Initially, after David’s diagnosis, I would cringe when I readbooks or articles by cancer survivors who stated that cancer hadbeen a gift in their lives. How could all that David endured beviewed as a...
Perhaps one of the more creative promotions of all time wasin 1969, when a marketer with the Procter & Gamble Companycame up with the idea of giving away goldfish with each purchaseof a king-size box...
We put on a pot of tea, a necessity between these two writing friends. Wecould no more imagine writing without this hot sustenance than we couldwithout pen and paper. We sat at the table to talk shop,...
I held back from seeing Jacob much during those weeks. He wanted only his mother, and I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him like that. I stopped by to pick up his siblings and take them away, but I...
What were you going to make for Christmas dinner?” one of myolder children asked in a very reasonable tone. I cleared my throat,but couldn’t speak. There was no real explanation for my behavior. I’d b...
The whole encounter was surreal. No one had mentioned cancer. I hadn’t requested special treatment for Jacob. Yet he’d just nabbed a private meeting with an actor from his favorite movie. I would late...
I often wondered after David’s death: Had they known something then? Did their very souls recognize each other? Did Jacob, closer to God than anyone else I knew, somehow sense this was the last time h...
That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob’s silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of t...
You have no idea how well you are doing,” John complimented mejust a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I’d come to a family gathering?...
Tonight I attend my thirty-fifth high school reunion with some trepidation.I have not seen most of these former classmates for thirty-some years. I am not the same young girl they knew in high school....
Don’t you believe that Jacob can be healed?” some persisted, pressuringElizabeth to believe—just believe—and Jacob would be healed. Theunderlying message was that Elizabeth’s faith was not strong enou...
You who have never “been there” in the throes of grief, have no idea what is going on inside the head of the grieving spouse: the scatteredthoughts, the constant worry that we will forget something or...
In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided me in the twisted,...
Can you remember another time when your chest felt like this?”My fingers splayed across my aching chest as I carefully pondered herquestion. Then I nodded vigorously as I remembered. Tears streamed do...
