A Love Like No Other

by Skip Hollandsworth

May 1995

Condensed from Texas Monthly

From the day she was born, doctors had expected Kimberley Marshall to die. She had cystic fibrosis, a baffling genetic disorder. Desperate to keep her baby alive, Kim’s mother, Dawn, took the infant home and for three hours a day she and Kim’s grandmother gently thumped on her chest and back to dislodge the sticky mucus that clogs the lungs of CF patients. Trying to get rid of it, one doctor says, is like sweeping spilled molasses off the floor with a broom.

To everyone’s astonishment, Kim eventually grew strong enough to go to elementary school. She even took ballet lessons and joined a girls’ soccer team.

“There goes the princess,” Dawn would shout from the sidelines, momentarily allowing herself to feel as normal as the other mothers. She imagined Kim to be normal, too, the kind of girl who might go to a high-school dance and lift her head dreamily at the end of the night, as a boy gave her her first kiss.

But Robert Kramer, the first doctor in Dallas to specialize in CF, warned Dawn and her husband, Bill, that it was only a temporary reprieve. Like a serial killer, CF is unstoppable. Although an array of pulmonary treatments and medicines now allows patients to live more productive, pain-free lives, average life expectancy is about 29 years.

As Dr. Kramer predicted, the days soon came when Kim’s body seemed to deflate like a rubber toy with a hole in it, and Dawn would return her to the Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. The routine became all too familiar: a few months of remission followed by a trip to the hospital’s CF unit.

Kim always brought along her stuffed animals, her favorite pink blanket and her diary. As children around her died, she’d write down her impressions (“Wendy died at 8:10 this morning! She suffered all night. It’s better this way. Poor little thing”). It was, Dawn thought, Kim’s way of preparing herself for what she knew would someday happen to her.

For a while Kim did what she could to be like the “normals” (her nickname for kids without CF). In high school she earned A’s and B’s and wore long dresses to hide her spindly legs. When classmates asked about her coughing spells, she would say she suffered from asthma. She’d pick up other CF girls in her car and drive along, honking her horn, waving at boys and flashing a jubilant smile.

Still, she could not ignore the reality of her life. Her digestive system was so clogged with mucus that she suffered painful attacks of diarrhea. She developed a neurological disorder that affected her balance and distorted her perception.

Finally, during her senior year, she grew so weak that she had to finish her course work at home. In one of her lowest moments she asked that her picture not be included in her high-school yearbook. “I look like a starvation victim,” she said. Growing increasingly frustrated, Kim argued often with her younger brother and sister. Over and over she watched a videotape of The Blue Lagoon, the story of an adolescent boy and girl who are stranded on an island and fall in love.

David Crenshaw first laid eyes on Kim in the spring of 1986 when both were being treated at Presbyterian. She was 16, thin, pale and beautiful, her red hair falling down the back of her pink nightgown. David was 18. He wore a baggy T-shirt, faded gray pajama pants and large glasses held together by a piece of tape.

“No way she’s going to look twice at you,” teased Doug Kellum, one of the CF unit’s respiratory therapists, who had noticed David staring at her. And, indeed, it was difficult to imagine any attraction between them. Kim loved expensive perfume, makeup and clothes. She would sit for hours in her hospital bed, reading romance novels.

David, on the other hand, was famous for trying to impress girls with crude jokes. Loud and robust, he was something of a legend at Presbyterian. No one had ever heard of a CF patient doing the things David did. For instance, when he wasn’t in the hospital, he raced midget cars at a local dirt track. “Our goal was to raise him as if he weren’t sick,” says David’s father. “Maybe I thought if he stayed tough enough, he could beat it.”

In truth, David never did act particularly sick. A prankster, he conducted wheelchair races and tomato-throwing competitions in the hospital’s third-floor hallway. One night he took some CF patients to a go-cart track in 32-degree weather. “He had this sense of immortality about him,” Dr. Kramer remembers.

For two years David would often walk past Kim’s door, working up the courage to pop in and say hello. Kim would look at him, smile briefly, then go back to reading her book.

