Marshall update: Today is six months since Consuelo passed away. Time is strange because sometimes it feels like it has only been six days and other times it feels like it has been six years. The impact of the loss is still very raw. Tiburcio and I are just taking it one day at a time. As I've said many times during this journey, when forward is the only way, you have two choices, you can sit down on the trail, or you can take the next step and continue on. We continue on.

If you want to visit Consuelo's niche at St. Mary's Cemetary, she is on the back side of the columbarium (the marble urn condo to the right of the statue of Saint Mary.) There are a couple of small painted stones on the ledge. Please feel free to leave one for her if you want.

In one way, continuing on meant for me to get clean from cancer. To that end I had laparoscopic surgery to have potentially malignant lymph nodes removed on February 1. It was a five-and-a-half-hour procedure and I thank the doctors and staff at Swedish 1st Hill Medical Center for their fine care. I am recovering about as well as I could hope, and the pathology results so far look good. I am on a low-fat diet (<20g per day) for three weeks and no lifting more than 15lbs for six weeks. I'm back to work and being careful about the lifting restriction.

As winter moves to spring, the Sunrise Rotary Blood Pressure Check/Stroke Awareness booth will come back once or twice a month at the Port Townsend Saturday Farmers Market when it starts up. If you are going to the market, please check it out and say hi, there is a good chance that I might be there working the booth.

I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but to "pay it forward" for all of the Grace we have received I volunteered to serve on the Port Townsend Marine Trades Association Board of Directors. At the first meeting, I didn't keep my head low enough and somehow became the Treasurer for this year.

Also, at Mass one Sunday there was an announcement from the parish's branch of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul that due to a new safety rule from the Seattle Archdiocese, there needs to be two members physically present when they hand out the vouchers to the needy and they needed more people. It is a great organization that passes on about $13K/month (over 98% of funds raised) in vouchers for food, clothing and utilities and is available to help all people of need in our community, regardless of religious affiliation. I thought to myself that I am quite good at being physically present, some might say very good, so I marked down that I could volunteer. When they called, they told me that they only distributed vouchers during the workday. Since I am still working, that does not fit my schedule but before I thought to hang up, they said that there was another way to volunteer. I still didn't think to hang up. They said that their grant writer was 89 years old and needed to hand off those duties. I did think about hanging up but didn't. So now I am the grant writer for SVdP. One might ask "But Marshall, you don't know what you are doing?" And they would have a strong point, but still, we move forward.

In truth, volunteering has taken a back seat to surgery prep and recovery. But now that I am on the mend and hopefully move from cancer patient to cancer survivor, I will devote more attention to them. If you are interested, the PTMTA Lifeboat Fund will be the recipient of the March 6 Bingo Night Fundraiser at the Hilltop Tavern. If one is interested in helping the SVdP, please let me know.

A thousand thanks for all of the amazing support you have given me and my family.

With Love and Gratitude,
Marshall