Looking back across my teenage years, there are many memories that make me smile. But if one week marked the true end of adolescence, it was during May of 1977.
Most people remember the end of their senior year as a blur of finals, yearbook signatures, and the thrill of freedom just beyond the edge of graduation. I always thought mine would be the same. I pictured a week full of celebration, a little bit of mischief, and a slow fade into summer before heading off to college in the fall. But life had something different in mind for me. My final week as a senior at New Lisbon High School became a pendulum swinging between classroom desks and hospital rooms, between graduation announcements and whispered medical updates, between the excitement of tomorrow and the uncertainty of whether the person I loved most would still be there to see it.
But the story of that week really begins a year earlier.
In July of 1976, just a few months before the start of my senior year, my dad died. Nothing prepares you for losing a parent—especially at 17. One day I had a dad, and the next day I didn’t. I walked into that senior year already carrying more grief than I knew how to hold. But life has a way of pushing you forward whether you’re ready or not, and so I kept going—classes, school events, football, basketball, golf, senior pictures, college plans and my girlfriend, Sue Ann. On the outside, my life probably looked normal enough.
At our high school awards banquet, my life had felt almost impossibly full of promise, as I walked across the stage again and again receiving letters in football, basketball, and golf. I was the MVP for our football team, the king on the homecoming court, and had received All-Conference honors for both offense and defense as a running back and defensive back. I also made honorable mention All-District as a defensive back. As president of the National Honor Society and third in my graduating class, it seemed as though every door to the future was opening at once. Graduation was only days away, Iowa State University waited in the fall, and adulthood seemed to be stretching out before me like a long, open highway.
I didn’t know then that the real test was still coming. Then, almost without warning, everything changed.
That evening, my mom said she wasn't feeling well. At first, it didn't seem alarming. She had a fever, no energy, and was vomiting a yellowish bile that none of us understood. I drove her to a doctor in Tomah, and after a brief examination, he assured us it was simply the flu. We believed him because that's what people did. We went home expecting that a few days of rest, fluids, and time would solve the problem.
Instead, each passing hour seemed to take something from her.
She grew weaker. Her face lost its color. The woman who had always been the steady center of our family could barely get out of bed. Watching her slip away so quickly created a feeling I couldn't explain, but couldn't ignore either. Something inside me kept insisting that this wasn't the flu.
We decided to seek another opinion from our hometown doctor. This visit was different from the moment he walked into the room. He examined my mom carefully, then stepped back. The expression on his face told me the answer before he ever spoke. Looking directly at me, he said quietly but urgently, "Her appendix has ruptured. You need to get her to La Crosse immediately. Don't stop. Don't wait. If the infection spreads much farther, she could die."
Die.
That single word seemed to echo through the room. Until that moment, death belonged to old people, strangers, or stories on the evening news. Suddenly, it was sitting in the room with us, staring directly at my mother. At eighteen years old, the future I had been celebrating only days before disappeared, replaced by one overwhelming thought:
Please, God... don't take my mom.
That word doesn’t land softly—not after you’ve already buried a father just months before. I drove her to La Crosse as fast as I could. I don’t remember the weather. I don’t remember the traffic. I remember the silence. And I remember trying to hold onto the steering wheel even though my hands were shaking. My mom held a bucket in her hands, sitting in the passenger seat. She was very sick.
By the time we got to the hospital, the doctors were concerned she was already too weak for surgery. They needed to operate, but her body might not survive it. They needed to stabilize her prior to any type of surgery. Meanwhile, I tried to hold onto whatever pieces of normal life I still had left.
I was supposed to be finishing final exams and rehearsing for the senior class play. Instead, I left school as early as I could each day, drove to La Crosse, sat beside her hospital bed, talked to her even when she couldn’t respond, and wondered each time I walked into that room if it would be the last. She was so weak and frail—nothing like the woman I had always known. The doctors spoke in cautious phrases: “if,” “it depends,” “we’re watching closely.” Then I’d drive home that night, trying to sleep before another school day began.
There are moments in life that etch themselves into your memory so sharply that even decades later you can feel them in your bones. One of those moments happened in class. There was a phone mounted on the wall in the classroom—something that rarely rang. But one day, it did. Mr. Sabey answered it while we worked quietly, then looked up and said, “Tim, it’s for you.” I walked to the phone, already uneasy. On the other end was a doctor from La Crosse.
“Timothy,” he said, “I need you to listen carefully. Your mother is not responding well from the operation. You should start calling your relatives. She may not survive.”
I don’t remember what I said back. I don’t even remember hanging up the phone. I remember the room spinning. I remember not knowing how you’re supposed to stand, breathe, think, or be when someone tells you that you are about to lose the only parent you have left. I walked back to my desk, sat down, and tried to pretend I still belonged in that classroom. But I didn’t. My brothers came home as soon as I called, and they heard how bad things were. We all spent time at the hospital, trying to stay hopeful even when the doctors weren’t.
A day later, I was supposed to make up a final exam for Mr. McCallum in biology. I was the only one who had not taken the test—everyone else had already taken it earlier in the week. He placed the test on the desk in front of me. I stared at it. Words, questions, lines—none of it mattered. I couldn’t force my brain to care about anything on that paper. I started crying instead. Mr. McCallum walked over quietly, picked up the test, crumpled it in his hand, and set it aside. Then he put a hand on my back.
