Connections

Hi,

October is always one of my favorite months of the year. Don't get me wrong, I love summer and always will because of the hot weather and summer activities in general, but October has a lot of things going for it also. To start, my wife Stephanie's birthday is on the 25th and my Aunt Mary Ann (an avid reader of this blog) has a birthday on the 2nd. Also, the weather has cooled down a touch and going for a run in the afternoon is great. We can't forget Halloween, which is always awesome. The list goes on for a while but there is another one thing that I find important about October, it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In recent years, this has become much more evident as you see signs in grocery stores (I donate at least a dollar every time!) as well as on TV and even now in the NFL, with the introduction of pink accessories like gloves and hats to wear on the sideline. This is important because it gives many people a chance to reflect on a family or friend who has had to deal with this awful disease. According to the American Cancer Society a woman's chances of getting breast cancer in her lifetime are a little less than 1 in 8 and the chances of a woman dying from breast cancer is 1 in 35. I am not going to inundate you with a ton of stats on this but I just wanted to be clear that you definitely know someone who has been affected by this disease. Sadly, my mother was 1 of the 35 who did not survive her bout with cancer. I miss her all of the time. The first year after her passing was insanely hard. Every holiday, birthday, or event was the first without her present. Now that's it has been almost 5 years, the scar is still very much there but I am able to go through these events and smile thinking about her rather than having a breakdown. While I still have those breakdowns on big occasions or just a random day, they are few and far between and I think my mom would prefer it that way. She wants me to smile when I think of her, and I do. That brings me to the comic above.

After college when I moved home for a bit I used get up in the morning and read the paper with my parents. My mom and I both loved the comic Get Fuzzy. It hasn't been as good in recent years but back then, it just cracked us both up every day. If we didn't see eachother in the morning before I headed to work I would come home later that day and say, "Man, did you read Get Fuzzy today!? It was so good." Then we would have a 2 min exchange. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal...but it was OUR deal. It was one small little thing that connected my mom and me. I loved it, and I still love it. Now, every time I read that comic, I wonder if she would like it, and it makes me think of her every single day. This one in particular she would've loved. She thought Bucky Katt was hysterical, and everytime he would get up to something (in this case, dressing up as a bat by putting a pot with wings on his head) she would point out the picture and say "Look how funny he looks!" Second to last panel, Bucky is standing there with the pot on his head, tongue out, just looking guilty. That's the shot.

I had other little things with my mom that we'd share but this was definitely one of the tops. Nowawdays, I am starting to find little connections with my son Noah such as watching music videos together in the morning or playing the Uke for him. I love these little moments and one day I will be able to tell him about these things that we did.

Happy October!

"While We Wait"

Conor