This time last week we were rolling into Winnemucca, NV after a long day's drive. We were only half way to where we were going. Usually, the cattle town in the middle of nowhere is merely a pit stop. A place to get gas, peel ourselves out of a deep road slumber to use the loo, and then poke fun at all the crusty, dated signs flashing for no one all big and Las-Vegas-like in front of the Casinos. This time was different because our trip didn't start like they usually do with our pre-dawn rising and loading in the car and a road trip straight through. This time we slept in Nevada. We had decided just the night before to make the 1000 mile road trip to see my brother in law. A phone call earlier that day informed us that he was in the hospital. It seemed the cancer was getting the best of him. "Well, sis", said my birth mom's husband - a dear of a farmer man, "you probably oughta get here in the next day or two".
And so we did. We packed up the kids and the car and the animals and hit the road. I've never seen the vast Nevada desert blanketed in snow. Not that I can remember anyway. I'm not sure if it's because we don't usually go through there in a winter time of year (what? It's June?) or because I'm usually asleep. Either way, it was beautiful to see. The parts that weren't snowy were drenched in golden setting sun with every shade of green and gold that sage and sand and buckbrush could possibly be. Another new thing for me. I had never thought about it before seeing it bathing like that. It's usually high noon, washout in light when we are there. Usually we don't see the wild donkeys either but the last two trips through we've been almost close enough to touch them. 
The afternoon of our second day on the road we sat in the family room of the hosptial in Ogden, UT. Conversations about what to do next slid heavy across the floor and I wasn't sure if my role was to just be there or to offer observations. I did both. I'm five years new to this family. I'm the youngest of five by ten years and the only one who was put up for adoption. When I met them five years ago, it felt like I'd always known them. Never once was there a question on either side as to whether or not we belonged together. I feel so blessed by that. My brother in law, the one in the hospital bed who is married to my oldest sister, is the one who first contacted me after my 3 year long search through a mediator. He drives creamery trucks. He smokes. He has a grizzly adams beard. He's all the kids favorite uncle. He cracks jokes and offers new colts to my wild ponies. He lifted my birth brother from his bed to the tub to the couch when he was dying of aids and my mom couldn't do it. He is a saint in a pig farmer's suit.
That first phone call five years ago was like talking with a long lost best friend. I recognized his inflections and his rural sense of humor (I grew up just an hour south of where that whole part of my family live). Since then I've looked forward to getting to know him better but that idea was put on limbo when we heard his prognosis gave him two months. It's been three.
His liver is failing. The day after we saw him in the hospital he was scheduled for some procedures that seemed to be little more than a gesture on the doctors' parts. They all do the best they know and when they don't know what else to do, they are simply just human beings with heavy expectations on their shoulders. They sent him home instead.
We were at my birth mom's house rocking on overstuffed chairs in a living room full of slow, uncertain air waiting to go visit him when we got the word that they were leaving and that they would stop by before heading home. He sat in the car, too weak to get out, the feeding tube giving him the first real nourishment he's had in three months. His eyes and skin the color of pale yolk. I reached through and held his hand and thanked him for that first phone call when he said "I think you are my wife's sister". I told him it changed my life and that I'll love him forever for that. He said he'd never forget it and told me to do the same. Theman said "We'll see you at fair in August!" We all chuckled. Even his 13 year old son.
I thought it was hard to stand there next to him, kissing his hand because he was in too much pain to hug, with everyone choking on their sadness and fear but when the car pulled away and he waved to us all, I forgot just where it was I was supposed to go to find that breathing part of me.
I found a piece of it in the desert on the way home when theman picked me a p
iece of fragrant sage all fleshed out as if it didn't know we were the only ones who would see it for days. I found another piece of it when I came home and put my hands on some plaster. I'm sure I will find it all eventually when I connect with that odd feeling that saying that last goodbye to someone when they sit in a car and you know this is it and really feel all the love that was in that moment.
Some people think that a heart breaking in a goodbye is sadness. I think that sometimes too but I also think that really it's love hiding in an idea that things should look like we want them to forever. It feels like stones and mud and moss in your heart...a heart so full it could explode might actually be just so much love your body can barely take it. 
