I know it’s been awile since I unleashed the pen and whipped out a blog.  Believe me, it’s not for lack of material.  When you live with a wife who is not only my best friend, but as she says, my babysitter at times, as well as a hormone enraged 15 year old boy/man who seems to only know the words “car” and “can I drive,” a 12 year old son who is starting to think that Madden 09 is actually real, and a 10 year old daughter who is, well, perfect!, and a yellow lab that has a bladder that contracts at 4:30 in the morning every day,  I couldn’t make up stuff better than that if I tried.  It has been a trying month recently.  About a month ago, my Mom died.  It wasn’t unexpected, but wasn’t totally expected either.  She had been sick for some time and ended up needing a heart valve replaced and bypass surgery.  She wasn’t expected to come off the ventilator after surgery, but did make it off and was doing well, until one day while eating she threw up and aspirated.  It was and has been, very difficult.  My Mom lived almost exaclty 1000 miles straight south of my house in a town called Cameron Texas.  This made running across the street to visit hard.  During our weekly talks I would often tease her about how a person raised in Wyoming could end up in the armpit of the world, central Texas, where grasshoppers outnumber people a million to one (I tease my twin sisters who live in Tampa how Wyoming girls could live in a place where Tarzan couldn’t take the heat and have cockroaches the size of a large chihuahua that hiss at you).  She lived there with her third husband of about 20 years, who was both physically and verbally abusive.  We usually ended our weekly phone conversations with me telling her that I could be down there in a jiffy and could have her stuff loaded in a U-haul and moved into my house in no time.  I learned that a person who is abused can have a difficult time breaking away from the abuser.  She is now hanging out with Jesus in Heaven, whole, in no pain.  Now having both of my parents gone has made me do a lot of introspection in how I am living my life and what my legacy will be to my kids when I am gone.  I often tell people that the most important thing that I will do is raise my kids in a Godly way and prepare them for adulthood.  As I look back, I have fallen short.  I look at things in my life that have taken time away from my family.  Is it really important to practice my guitar three or four hours a day?  Is it really necessary to pick up all the extra shifts at work?  My son asked me once recently if someone like Steven Curtis Chapman called and needed a player for a tour would I actually go?  Would I miss dance competitions, football and basketball games, and things like sitting on the couch in our boxers playing Madden on the PS3?  No Way.  Maybe it takes events like this in our lives to refocus.  As a physician who works with critically ill patients, I see people all the time who are dying and I have never heard one say anything like, “I wish I would have spent those extra days at work,” or “I wish I would have done more surgeries or procedures while I had the time.”  I have, unfortunately talked to way to many who lament the times they missed with their families.  I remember the day I was leaving for my first day of medical school, my wife telling me it will be ok (if I would have had my Partridge Family lunch box it would have been just like kindergarten), and I looked her in the eye and said, “I can do almost anything in the world, but I can’t live without you and the kids.  If I think this journey has the potential to cause me to lose you I will walk away and never look back.”  I look back and see some times that as I was putting in the hours, my family went above and beyond for me.  Recent events have caused my to refocus.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my Dad, and now my Mom.  They were great parents who sacrificed much of their hopes and dreams so their kids could follow theirs.  I will miss them both dearly.