There was a day when my life changed forever, and yet the world seemed to stand completely still. The day when everything I had known, and thought, would once be became something different. It has taken many years to understand that this change is something that has altered my world, but that it doesn’t necessarily have to result in a negative impact, unless I allow it to. A life lesson learned, time is precious, life is unpredictable, and Bob Dylan is a legend.

I had just drifted off to sleep, was still slightly in that subconscious place where the senses are still mildly alert, but the rest of the body is slowly shutting down, one component at a time. My cell phone rings, I squint in an effort to see the number without my contacts. The screen shows an area code, nothing more. Unfamiliar to me, I silence the ringing and return back to the comfort of my (then) husband’s embrace. Again the ringing starts, more awake now than before, I try to see the number on the screen, same area code, still missing the remaining digits. At this point I didn’t have any thoughts of concern, to be honest I was annoyed that the phone continued to ring with no messages left. This was a feeling I would later have regret about. Once again, I returned to the comfort of my bed, and the desire to drift off to the world of my dreams. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to live a nightmare.

Loud, rapid knocking on my front door startles me from bed. I rise to see who the caller could be at this late hour. I stumble towards the door, still “squinty” to find my way through the house (it had never occurred to me to put my glasses on). Opening the door was like letting the flood gates break free and all the water of the world seemed to come crashing into my home. I struggled to maintain balance against it’s force. My mother was standing in front of me; and even through my blurred vision I could see that she had been crying, something was definitely wrong. All she managed to get out before bursting into tears again was “it’s your dad.” Confused, I stared at her, asking what it was she was talking about. Her cries were that of despair, and the awful sounds of chocking sobs were slowly escaping from her mouth as she attempted to finish the news. It was at that point that she said the words that I would later remember as being the three words that made the world stop turning, “he is gone.”