“I was in disbelief. I thought he would be taken away from me like the girls were. I didn’t want to get attached. Even with a giant belly at 38 weeks, seeing him move wasn’t enough for me to believe. I wanted to protect myself and prepare for the worst.”
“Looking back, there was ‘The Before,’ and then there was ‘The After.’ I am a stranger to that woman now. Loss happened to other people. Cancer happened to them. Until one day they are gone, and all that is left is the heartbreaking absence of their presence.”
“He only saw my extra weight and my physical ‘flaws.’ He didn’t see me as a person, or strong woman whose body has been through a lot of medical history in the last year or so.”
“I knew the day was coming. I forced a smile when it happened, but the honest truth is, my heart wanted to burst out into big, bubbling tears.”
“My mother took me down into a basement with some strange men. They packaged up large bottles of what I was told were antibiotics. I was only 12 at the time. I put them in my backpack. The rest of the trip my mother was incoherent. She couldn’t even keep her head up. That was the last straw for my dad. Later I found out that she had me carry over 1800 pills of narcotics and muscle relaxers that she planned to use all for herself.”
“They did X-rays on his little lungs and told Case it’s the equivalent to you or I drinking gasoline.”
“All of a sudden everything changed. She looked in his eye and things became serious. ‘I’m trying to get him into a specialist today.’ The word ‘today’ was lingering. What could be so important? I couldn’t believe my ears.”
“I don’t like how he hurt and how he suffered. I don’t like the pain his disease caused. But I do like what it taught me.”
“He breathed 2 tiny last gasps of breath before leaving us for good this time. I watched him, felt him and loved him. So I think yes, I will mourn and still cry, if I want and need to.”
“When I was 5 years old, one of my earliest memories is of my mother dropping me out of a two-story window which resulted in both of my arms being broken.”