David was undaunted. “When she was in the hospital and he was home,” Kellum says, “he’d call me to find out how she was—even though she wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

Surprisingly, it is often in the CF unit that young patients experience their first encounter with romance. “You assume that because CF kids look so weak, they don’t have much of a sex drive,” says Dr. Kramer. “Yet they probably think about it more than regular people. It’s their way of affirming to themselves that they are alive and kicking.”

In late 1988 Kim began an on-again, off-again relationship with another CF patient, a young man named Steve. “I knew it wasn’t going to work out,” David said. “They were afraid of commitment.” And the relationship did finally falter.

In the fall of 1989, when he and Kim were both at home once again, David called and asked her to dinner. Although she said no, David declared, “I’ll be there at 8 p.m., no buts about it.”

Horrified, Kim brought along her sister, Petri, and made her sit with David in the front seat of his car while she sat in the back, refusing to speak. Kim also remained silent through dinner, and gave David a tortured look when he suggested they go dancing at a nightclub. When he took her home, Kim leapt out of the car and ran to her room.

Still, David kept showing up at Kim’s house. They went bowling. He took her to watch him race. And, despite everything, love bloomed. On November 17, 1989, Kim wrote in her diary: “Tonight, David and I kissed for the first time. God, please let this relationship work out.”

Six months after their first date, Kim and David announced their engagement—to the shock of their families, friends and doctors. “Both of you are sick,” David’s father said, pleading with him to reconsider. “You can’t possibly take care of yourselves.” “Do you realize that one of you is going to die in the other’s arms?” Dawn asked her daughter tearfully.

Kim and David insisted that they had a right to be together. “I think Kim realized this was going to be the last chance she had to experience love,” Dawn said, finally agreeing to the union.

On October 27, 1990, Kim Marshall, 21, wobbled down the aisle and declared her love for 23-year-old David Crenshaw. The church was filled with the sound of coughing, as Dallas’s CF community came to support them.

The couple lived on their modest monthly disability checks in a one-bedroom apartment. It resembled a hospital room, crammed with oxygen tanks, medicines and a refrigerator stocked with I.V. bottles.

Domestic tasks were difficult: They needed a day to clean the apartment and do the laundry. By nighttime both were exhausted. Yet they were happier than they ever could have imagined. He nicknamed her Tigger (from the children’s book Winnie the Pooh) because of her red hair; she called him Bear because he was cuddly. He was always sending her cards, the mushier the better. She wrote him long love letters. (“We are going to conquer the unconquerable.”)

To earn extra income, David worked rebuilding race cars. He also enrolled at a junior college to get an accounting degree. One of his CF friends, Richard Johnson, warned him it was impossible to keep up such a pace. David just said, “I’ve got to do this for Kim. There isn’t anything in my life but her.”

By 1992 Kim’s veins had begun to collapse. Because her body was unable to absorb food through her clogged digestive system, she was rapidly losing weight. She became ashamed to show herself in public. “Tigger,” David wrote her, “you are the most beautiful woman I know inside and out. I love you with all my heart and soul! Bear.”

David never left Kim’s side during her frequent trips to the hospital. He would sleep on a cot in her room. To entertain her, he wheeled her to the maternity ward so she could look at the babies. If she wanted candy in the middle of the night, he’d go out and buy her some. Amazingly, Kim’s health improved, and she returned home.

Then, in early 1993, David’s condition worsened. His cough grew louder and deeper. His face got puffy from fluid retention. Eventually he, too, breathed with the assistance of a portable oxygen machine.

David assured Kim there was nothing to worry about; he just had to build up his strength. He didn’t tell her what Dr. Kramer had said after a recent checkup: David’s lungs were becoming stiff with scar tissue and his bronchial tubes were closing up. He was slowly choking to death.

It was a race against time, and David would not waste a single moment. In July, to celebrate his 26th birthday and Kim’s 24th, he insisted they take a week-long Florida vacation. “Only once did they feel good enough to leave the condo and go to the beach,” says Kim’s sister, Mandy, who traveled with them. “Both carried their portable oxygen tanks. They sat on the beach holding hands.”

Three months later, David and Kim went for a checkup. While Kim waited in another room, Dr. Kramer studied David’s oxygen levels. “You’ve got to go into the hospital,” he said. “And this time, you may be there for a long time.” David managed only one response: “Make sure Kim is okay.”

