Keith died in March of 1999. This will be the seventh time we have been confronted with the anniversary of his death. On the outside, I probably appear quite normal to most people. The main difference seems to be that I am less patient and have a“shorter fuse” than I did in 1998.

Actually, I feel like I am living in an earthquake zone with a fault line running right through my heart and my soul. My wife and I just returned from a hiking and rafting trip in Costa Rica, a country which has a spine of volcanoes separating the Pacific and Caribbean side. The plates that make up the earth’s surface collide here. If you were flying above the surface, everything would seem rather quiet and normal. If you drive on the surface, you experience a different reality. Fault lines are everywhere, just like they are within me. Things may appear calm at that moment, but powerful forces are underneath, and the calm may be shaken or even covered with lava without much warning.

In the midst of this year, we had our own personal trembler shake our lives. It certainly rattled me for weeks. Mike Condrin, a friend of Keith’s attended the UCLA-Stanford football game last fall. Mike and Keith had become friends while participating on the freshmen crew team. During his trip back to UCLA in 2005, Mike was dismayed to hear, for the first time, that his college friend Keith had died in 1999. Mike’s recollections of Keith (which we really enjoy) are on The Gift of Keith . You should read it. It is in the section of Keith’s memorial website under the letters from Keith’s friends. It is a welcome addition to our store of memories about our son.

But, can you imagine how it feels to have someone new contact you after six years ? We are glad that Mike did, but of course the fault line opened up and all those old feelings and memories came pouring back to the surface. People around me may have noticed that I was a bit quieter for a couple of weeks. I guess I was withdrawing, trying to put my “game face” back on. Most people don’t realize that when your child dies, a permanent fault line cracks your heart and soul.

The Costa Ricans have a technique to deal with the fault lines. In those sections they have just given up and they don’t put asphalt on the roads. They just keep the road covered in dirt and rock and then re-grade it after the ground moves again. I need to accept that I will never be able to fix those fault lines within me, just patch them up as best I can and then try to move on. Going with the flow, I suppose.

Of course a major shifting of the plates can also cause new volcanoes to erupt. You don’t even try to put a road close to those. I have had one major volcano in my life. I hope I only have to live with minor tremblers, and nothing more than that.

Before our trip to Costa Rica I said some prayers that we would be kept safe, enjoy our travels, and have the opportunity to have some wonderful experiences. I asked Keith to watch over us, too. Keith majored in biology at UCLA and had even spent some time at the UCLA biological research station at Bodega Bay. He studied cormorants while he was there. I am sure that Keith was smiling as we saw Quetzals, Sun Bitterns, and even a Bellbird. We had a glorious time.

Thank you, Keith!!