A Year In Review - Reflections of 2018!

You take the good🎶You take the bad🎶You take them both, and there you have the facts of life🎶

What an extraordinary year this has been. We have certainly had some great days, some moments where we marched, celebrated birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, reunions, weddings, high school friends paint and sip party, family, concerts and good times. Our children graduated this year one with a Bachelors and the other a Masters degree. We are so proud and excited for their furtures. On New Years Day, January 1, 2018, we had a brunch and created a vision board. There we were with our poster boards, magazines, sciccors and other materials laid out on the floor as we created our individual desires. We were all excited for what was to come in 2018.

It was a year of family fitness and health goals in action as we did our 40 days of being vegan during lent. We weaned ourselves back to our diets by going vegetarian, pescatarian to anything goes. Although we still held each other accountable, we drifted off into our own regimen. The King immersed himself in playing the guitar, an instrument that he used to play but after years of not playing, he decided to get back into the rhythm of things. 

There was quite a bit of traveling as I presented at a cancer conference in Chicago.  I was also a featured speaker for a health and wellness event. It was during one of my trips away where I was going to the Hill in DC to speak with my State Senators and Congressmen/women when I got a call that my mother had taken a terrible fall and was admitted to the hospital as her hip was fractured. We were all very concerned as our mother was 95 years old and not a sickly woman. However, there was a concern that she may not make it as it is pretty common for the elderly to die due to other complications that often accompany a fractured or broken hip. I remained hopeful as my brother would keep me updated on her progress and we would FaceTime and I can check in on her directly. 

It was now August and we were relieved that our Mother was able to celebrate her 96th birthday incidentally, the following day was my brothers birthday. However, he told me that he was not feeling too well and in no time things went from bad to an extreme case of worse. Three days after his birthday, my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. 4 weeks and 4 days after his diagnosis, my brother was gone. What was most incredible was our mother’s passing, she passed away two days before my brother. In fact, the day we went to see our brother in the hospital we did not tell him about our mother who had died that morning.  Of all the amazing things that could happen, our brother had to be revived the morning after our mother passed away. Somehow, I wonder if he saw her in the spirit realm. While we went to tend to our mother’s arrangements, we received the call that our brother had passed. It was an indescribable experience. 

We braced ourselves and faced each farewell. The outpouring love and support from our family, friends, church and in some cases strangers was overwhelming. There were other family challenges that were also in the mix, uncertainty with health issues kept me on my toes. There was no time to relax. There was still work to be done, traveling, continuing research, writing the book and planning for 2019. After my brother’s death, I decided to take the documentary, The Day That Changed My Life on a screening tour. We had a private screening in November and we are currently filling in dates across the country in churches, college campuses, theaters and other venues. The documentary was shown in the theater in the Fall of 2014, 2015 and 2016.  However, there is a sense of urgency to bring awareness through the journeys of those whose lives have been touched by cancer, especially to the underserved communities. In addition, the book The Day That Changed My Life - Cancer an uncertain journey will soon be published and available. 

 
Through it all, I am reflecting on 2018. It was quite a year. I am missing my mother and my brother. I will miss the phone calls with my mother where we will sing medleys of her favorite hymns, and I will miss her breaking into a song where she would hit a high note and hold it for as long as she could, I will miss our jokes, the laughter and the conversations. I miss my brother’s daily text messages that would come early in the mornings around 5:30am. I will miss our conversations, our FaceTime check ins, our laughs and even our disagreements. I will miss saying I love you to them both.  However, I surrender to the order of life as I respect the process and with a grateful state of mind, I give thanks for having had them in my life. I give thanks for my King, our children, my grandchildren, family and friends - I will treasure each moment.

As I enter into 2019, I am open and ready to receive all that it has in store. Although at times I may feel sad, and overcome with grief, 2018 has exposed my strength, my faith and my resilience.

Cheers to 2019!!!