CMC Mountain Voices - Notions of Grace // Jason Kolaczkowski

Notions of Grace: A Memoir of Climbing, Cancer, and Family

Written by Jason Kolaczkowski

If you were to leave the story of your life behind for those you love the most, what would you say? What lessons would you learn in the telling?

On a train ride towards a downtown job, Jason Kolaczkowski was staring at a screen, his computer folded open in his lap while the cursor blinked at him, pleading for him to type just a few honest words. He was still shaken to his core. He had recently returned from leading an attempt at an unclimbed peak in the Himalaya, a climb that was supposed to be to be his magnum opus - the ultimate object lesson for his young, twin sons on the power and necessity of dreams, even when dreamt in the face of the uncertainty and fear and heartbreak of his recent leukemia diagnosis. But it turns out that is not what the climb had delivered. It brought more questions than answers.

A life of youthful possibility and the inevitable traumas and triumphs of an imperfect reality, a life balancing climbing and responsibilities, a life of personal goals and intertwined relationships was too complicated to be summed up so neatly. What did he want to tell his sons, now too young to understand but who someday would not be? What did he want to tell his wife, his brother, his parents, and his friends?

About the Author

Jason Kolaczkowski is a father, husband, son, and brother. He is a lifelong health care analytics professional, used to confronting risk through the lens of numbers and probabilities. He is also a dedicated, amateur climber and is, currently, a cancer survivor - by definition, a transient state. He shares his passion of enabling families to get outdoors through a blog and YouTube channel called Short Guys Beta Works (www.shortguysbetaworks.com) as he, his wife, Kristina, and his twin sons, Connor and Kade, tramp amongst the peaks near their home in Colorado.