Cancer Sucks Game #1

Mom's cancer has returned. 

Life's challenges have the ability to weight heavily on your mind. It can sometimes become all encompassing. It sometimes fades to just the voice in the back of your head. But it is always there.

In hockey, you have to spend sixty minutes focused on nothing else. This holds true in any sport, it is sometimes the duration that changes. Nonetheless, when I work on the ice, I have to focus for sixty minutes. With nothing else in my mind but the game.

As refs, we talk about compartmentalizing. No matter what happened during the day, that week, that month. No matter the fight you had with your wife. No matter that work may not be going your way. When you step on the ice, you have to dedicate the next sixty minutes to the task at hand. Be there and not lose focus.

Generally, I don't have to spend a lot of time compartmentalizing. My wife and I don't fight. We rarely even disagree. Work rocks, I am living the dream. But when my Mom is sick, it gets tough.

This time, it is going after her liver. I know she is in good hands. I know she has good docs. I know that the medicine can work. But it is still scary. Like I am five years old and scared of being alone.

So, to find a way to get it off my mind for sixty minutes and to still carry it with me in a healthy way, I did this.

Game 1 was Army v Air Force, 1/11/2013