While I was drying off Maddie after her bath tonight, she said, 'I love you' to me for the first time. It sounded like 'All lub boo,' but I didn't care. To reciprocate, I showed her what an ex-Marine looks like when he cries.

Forgiveness is not something you do for someone else; it's something you do for yourself. To forgive is not to condone, it is to refuse to continue feeling bad about an injury.

Of all the things I've ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away from Cec's room, 'Life's that way. Let's go home.'And so we did.

Today we fight. Tomorrow we fight. The day after, we fight. And if this disease plans on whipping us, it better bring a lunch, 'cause it's gonna have a long day doing it.

April 11, 2004Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the rules of thought, feeling, and behavior in these circumstances? It seems like there should be a rule book somewhere that lays out everything exactly the way one should respond to a loss like this. I'd surely like to know if I'm doing it right. Am I whining enough or too much? Am I unseemly in my occasional moments of lightheartedness? At what date and I supposed to turn off the emotion and jump back on the treadmill of normalcy? Is there a specific number of days or decades that must pass before I can do something I enjoy without feeling I've betrayed my dearest love? And when, oh when, am I ever really going to believe this has happened? Next time you're in a bookstore, as if there's a rule book.11:54 p.m.Jim

I will bear this grief, I will endure it. I will reach a point where it doesn't kick me down an abyss whenever I turn my back on it.

How can it be that there is such a colossal gap between what we think we know about grief and mourning and what we actually find out when it comes to us?

I've attempted to flood the path with light where I could, and where I could not I've wanted at least to hold up a candle so that others coming this way might not stumble too painfully.

A kind of Providence keeps us blind to the intensity of suffering so as to keep us sane, until that day when the suffering is our own or that of someone we love beyond imagining.

How incredibly far our lives drift from where we knew with all certainty they would go. How little today resembles what yesterday thought it would look like.