I know I promised to keep future updates as upbeat as possible. But the mood that hangs over me looms like winter clouds blanketing a gray landscape. I'm floating above it all, like an airplane steady the course. Steady the course...keep your coordinates. Life gives us some of the most terrible surprises.

I think my mother-in-law is dying. I say I think because we are holding on to a shred of hope that lies in the off-beat chance a drainage tube from her brain can give her a chance at recovery. After a recent breast cancer diagnosis and surgery, she seemed on the right path toward healing. I believed in my heart I had nothing to worry about. The surgery was successful. Yet twenty four hours can stride through life and make such a difference. After surgery, she suffered two strokes, now what we know to be an evolving stroke. Fluid is in her brain, creating massive pressure, and the stroke has ravaged portions of her brain.

So we sit. We wait. I drink coffee, pretend to read, slightly listen to menial conversation. But its not menial-- it's a welcome distraction from reality. Tears burn up my throat. I fight them back, rub little droplets from my eyes, and go for a walk. I've never watched such a vibrant person fade. My grandmother slipped into dementia....we knew her mind and body would crumble. My father left us in a flash--- like a snow storm quickly bubbling up from the west heaving piles of cold snow and retreating quickly to the east. This we never expected.

Its so exhausting to watch someone die. If that's what is really happening here. I am clinging to channel her grace as I traverse this difficult, painstaking path. I am hoping some strange magnificent miracle will help her open her eyes. I feel like Sally Field in "Steele Magnolias" "Open your eyes Shelby, open. open. open." But life isn't a movie, I'm not Sally Field, and all this is really happening.

I will update you all later. I've shared my losses with you in grave detail-- so this I feel comfortable relaying. I feel peaceful typing to invisibility--- who will read this? I have no idea. But we go on living, as tired as we are.

Love you.
Jeb