A good trip and a sad return

I like Denver, but I start to get a little stir-crazy after a few months in town without a break. One of my college friends' family owns a condo in Dillon, and this weekend six of us gathered there to hang out and relax. It was a very welcome trip. My wife and I got to visit two friends we only get to see about once a year, and two more that we hadn't seen since 2001 (but they've recently moved to the Denver area, so we hope to see them more often).

It was wonderful to get out of town to spend some time with great friends, but there was a cloud on my mood that has intensified since we returned to Denver.

For the last couple of years, the mother of one of my wife's students has been living with an aggressive form of lymphoma. On Friday night, she died. I only met her a few times, but I've come to know her, her husband, and their two children a bit through stories related by my wife and through their telling of their own story on their blog (I'm omitting a link since it isn't really meant to be a public blog). I've had lots of feelings about this transition and about the rest of their journey over the last year or so, and I know I've been learning something important about humanity from them, but at the moment I can't put any of it into words.