Living the Life My Mom Couldn't
Marking Time with A Marble a Week My Mom, Jo Ann Young, died of colon cancer in October 1997. I was 43 years old. She was 61. This photo of us together was taken shortly before her diagnosis. Shortly after her death, I filled a round glass vase with glass marbles. Each marble represented one week of my life if I lived only to the age of 61. I started with about 220 marbles. Each week, I would throw one of the marbles into my garden. I was making a symbolic promise to myself to live my life at a run and with purpose, in loving memory of my Mom. When, I celebrated my 60th birthday, I was down to about 10 marbles. I got my job offer for the Doha gig and threw the last of the marbles into the garden as an act of making way, moving on, and living larger. I was now living longer than my Mom had lived. I remember Mom sitting at the kitchen table, just months away from her final days. She said she wanted to visit Hong Kong. My head snapped around to look at her. W