Kramer walked across the hall to tell her. Kim dropped her head and tried not to cry. “Don’t let him suffer, Dr. Bob,” she said. During his 30 years as a CF specialist, Kramer had watched more than 400 young patients die. For his own sanity, he distanced himself emotionally from cases like David’s. But now he gathered Kim in his arms and wept.

David was admitted to the hospital on October 21. Kim sat by his side. She tried to write a letter to Medicare officials, begging them to consider him for a lung transplant, a last resort for a few CF patients, but she never got to finish it. Five days later, David’s lips and fingernails turned blue.

“David, not yet,” she said. Unable to speak, he mouthed “I love you” and blew her a kiss. Kim and David exchanged one long look of grief and love. Moments later he died.

Within 24 hours of his funeral, Kim went into a state of shock. A week later Dawn took her to the hospital. After seeing her, Dr. Kramer offered a decidedly unmedical diagnosis to her parents. “Her body is giving up,” he told them. “It’s as if she were dying of a broken heart.”

Kim was semicomatose for two days. Then, early on the morning of November 11, she regained consciousness, opened her eyes and began speaking in a peaceful, cooing voice that no one could understand. A nurse said it sounded as if she were talking to David. Then she shut her eyes and died.

Kim was buried in her wedding dress alongside her husband. Their tombstone reads: “David S. (Bear) Crenshaw and Kimberley (Tigger) Crenshaw . . . Together forever. Married three years.”

All their friends and family agreed theirs had been a love story like no other. “To me,” said Dr. Kramer, “it was Romeo and Juliet all over again.”

Weeks later, Dawn was sorting through the couple’s possessions. She came across the last card David had sent Kim before he died. “We are close even when we are apart,” it read. “Just look up. We are both under the same starry sky.”

 

Wanted: The Healing Power of a Pet

This classified ad from the Sturgis (Michigan) Journal showcases a cat that thinks it’s a lion. “Free to good home: 2 adult female cats, 1 long-haired gray, 1 deluded calico.” Linda Meggison

• • •

My wife found this flyer taped to a neighborhood telephone pole: “Found, male yellow Lab, very friendly. Loves to play with kids and eat Bubbles. Bubbles is our cat. Please come get your dog.” Robert Chapman

• • •

Who could resist this dog after the sales pitch in the Athens (Ohio) News? “Worst dog ever. Free to a good home. Not fixed. Doesn’t come when called. Runs away. Kills chickens and has foul smell.” Laura Calentine

Two Words to Avoid, Two to Remember

By Arthur Gordon

January 1968

Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person—not only changed, but changed for the better. Such moments are rare, certainly, but they come to all of us. Sometimes from a book, a sermon, a line of poetry. Sometimes from a friend. . . .

That wintry afternoon in Manhattan, waiting in the little French restaurant, I was feeling frustrated and depressed. Because of several miscalculations on my part, a project of considerable importance in my life had fallen through. Even the prospect of seeing a dear friend (the Old Man, as I privately and affectionately thought of him) failed to cheer me as it usually did. I sat there frowning at the checkered tablecloth, chewing the bitter cud of hindsight.

He came across the street, finally, muffled in his ancient overcoat, shapeless felt hat pulled down over his bald head, looking more like an energetic gnome than an eminent psychiatrist. His office was nearby; I knew he had just left his last patient of the day. He was close to 80, but he still carried a full caseload, still acted as director of a large foundation, still loved to escape to the golf course whenever he could.

By the time he came over and sat beside me, the waiter had brought his invariable bottle of ale. I had not seen him for several months, but he seemed as indestructible as ever. “Well, young man,” he said without preliminary, “what’s troubling you?”

I had long since ceased to be surprised at his perceptiveness. So I proceeded to tell him, at some length, just what was bothering me. With a kind of melancholy pride, I tried to be very honest, I blamed no one else for my disappointment, only myself. I analyzed the whole thing, all the bad judgements, the false moves. I went on for perhaps 15 minutes, while the Old Man sipped his ale in silence.

When I finished, he put down his glass. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to my office.”

“Your office? Did you forget something?”

“No,” he said mildly. “I want your reaction to something. That’s all.”

