Whining, Wine-ing & Winning

I don’t have to think hard at all on this one about my answer. I’d erase one phone call.

It’s been a while since I’ve written…I mean really sat down to erase my mind and just word vomit on my keyboard like I used to, a lot longer than I ever intended…and if you know me at all, you know it’s definitely not because I suddenly ran out of shit to say.

Life has just been really fucking heavy. A little over a year ago, in late July 2025, Jeff, Bee and I stood outside our house watching the moving trucks pull away. We were moving to Wesley Chapel, Florida. Our house was packed, our shit was on a truck headed to Florida, and we were right behind it. Before we even made it out of the neighborhood, Jeff’s brother called. Their mom was in the ER. A few days later, we learned she had a brain tumor, and just like that, Florida wasn’t happening anymore. Now we just had to get our everything back from Florida which was a whole other adventure not even worth posting because it was awful and so was the moving company.

We redirected our lives to Kansas City because there really wasn’t an alternate decision to make. This was where we needed to be. We needed to be close to his mom and his family while she went through radiation, chemo, appointments and everything else that came with a diagnosis none of us saw coming.

Glioblastoma. That’s the name of the monster that changed everything. For a while, she was doing really well. Really well, considering what she’d been through. She finished treatment, kept going to her appointments and did everything she was supposed to do. Then she went in for what was supposed to be a routine follow-up and we found out it had spread.

There wasn’t some huge warning that something had changed. It was a routine appointment. One of those appointments you go to because that’s just what you do after everything she’d already been through. She’s handling everything like a champ and fighting as hard as she can with a great attitude. Some days are great, others are not so great. The illness is taking the best of her, and I don’t know how else to say it. She is one of the strongest women I know. She was healthy. She’s tough as shit. She has faced things in her life that would knock most people on their ass, and through all of this she has barely complained.

That’s the part I don’t want to get lost in all of this. She is so much more than the woman in our family who got glioblastoma. She’s spent her life making an impact on other people. She was a principal for years and later a house mom at K-State and KU. She’s a mom, a grandma, a sister, a mother-in-law and a woman who has a whole lot of people who love her. I haven’t known her for my entire life, so I’m not going to pretend I can tell her whole story. I can only tell you about the woman I know. I’ve watched her go through something that would give anyone every reason in the world to be angry and bitter. I’ve watched her family rally around her. I’ve watched my husband try to figure out what the hell you do when the person who has always been your mom suddenly needs you in a completely different way. There isn’t a handbook for any of this. You just keep showing up.

Watching what this disease has done to her is heartbreaking, and it’s really unfair. There isn’t a positive spin I can slap on that sentence. There isn’t some inspirational quote that’s going to make it suck less. Sometimes life is just really unpredictable, and watching someone you love change because of an illness they never deserved is one of those times.

Next Sunday, August 23, our family is participating in the Head for the Cure 5K here in Kansas City in her honor. Jeff decided to get involved because he wanted to do something. When someone you love is fighting something you can’t fix, you start looking for the things you actually can do. He knew from the beginning that the money he raised might not change his mom’s current situation. That wasn’t the point. The point is to honor her and to recognize how tough she is. To help fund research and to raise awareness…and hopefully, someday, help change the story for another family who gets the phone call that rearranges everything. So he started fundraising and that man has raised over $5,000 and I’m so proud of him. Next Sunday we’re going to show up for her. We’re going to run. (I’m going to walk) because let’s not get carried away here, but we’re going to be there for her.

I’m not writing any of this because I want anyone to feel bad for us. I want that to be the last of anyone’s worries. This isn’t about us. This is about giving a shout out to one of the strongest women I know. It’s about recognizing what she’s fighting and how hard she’s fighting it. It’s about making sure that while we’re talking about glioblastoma and treatments and 5Ks and fundraising, we don’t forget the actual person in the middle of all of it. I guess it’s about that phone call too. The prompt asked me what event I would erase from history, and I didn’t have to think about my answer.

I’d erase that phone call but I can’t. What I can do is tell you about the woman on the other side of it and next Sunday, we can show up for her. That’s where I needed to start before I could come back here and tell you about everything else that’s happened while I’ve been gone.

And if she ever reads this, I hope she knows how much she means to all of us. I hope she knows that we see her, not just what she’s going through, but her. We see how hard she fights. We see the strength it takes to get up and keep going on the days when nothing about this is fair. We see the mom, the grandma, the sister, the mother-in-law and the woman who has spent so much of her life showing up for everyone else.

I hope she knows how many people are showing up now because of her. There are a million things I wish I could change about the last year. I wish I could take this away from her. I wish I could take it away from Jeff and everyone who loves her. I wish our family had never learned what glioblastoma was in the first place. More than anything, I wish I could go back to that driveway for just a minute. Before the phone rang. Before any of us knew what was coming. I think I’d stay there a little longer. I’d look around at my family and appreciate how ordinary that moment felt, because I know now what I didn’t know then.

At times the ordinary moments are the ones you’d give anything to get back. So next Sunday, I’ll walk every step for her. Jeff will run for her. Our family will show up for her. And when my legs hurt and I wonder why the I agreed to a 5K, I’ll remember that what I’m doing is easy. She’s doing the hard part and she’s still showing us what strength looks like.