Atomic Tumor

Today's the birthday of a special 10 year old boy, a little boy who just lost his mother. I hope he's having the best birthday he can muster.

His mom was a blogger, part of the Rocky Top Brigade. Her husband kept a hopeful vigil on their blog Atomic Tumor, while there was hope and has kept a diary of celebration and mourning of her life since she died.

I don't know them. I knew of their blog. I wouldn't say I had been a regular reader, but I did occasionally check a post here and there. I guess maybe there were like fellow residents of my subdivision. I might nod at them in passing.

Since he began keeping his vigil, I've been reading more regularly. I admit I thought his hope was admirable but misplaced. But then I believed that she would pull through, too. The power of his hope was so strong and so convincing. I didn't check the internet for a couple days and when I saw that she had died, I felt almost a physical jolt. She was only 29 years old - the mother of two children. She was about to graduate, she had hopes of a new career.

In his writing, he describes places that I know: Sophie's, the Krystal* on the Strip where they had their first meal together as a romantic couple. Somehow, through the miles it makes it more real for me. But even if it weren't it would be so touchingly sad, but joyful, too. He really has celebrated their life together through that blog.

Her name was Barbara Jamie Bearden Kilpatrick. Here's the obituary her husband wrote for her. But the whole blog of late has been a moving testimony to her life and the people that she loved.


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*That would have totally worked with me. No matter how bad English food is, they haven't come up with anything as disgustingly yummy to my tastes as a Krystal. I would, if not kill, then threaten or maim for four cheese Krystals right now - I'd kill for it if it were washed down with a SunDrop.