the last picture of my mom

This is the last picture of my mom, taken by my sister just 6 days before she died, and after she had a perm. She doesn't look like someone who was going to die in less than a week. But I guess that is a good thing. Barbara send me this picture with the following words from Thomas Hardy's Moments of Vision

I am the family face,

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Protecting trait and trace

Through time to times and on

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion

Saturday my friend Tom and I ran in the Salt Lake 1/2 marathon. We devoted the run to my mom, our friend Bob, and his dad...all of them gone this past year, leaving an emptiness that not even a good run could ever replace. But we remembered them and ran, thinking of them sitting "up there" watching us and being proud.

We thought of them and talked of them until the last two miles. We silently ran our own race then, alone with our memories and our losses. I came in third in my age group. Ma would have been proud even if she thinks I am too old.