Thinking about how many years--decades, actually--I'd deferred my dream of learning to play the guitar, I find it remarkable that I finally took it up not long before Dennis got sick.

Do I have what it takes to help my young family survive my husband's terminal illness?

If your kid goes to a therapist weekly, a peer grief group monthly, and a grief camp for a few days in the summer—which would be a lot of grief work, by the way—there are still somewhere around three hundred days in the year where it’s all on you, the widowed parent, to figure out what to do.

For the duration of Dennis's illness, I felt like Hester Prynne. I had the overwhelming sense that I was walking around with a giant 'FW' emblazoned on my shirt: "Future Widow.

The question 'How are you' would usually throw me into an existential tailspin. It seems like such a simple question--but it would cause fits of uncertainty in me almost every time.

I had no guidebook to tell me what to say to the kids--nor the time to find such a thing, if it even existed.

No profound remarks are required. The simplest message--I'm here and I care--is all that's needed.

Less than two weeks ago, my husband was perfectly normal ... and now he has a brain tumor? How can this be our life?

Have I said yet that we were lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people, both near and far?