semi-daily journal of my thoughts and feelings(hopefully) On my life living in the Rocky Mountains...
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| rkymtnmusings semi-daily journal of my thoughts and feelings(hopefully) On my life living in the Rocky Mountains... .
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1/21/2006 It was a very busy day. Shirley,Halley, Ian and I attended the wedding of a couple friends of the family at 11:00 a.m., that lasted until about 12:30, went from there to the funeral of the son of a family friend at 1:00 p.m., and then tried to get back to the reception for the wedding. And tonight (actually, all weekend long) the towns of Winter Park and Fraser are throwing a birthday bash for Mary Jane. The wedding was for some friends that attend the same church as our family...that would make them a part of our bigger family-family of choice, if you will, the family that is our church community-our larger body as it were...It was a very blessed event, one that Shirley played a part in the wedding planning, shower for the bride, etc. and it was unlikely that anything would make her miss it. What came very close was the untimely and tragic death of the son of a close friend of Shirley's-and the family's. Her son was hanging out with three other friends, and they found a 22 pistol. They checked to see if it was loaded, and it appeared it wasn't. They fired twice and it didn't go off. The third time it did. it hit our friends son in the back of the head. His friends did c.p.r until the paramedics came. He was rushed to a clinic and then airlifted to a hospital in Denver. He was put on life support, and was operated on to relieve the pressure that blood was putting on his brain. For all intents and purposes he was dead by midmorning the next day, but was kept "alive" so that his organs could be harvested. I have to admit, I have contemplated, first, who would outlive whom...me or my children, and then mentally prepared myself for thier possible demise, how it would would happen, and my reaction...for instance, Evan likes to snowboard the steep, deep powder...I could see him being caught in an avalanche. And Ian...only God knows, but I afraid it wouldn't be pretty...in reality, though, as much as I try, I can't even imagine... And on top of that, it was his best friend, also 15, that did the shooting and was taken into custody. The D.A. is trying to hit him with the book...try him as an adult for aggrevated manslaughter-18 years, and the community is in an uproar. He was in custody and a suicide watch in Grand Junction, but the parents of the slain boy pleaded on his best friends' behalf, and our county judge gave him permission to return home under house arrest and 24 hour supervision, and permission to attend the funeral...under police guard and with the instructions that no one be allowed to touch him...like that was gonna happen !!! They put him in a meeting room at the church with an armed guard at the door, who was quickily overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who came to give the young man comfort, love and support, expressed with long, tearful hugs and whispered words of support. When the services started, the family filed in and sat down, with this young man sitting in the midst of the family in the front row at the slain boys' father's left hand. There was standing room only in the church, and people where there to grieve and celebrate Kale's life and memory, as well as support his best friend Matt. It was overwhelminig... And then we were able to catch the last of the wedding reception-that is where I took the pictures posted previously...and we scored all the leftovers to take to church services tomorrow-enough to feed another roomful of people-just like the fish and loaves of bread !!! And tonight if we feel up to it we may go to Mary Jane's party. They are going to have a parade, fireworks, a bar crawl, but what we want to go see is the ice sculpting and have hot chocolate and play on the sledding hill next door. "Who is this Mary Jane ?", you say...well she's not just a person...she is also a mountain...well part of a mountain...allow me to explain...The birthday party is to celebrate thirty years of the existance of the Mary Jane ski area. But the Mary Jane ski area was named for the Mary Jane Placer located there, once mined for silver and gold. the Mary Jane Placer was named for, and ultimately owned by a Lady of the Evening that used to reside in Arrow across they way, where the railroad ran over the Rockies and into Grand County. (it now runs through the Rockies in the Moffat Tunnel, finished in 1926) You can still climb the Rockies up to the remnants of Arrow and farther to what is left of the trestles of the Arrow Loop. When I do this, I often turn and look out over the valley to the west to gaze on the ski slopes of Mary Jane and Winter Park and think to myself "She must have been a heck of a lady..." :-) posted by David | 1/21/2006 06:01:00 PM |
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