“I wanted to save my son’s smile and innocence, since I couldn’t save him. When the end happens, I will have these memories to remind me of the wonderful times we had fighting a horrid disease. I will have those beautiful blue eyes I saw for the first time when he came into this world.”
‘We don’t know how much time he has left. ‘Jason, I cannot lose one more moment.’ My husband nodded his head. ‘I know,’ he said. These will be our last family photos.’
‘When the trunk opened, we found a name – Patricia. They discovered it hidden in the attic. In my gut, I knew I was going to find her.’
“I could tell she was a bit hesitant. I put the trunk down on her front porch, took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. As I heard her steps as she approached, I couldn’t contain myself. She opened the door, looked down, and said, ‘I can’t believe you found it.’”
‘I didn’t realize how much I would miss my dad’s handwriting. I didn’t know handwriting could be part of the grieving process. Mourning handwriting? But I did. I still do.’
“I watched him sketch out that second attempt and smile at it. He looked up and said, ‘How’s this one? I think this one is better, don’t you think?’ Maybe he was imagining it actually being tattooed on me and how that would feel, after he was gone.”
‘My dad was sick 2 years ago. Not like stomach flu sick. Not like pneumonia sick. Not like medicine-can-fix-it sick.’
“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.”
‘It’s okay Molz, you got this!’ My DAD was in the delivery room when I birthed my first child. I looked up from the bed horrified he was actually watching this whole thing.
“He could have snuck out. But he chose to stay. And I chose to let him. The power of those decisions would not be fully understood until 3 years later.”
‘I hope you take your time’: Mom pens heartfelt letter to her kids who live in a world ‘eager and rushed to grow up’
“Show me the trick where you let go of your bike handlebar with one hand — you are so proud of that.”
‘Remember to tell them about the love’: Pregnant 19-year-old on what she wishes she was told
“Tell them about the love. The overwhelming, wholehearted, helpless, deep, endless, limitless, incredible love.”
‘I’ve never kissed a girl on the lips’: Why this couple WAITED to share their first kiss
“I really wanted the woman I was going to marry to be the only woman I had ever kissed.”
‘I let my 15-year-old daughter get a tattoo, and no, I don’t care what anybody has to say about it.’
“She wanted to get a very small, very appropriate tattoo to honor her dad, who passed away from cancer when she was 13.”
Mom with terminal breast cancer afraid to miss the ‘little moments’ with daughter: ‘Light-up shoes, ice skates, bra straps’
“It has been 10 months since a dear doctor friend told me I had stage 4 breast cancer. I sat outside on the phone, begging her to tell me my daughter would remember me.”
