Equipped with a trimer and a work ethic engrained since birth, I relish the moment. This piece of ground is my parent’s 2-acre property, but to me, it is where I reunite with my father. I will spend the next several hours assisting my mother in the upkeep of what was once my parent’s dream. At every turn, I relive the joy of my childhood. I picture my father, small in stature but mighty in heart, riding Appaloosas side by side with me, a cowboy hat atop his head. Dad made me jump right back on our stubborn Welsh pony, Thunder, the first time he bucked me off. In the field where this rite of passage took place, I feel my dad with me. It is here that we walk hand in hand, side by side again. For a moment life exists separated from my most painful memory—the day cancer stole my father from me nearly 12 years ago. Those eight weeks beginning in the summer of 2013 left a wound that never heals. Dad’s stomach cancer was stage four by the time doctors caught it. Although I prayed for a miracle, one never came. He was not just any father, he was the dad that set the standard. He was a dad my friends loved and adored because he was often the father they never had. Through his life he taught kindness, forgiveness, perseverance and the power of limitless love. It is in the quiet moments on my parent’s property that I reflect upon not only how much my family has lost but also how much we were given during the time shared with my father. In his barn hangs the cowboy themed six-foot tall billboard from one of my first on-air broadcasting jobs. He was so proud. Broadcasting took me states away from my father in his final years. While dad wanted me to pursue my dreams, experience is a valuable teacher. I know now that the core of those dreams is harnessed close to my parent’s land. In the years that followed my father’s death, my husband and I suffered the unimaginable fate of cancer’s thievery several more times. First, we said goodbye to an aunt taken by pancreatic cancer and then an uncle who lost his battle to bladder cancer. We lost my mother-in-law within a month of diagnosis to ovarian cancer in 2017. And when we finally moved home to Colorado to be close to family and to put down roots, within a week, my husband’s father received his brain cancer diagnosis. We said goodbye to my father-in-law much like my father and mother-in-law before him, within a few short weeks. In the law school application process, several schools honored me with impactful scholarship offers. However, each of them will take my husband, my children and myself away from family. Thinking of my children living away from my mother, their last remaining grandparent, hurts my soul. Yet, the cost to attend law school at Denver University is substantial. That cost in addition to the cost of childcare while I am in school will lead to considerable debt. It is my only in-state option, and I yearn to make attending possible. Cancer’s lessons remind me of where I belong. I belong near my mother where I can pick up a trimmer and walk for a few hours with my father once again. At 73, despite the upkeep, my mother refuses to leave the one place where I know she feels dad too. Together, we will not let cancer steal what remains—memories etched in my parent’s dirt.