5th Anniversary in Malibu // A Photo Essay

As we mentioned, the 5th anniversary of the stroke hit us a bit hard.  After a wonderful screening of the short film, an all-nighter launch of the new website, and more Mexican chocolate pie than we'd like to admit, we decided to break away for the night and go back to Malibu, just the 3 of us.

We have occasionally stayed on Pepperdine's campus in recent years at their business school's executive hotel (the best deal in Malibu).  We enjoyed a blessedly simple night eating our favorite take-out in bed and watching "Matilda" on Netflix, snuggling with James.  The next morning we lingered at our favorite vista atop campus--Heroes Garden--a memorial in honor of the victims of 9/11.  As we looked down across the ocean and our old married housing apartment building below, the place from which Katherine was removed by paramedics five years ago, the words of a 9/11 widow rang even more true, "We can in the midst of tragedy find God".  I'm deeply grateful to say that we can and we have. 

Later, I walked up to our first home, that old married housing dorm, the familiar smell of the eucalyptus tree outside the door instantly forming a lump in my throat.  It looks like a dorm now, not a home, and life has moved on in that place. 

Though the memories there can hurt, the ability to return at allinspires hope inside us, and the ocean will always be one of the most healing places.  Malibu and Pepperdine will always be a part of our story, and they not only remind us of the lovely times we had but of even lovelier times still to come.

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