Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine.

I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on

There was a fine-tuning of Richard's and my temperaments during the years we lived with his heart disease, lymphoma, and lung cancer. Before, our differences had triggered sporadic tension; now our basic natures served us better. Our sensibilities and quirks evolved into something more shared and complex, more mingled.

But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine. As John Donne has written; it is not so pure and abstract as one might once have thought and wished, but it does endure and it does grow.