Leave A Trace

Jehudo Epstein's 'The Dying Job'


I am a big proponent of journal writing. the top shelf of my closet is almost filled across with them. They range from picture albums, pretty covered ones with nice paper, to sheets of scrap computer paper furiously covered with ideas, and feelings. Envelopes and Mead notebooks are my Journal of choice these days.

Why? They are cheap and I feel I can write whatever I want and not ruin a pretty Journal book with the scribblings.

I was asked by to teach a lesson at a meeting for women in my church called Enrichment Night. It focused on doing the little things, like journal writing, praying, reading scriptures and serving.

So this week I noticed my mom writing in her journal. She shared some passages with me. And I read some passages about myself that I appreciated that she included...

Here are some:

"4-11-98. Amanda went through a very bad episode with her disease. She had a toxin in her blood stream that was not diagnosed for awhile. We finally decided to take her down to University of Utah Hospital. Dr. Fang is very intellignet. He changed her meds. She is doing a lot better. As well as can be expected. He said she is a hard case because she Crohns, Colitis and IBS."

Then she recorded one of the sweetest things that had been lost to my memory.
First I should say that at my healthiest in HS as an athlete that lifted weights etc. I weighed 127. My body is comfortable at 135 and after a child I think that I would be happy at 140. Here is mom's entry for April 2, 2004.

"Amanda Has been goin downhill again. For the past two month it's ben esp. bad. She got down to 118 pounds. I went down to help her when she had a colonoscopy. It is bad. She has ulcers all over her colon. They put her on 60 mg of prednisone and did an infusion of Remicade. It costs around a thousand for each infusion. Their insurance just kicked in, but they still have to cover co-pays....

"When she came home a couple of weeks ago, we all were sitting around the table. Jaden was in his blue booster seat and Amanda was feeding him his cereal. She got emotional about her situation and started crying. Jaden leaned his head over toward her and put his hands around her neck as if to say:'Oh, mom, I love you, it's okay. I hope I never forget that moment. He's only 11 months old."


















This picture was taken two months after the journal entry, when I was starting to regain my strength and weight.


Thanks to my mom's entry, I will never forget that moment.