I loved my time in Tanzania but people tend to know so little about it. Their president is a woman and is also Muslim. I found that fascinating! We were late getting to the airport in Arusha because she was in town and we couldn’t get out onto the streets to leave for the airport. The last few photos are from the sun setting over our spot in Lake Eyasi.

We went to Lake Eyasi for a couple of nights and toured the grounds on the shores of Lake Eyasi and we went to visit some of the tribes nearby. One of those tribes is the indigenous ethnic group called the Hadzabe Tribe. They are one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes left in the world. There are only thought to be about 1500 left in Tanzania with only 1/3 of them living traditionally. They are the people that have only an oral language (not a written one) that consists of clicking and popping noises. One thing I had never thought of before was how difficult it is to do a census on the nomadic tribes in Africa. I talked to our driver about it and he just said it was hard. They allow tourists to come and hunt with the men and gather with the women, as it also earns them money. The man in the photos with the beaded headband is this tribe’s chief. The men and women have separate roles and were separated when we first came to visit. They do not keep track of time or even the age of their children. There are no birthdays or anything like that. They do not even keep track of how old a child is. They let them develop naturally in their tribe and go with their gender groups when they feel ready. The kids wore no shoes and there were times when they got pickers or burrs in the soles of their feet. There were no tears. They simply picked up a reed or a stick and brushed them off. The soles of their feet were incredibly tough. I mentioned several times that the people in Tanzania are so incredibly friendly. The Hadzabe people were the exception. They really didn’t want much to do with us, especially the women. We were given permission to take photos and share them. They love their kids…love to sing and dance….and the kids are really happy. I loved the little girl swinging on the tree boughs. She had pure joy on her face.

Two and a half years ago I spoke to my Joe for the last time. I was lying in bed on a Sunday morning and he called me along with Rich and his wife, Michelle. They were just getting ready to leave off Rich at the airport and start heading home to Kansas City. They were anxious to pick up their dogs. Joe told me he would call me later that afternoon during his drive, or if he got tired. I got up and went to church and then crossed the street to get groceries when my phone rang. It was Michelle’s mom, telling me that they had hit bad weather and had been in a car accident and that Joe hadn’t made it. It took me over a year to go into that grocery store again. My whole world got sucked into an awful vortex at that moment. I had to call Rich at the airport to tell him our first born son was gone and he had to stay in Colorado and make it to Michelle, who was in a small, rural hospital alone. I had to call his best friend. I had to call Lily and ask her to come home and then tell her. I had to tell my parents. I had to tell his brother. I was a wreck. There were people who came to the house and sat with Lily and me all afternoon. They cried with me and told stories about Joe. Some wonderful people in my life have really stepped up in the last 2 1/2 years….knowing that when I always say I am “fine” that I might not be. I have met a bunch of new friends who are moms who have lost their kids as well. They are the easiest people for me to talk to. They know the absolute pain and horror of the whole thing….and I don’t have to try and spare their feelings. They KNOW. I have this lovely older woman who lives next door who lost her only daughter almost 3 years ago. We have a quiet way about honoring our kids together. She came over on Mother’s Day evening to sit on my front porch together. Nothing really needed to be said.

I have said it many times, but a part of me died with my Joe. I was such a smiling, happy person and now I feel it when I smile. Something that was so natural before has to be worked on. That smile rarely reaches my eyes. I have mastered the “I’m fine” mask that I wear in public. It only slips when I have to wear it too long, and it gets too heavy. Then it slips at the most inopportune times. I lost a lot of my sparkle when Joe died. However, I know that a part of him lives on in me. I can feel him in my heart when I am traveling somewhere I know he would think is cool. I feel him by my side when I am on a fire call or a medical call. I yearn to tell him that I am honoring him by doing this firefighter/EMT gig in rural Montana. I would love to compare stories on his busy city FF/EMT job and my rural volunteer one. I guess that conversation will have to wait until we are reunited again. Until then, I write him letters every day or so to tell him what is going on…like a one-sided phone call. Today, Rich and I went to the River’s Edge city park and sat on the bench placed there to honor Joe at the fishing pond. We watched the fish jump and the dragon flies fly lazily by. The tree behind his bench has turned a bright red already, letting us know that fall is not far off. The Chiefs won last night and Joe would have been pretty stoked about that. He is so very missed….no matter how much time goes by. He is my son and is loved unconditionally forever. Since I am still here, that love has to have somewhere to go and it often is in the form of grief. So be patient with those moms out there who have lost a child…it is not easy and is the worst pain I have ever felt….1000 fold. My life has changed so much in the last 2 1/2 years. My friends have almost all changed. I can count on one hand those that have stuck by me and reached out regularly. I have learned to let go of the others….including family as well. That has been very hard. I talk to Joe about it often, actually. Here is to a wonderful man taken way too soon. I love and miss you, son.