A chill rain was beginning to fall outside, but his office was warm and comfortable and familiar: book-lined walls, long leather couch, signed photograph of Sigmund Freud, tape recorder by the window. His secretary had gone home. We were alone.

The Old Man took a tape from a flat cardboard box and fitted it onto the machine. “On this tape,” he said, “are three short recordings made by three persons who came to me for help. They are not identified, of course. I want you to listen to the recordings and see if you can pick out the two-word phrase that is the common denominator in all three cases.” He smiled. “Don’t look so puzzled. I have my reasons.”

What the owners of the voices on the tape had in common, it seemed to me, was unhappiness. The man who spoke first evidently had suffered some kind of business loss or failure; he berated himself for not having worked harder, for not having looked ahead. The woman who spoke next had never married because of a sense of obligation to her widowed mother; she recalled bitterly all the marital chances she had let go by. The third voice belonged to a mother whose teen-age son was in trouble with the police; she blamed herself endlessly.

The Old Man switched off the machine and leaned back in his chair. “Six times in those recordings a phrase is used that’s full of a subtle poison. Did you spot it? No? Well, perhaps that’s because you used it three times yourself down in the restaurant a little while ago.” He picked up the box that had held the tape and tossed it over to me. “There they are, right on the label. The two saddest words in any language.”

I looked down. Printed neatly in red ink were the words: If only.

“You’d be amazed,” said the Old Man, “if you knew how many thousands of times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to the woeful sentences beginning with those two words. ‘If only,’ they say to me, ‘I had done it differently—or not done it at all. If only I hadn’t lost my temper, said that cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled.’ They go on and on until I stop them. Sometimes I make them listen to the recordings you just heard. ‘If only,’ I say to them, ‘you’d stop saying if only, we might begin to get somewhere!’ ”

The Old Man stretched out his legs. “The trouble with ‘if only,’ ” he said, “is that it doesn’t change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way—backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse for not trying anymore.

“Now take your own case: your plans didn’t work out. Why? Because you made certain mistakes. Well, that’s all right: everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are what we learn from. But when you were telling me about them, lamenting this, regretting that, you weren’t really learning from them.”

“How do you know?” I said, a bit defensively.

“Because,” said the Old Man, “you never got out of the past tense. Not once did you mention the future. And in a way—be honest, now!—you were enjoying it. There’s a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes. After all, when you relate the story of some disaster or disappointment that has happened to you, you’re still the chief character, still in the center of the stage.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Well, what’s the remedy?”

“Shift the focus,” said the Old Man promptly. “Change the key words and substitute a phrase that supplies life instead of creating drag.”

“Do you have such a phrase to recommend?”

“Certainly. Strike out the words ‘if only’; substitute the phrase ‘next time.’ ”

“Next time?”

“That’s right. I’ve seen it work minor miracles right here in this room. As long as a patient keeps saying ‘if only’ to me, he’s in trouble. But when he looks me in the eye and says ‘next time,’ I know he’s on his way to overcoming his problem. It means he has decided to apply the lessons he has learned from his experience, however grim or painful it may have been. It means he’s going to push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, resume living. Try it yourself. You’ll see.”

My old friend stopped speaking. Outside, I could hear the rain whispering against the windowpane. I tried sliding one phrase out of my mind and replacing it with the other. It was fanciful, of course, but I could hear the new words lock into place with an audible click.

“One last thing,” the Old Man said. “Apply this little trick to things that can still be remedied.” From the bookcase behind him he pulled out something that looked like a diary. “Here’s a journal kept a generation ago by a woman who was a schoolteacher in my hometown. Her husband was a kind of amiable ne’er-do-well, charming but totally inadequate as a provider. This woman had to raise the children, pay the bills, keep the family together. Her diary is full of angry references to Jonathan’s inadequacies.

“Then Jonathan died, and all the entries ceased except for one—years later. Here it is: ‘Today I was made superintendent of schools, and I suppose I should be very proud. But if I knew that Jonathan was out there somewhere beyond the stars, and if I knew how to manage it, I would go to him tonight.’ ”

The Old Man closed the book gently. “You see? What she’s saying is ‘if only; if only,’ I had accepted him, faults and all; if only I had loved him while I could.” He put the book back on the shelf. “That’s when those sad words are the saddest of all: when it’s too late to retrieve anything.”

