Congrats to our Scholarship Winner!

Congratulations to Maryville High School senior Crystal Moore. On Friday night, Tye and I awarded her the 2nd Annual Brian Halley Memorial Scholarship. I have such a fear of people forgetting Brian, and I struggle daily with this issue. It feels good to do things to keep his memory alive.

We will be sponsoring a hole at the St. Gregory's golf tournament on May 29th, in memory of Brian and to promote melanoma awareness. We are also sponsoring a sunscreen station, in hopes of keeping other daddies and mommies out there safe from the sun.

The other day Tye said, what happened to your mom? Before I could answer, he said...she had a headache, right? I said no, remember it was a heart attack. Oh yeah, he said...her heart quit beeping. By now he was climbing out of the shower and I was drying him off. He turned and said, so what happened to my dad? He has been asking that a lot lately. I am trying really hard to be honest with him, but also not scare him about being sick. I responded...he had cancer called melanoma, can you say that? He repeated me. Then he said...that's why we wear sunscreen because my dad got burned and it made him die.

Well, not exactly. I said...Daddy had a mole on his leg that got sick and the doctors couldn't fix it. We talked about all the things that doctors can help us with. Then I said...sometimes a person can get really sick, like Daddy had some things growing on the inside of his body that were hurting him. But you can also get melanoma from a sunburn. I told him...we wear sunscreen so we can take really good care of ourselves, just like we take showers to stay clean and we eat healthy foods and we watch for cars when we ride bikes.

He kissed me and smiled and ran off to get dressed. I smiled at him and thought to myself, how unfair for me to have to explain this to him. The he came back in and said...I sure hope I don't get melnanoma (sp).

Me too, God help us all.