I was 48, accustomed to phone calls from Robin Leach, beckoning me to adventurous, exotic places. But one phone call from Chicago, bringing tragedy, changed my life. That moment, the darkest I’d known, ultimately illuminated a whole new world, moving me – and my family – to an unknown continent on the other side of the world, and throwing me headlong into the most rewarding adventure of my life…
I’d had a successful career as a television producer/director, an 18-year marriage that friends envied, and two beautiful teenage daughters. Life was good, if not exciting. My future was neither frightening nor particularly exciting. Was this all there was?
My life had been about caring for others. Trying to be the perfect friend/daughter/wife/mother, but too often feeling I was never good enough.
My stepfather always said, “Man plans, God laughs.” He must have gotten a belly full. After a year in the hospital, my stepfather died, and life sent me careening around curves I never anticipated, out of control as I headed for a triple whammy that threw my off course completely. In May 2004, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Shortly after I completed radiation my mother, the one person who’d reassured me that I was doing great – that I was great – died unexpectedly while we were celebrating my daughter’s birthday at Disneyland. Just when it seemed my throat could open enough for me to hum again, the call about Karen came.
Karen was a best friend like no one else… organizing funeral details when I was too paralyzed to do so, browbeating oncologists before my first radiation treatments, to not screw up…or else. I’d been there for her too…when at 19 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, when she was in rehab, for the 3am topples off the wagon. For more than 30 years, Karen had been there for me, understanding me in a different way from anyone else, not buying my “perfect child” image for a minute.
February 5, 2004…I had just walked in from carpooling. The phone rang and it was Andy, Karen’s brother and an old friend. Karen had had outpatient shoulder surgery that morning and hadn’t come out of anesthesia. My stomach dropped to my knees.
