Sunrise, June 15

Yesterday, we found out that the wife of our coworker (she is thirty-one and has twin girls slightly over a year old) has leukemia after having banishing the disease from her body once five years ago. She is faced with four weeks of hospitalization and chemo. This will be followed by four months of bone marrow transplant procedures. And that will be followed by…what?

I thought about this woman all night. I thought about my own wife, now gone following her own fight with cancer. I thought about the babies, the husband, Afghanistan, my daughter, and I slept only a little. At a bit after five this morning, I left my house and started driving around the valley, just to feel the sensation of motion. Eventually I stopped so that I could watch the sunrise. Posted here is a picture of the place where I finally settled to begin this new day in our always cruel and sometimes beautiful world.

--Mitchell Hegman