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I woke from my double mastectomy on February 20, grateful to be alive.
My breast cancer had been caught in time. As I lay in that hospital bed, still foggy from anesthesia, I learned that my son Parker’s friend’s father had gone missing.
That morning, he had gone out for a cross-country ski near Bear Creek in Telluride, the same town where both of our families had moved just one year earlier. He never came home.
Three days later, they found him buried beneath seven feet of snow, killed by an avalanche that released above him.
We had both been called to Telluride. I felt it deeply on an early family trip, a pull to uproot our lives and start over in this mountain town. He felt it too: same year, same certainty. Something larger than us guiding two families to the exact same place.
One year later, I was diagnosed with cancer. He headed out for what should have been an ordinary ski.
I survived my February 20th. He didn’t survive his.
As I lay there healing, barely able to move through the pain, tears rolled down my cheeks when I learned he had been found. Buried under snow.
The tears still come every February 20th. The questions come with them:
Why was I the lucky one? Why did I get to recover while his wife had to figure out how to tell their four children that their father wasn’t coming home?
We were both pulled to Telluride by the same mysterious force. We both faced our February 20ths that morning, but the only difference was time.
I was given more of it.
Every year on this date, I pray for his children. I pray for his wife, left to navigate life without her partner. And I sit in gratitude so profound it aches because I get to hug my children.
I get to watch them grow.
I get to be here.
I don’t have answers for why I stayed and he didn’t. I don’t know how the math works. But I know this: being the one who gets more time is not a reward—it’s a responsibility.
And maybe that’s the point.
Show up.
Be present.
Love fiercely.
Create something that helps others.
Don’t waste what was given.
Not because survival has to be earned, but because time is the most fragile thing we have.
His children don’t get more time with their father. His wife doesn’t get to grow old with her partner. That truth humbles me every single day. As I step into 2026, I choose to believe I’m still holding that fragile gift of time. Not because I trust tomorrow—cancer cured me of that illusion—but because today, right now, I am here.
And if I’m here, then I must answer the question that’s followed me since that hospital bed:
What am I going to do with this time?
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