Okay. True confession time. I cry in the car. A lot. And not only at this time of the year when the pageant is right around the corner but all the time. Music has always been a big part of my life and the songs along the way help me mark the events in my path. The songs make me cry. Happy tears, sappy tears, sometimes (but not often) sad tears.

On my drive to Stillwater this a.m. it was no different. Flipping through the Sirius I came upon “One” by U2.

Bono sang.

It was dark back there. And early. Around 4:30 a.m. on Highway 60 headed towards Stillwater and I was all alone. Did I mention it was dark?

The words blasted me right back to last October when I was staying with my mom before she went to be with the Lord. At her request and my aunt’s urging, I had wrapped things up here at home as best as I could so that I could go stay with mom for a few months. I figured that I could do that since, if I have my computer and my phone, my business is pretty portable.

What I learned when I got there is that any little noise that my phone made disturbed my mom so I eventually put it on quiet. I would try and return calls while she was sleeping but often I couldn’t connect with the people and then would miss their calls when they called back. Finally, in desperation, I asked my current Mrs. Oklahoma, Rachel, if she could call the potential contestants back, make my apologies and answer their questions. Rachel assured me that she would be more than happy to do that. She carried me.

Mom and I had a lot of fun for the first two weeks I was there. We laughed, we sang, we talked. But the second two weeks were really tough. Mom’s disease progressed faster than anyone thought that it would. Even the doctor seemed surprised.

My brother, Jon (I call him Jonny, I can’t help myself) spent almost as much time as I did when it started being really hard. By this time, mom needed pain meds every two hours. Jonny would come so that I could go to bed at nine. He’d do the meds at eleven and one and then I’d get up at three and kick him into the bed so he could get some more, better sleep. Jonny and I had some of the most amazing experiences with mom as she was going through the death process and I could not have gotten through that without him. He carried me.