“Don’t worry about this,” he said. “Some things matter more.” That moment has never left me. Not because he let me skip a test, but because he treated an overwhelmed, scared 18-year-old like a human being first and a student second. Sue Ann, who also happened to be my lab partner, sat close beside me, doing her best to console me—one of those small, tender moments that stays with you long after the years have passed.
Meanwhile, life at school kept spinning as nothing had happened. I was in the Senior Class play with Sue Ann. It came and went with me missing rehearsals, which Miss Fisher did not like. People talked about yearbooks. College plans. Summer jobs. Cars. Music. Futures. And there I was, one foot in the noisy hallways of New Lisbon High School and the other in the hushed corridors of a hospital, learning lessons no classroom could ever teach.
One night, a doctor came in and said the numbers were changing—in the right direction. Her body was responding. Slowly, but undeniably. Each day, a little better, until finally: “We’re past the most dangerous point.” She wasn’t out of the woods, but the words she was going to make it entered the picture. Hope returned like oxygen. She was released from the hospital just before my graduation.
I graduated on Wednesday, June 1st. I was third in my class, but the honor felt muted. Chuck had brought my mom so that she could see her youngest receive his high school diploma. She was still weak from the illness and surgery, but it was wonderful to have family in the audience. I spent most of the night with Sue Ann and the rest of the class of '77 at Fort McCoy in Sparta, WI. Fort McCoy is a US Army installation that serves as a year-round training center for the National Guard. The high school had an agreement with them each year to allow graduating seniors access to the pool the night of graduation.
After a night of celebrating with my classmates, I dropped Sue Ann off at her home in Hustler at about five o'clock in the morning. We were both exhausted. As I pulled away, I remember thinking how wonderful it would feel to crawl into bed after one of the longest and most memorable days of my life.
Instead, as I rounded the first corner in our Ford LTD, the rising sun exploded over the eastern horizon, turning the windshield into a sheet of blinding white. Before I knew it, I had lost my bearings and the car drifted into the ditch. Somehow, despite my sleepy reflexes and less-than-stellar driving, the car eased back onto the pavement without a scratch. Looking back, I have little doubt God had a hand on the steering wheel that morning. The only evidence of my misadventure was a collection of weeds lodged underneath the car—nature's way of leaving me a receipt. Later that day, after I finally woke up, my mom asked a simple question about those weeds. It was one of those moments when I realized mothers have an uncanny ability to notice the things we hope they'll never see.
Looking back now, I realize that week was the moment I crossed the invisible line between adolescence and adulthood. Not because I was legally an adult, not because I graduated, but because life demanded I become someone stronger than I thought I could be. I learned that grief doesn’t wait until you’re ready for it. I learned that responsibility sometimes arrives unannounced. I learned that fear doesn’t mean you’re weak—it means you’re human. I learned that kindness from others matters more than they’ll ever know. I learned that love often looks less like big speeches and more like late-night drives and hospital chairs.
And I learned that sometimes, the miracle isn’t that someone survives—it’s that you do, too.
My mom lived another 43 years after that near-fatal week. She lived long enough to travel the world and to see the man I became, the career I built, the life that unfolded far beyond the walls of New Lisbon High School and Iowa State University. She lived long enough for me to thank her, long enough for me to understand her strength, long enough for both of us to heal from what life tried to take from us. Long enough to walk me down the aisle and watch me marry the woman who would become my greatest blessing. Looking back, I sometimes think the greatest gift wasn't simply that she survived. It was that we were given forty-three more years together.
And I think about that often: everything I experienced during that month would have looked different if she hadn’t survived. Maybe I would’ve abandoned college. Maybe I would’ve carried anger instead of gratitude. Maybe I wouldn’t have understood how fragile and precious a life truly is.
Looking back now, I realize that week wasn't simply the end of high school. It was the end of another chapter of my life.
Until then, I'd measured growing up by birthdays, driver's licenses, football games, report cards, and graduation. Life had a different definition. It taught me that adulthood doesn't arrive with a diploma in your hand. It arrives the first time someone you love needs you more than you need yourself. It arrives when you keep showing up despite fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty. It arrives when responsibility chooses you instead of the other way around.
That week also reminded me that no one walks through life's hardest moments alone. A teacher who quietly crumpled a biology exam. A girlfriend who simply sat beside me while I cried. Brothers who came home without hesitation. Doctors and nurses who fought for my mother's life. Small acts of kindness became lifelines, and I've never forgotten how much they mattered.
When I left New Lisbon later that summer for Iowa State, I packed clothes, books, and a few boxes for my dorm room. But the most important things I carried couldn't be packed.
I carried the quiet strength my mother had modeled throughout her life. I carried the resilience forged by losing my father and nearly losing my mother less than a year later. I carried the friendships, teachers, coaches, and neighbors who had shaped me. I carried faith that had been tested instead of merely inherited. And I carried the growing realization that life's most difficult seasons often become the very experiences that prepare us for everything that comes next.
The boy who arrived in New Lisbon as an uncertain sixth grader had no idea what those seven years would hold. He found friendships that would last a lifetime. He discovered confidence, experienced heartbreak, celebrated victories, endured loss, and learned that character is usually formed long before we recognize it.
As I drove toward Ames that fall, I wasn't just leaving a small Wisconsin town behind. I was carrying its lessons with me. They would shape the student I became, the engineer I would become, the husband, father, grandfather, and the man I was still becoming.
New Lisbon had given me far more than an education.
It had prepared me for life.