He stood up a bit stiffly. “Well, class dismissed. It has been good to see you young man. Always is. Now, if you will help me find a taxi, I probably should be getting on home.”

We came out of the building into the rainy night. I spotted a cruising cab and ran toward it, but another pedestrian was quicker.

“My, my,” said the Old Man slyly. “If only we had come down ten seconds sooner, we’d have caught the cab, wouldn’t we?”

I laughed and picked up the cue. “Next time I’ll run faster.”

“That’s it,” cried the Old Man, pulling his absurd hat down around his ears. “That’s it exactly!”

Another taxi slowed. I opened the door for him. He smiled and waved as it moved away. I never saw him again. A month later, he died of a sudden heart attack, in full stride, so to speak.

Much time has passed since that rainy afternoon in Manhattan. But to this day, whenever I find myself thinking “if only,” I change it to “next time.” Then I wait for the almost-perceptible mental click. And when I hear it, I think of the Old Man.

A small fragment of immortality, to be sure. But it’s the kind he would have wanted.

 

Problem Solved

Anthony Miller was acting oddly, even for a robber, when he entered a bank in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. He drew his BB gun, demanded money, and then asked the teller to call the police. Miller later explained that he wanted to be arrested so he could get away from his wife. It worked. He was sentenced to three to six years in prison. Source: Associated Press

• • •

While I was visiting my grandfather in the hospital, a nurse came in to check his blood sugar. Before she started, the nurse examined his red fingertips, which had been poked numerous times already, and said, “Hmm . . . which finger should we use this time that won’t hurt too much?”

“Yours,” my grandfather replied. Tara Vyn

The Day My Silent Brother Spoke

BY JIM WATSON

January 1992

It was my mother’s wedding day—a hot July morning in a small stone church in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. She was 60 and never more radiant as she opened this new chapter in her life. Outside the church, Mother called us together for a few serious words.

“Go see Grandma now,” she said. “Don’t be upset if she doesn’t know you.” Strokes and heart disease had left my 89-year-old grandmother lying crumpled and uncomprehending in a nursing-home bed.

As I drove through town, I looked around at my passengers. Here we were, the grandchildren: a banker, an entrepreneur, a musician, a lawyer, a journalist. And next to the window in the backseat, sitting quietly, was Page. How could this affect him? Probably not at all. He would never understand.

Page, my younger brother by four years, has been brain-damaged from birth. He does not speak, cannot hear and sees poorly through his remaining eye. He stopped growing when he was five feet tall and struggles against obesity. A wall of autism shuts him away from the outside world. He spends most of his time lost in his own musings, nodding, laughing, clucking and crying at a pageant only he can see.

Growing up, his brothers played football, drove cars, made friends and dated pretty girls. Page stayed home, entertaining himself on a rope swing, staring at television or playing with a flashlight—his lifelong fascination. One by one, the rest of us went off to school, got jobs, married and moved away. Page traveled to dreary institutions and rehabilitation centers, where he learned the basics of reading and using tools. Now 34, he has a room in a private home and a job with a small workshop for people like him. He is on his own, and at last he is happy. But it wasn’t always this way.

During his teens, Page struggled with the emotional overload of adolescence. Seized by fits of anger, he would burst into uncontrollable tears, rake his fingernails down his face until his cheeks bled or, frustrated by newly forming cataracts, jab at his eyes with pencils. He passed through several distinct phases, each marked by a peculiar ritual.

First there was ground-kissing. Every so often, for no apparent reason, he would stop in midstep, drop to his knees and give the floor or sidewalk a long, passionate kiss. Wiping the dirt from his lips, he would calmly stand up and, with an air of accomplishment, continue on his way.

Ground-kissing gave way to spinning in place. From a sitting position, Page would suddenly stand up, twirl around as if he were unwinding himself from an invisible string and then, satisfied, take his seat. He whirled three times—never more, never less. One Sunday in church, Page decided to “unravel” during the sermon. First, a rustle of papers and clothes. Then he stood, knocking a hymnal loudly to the floor. All eyes turned to investigate the disturbance. Children gawked, bewildered. I stared at the church bulletin, my face burning.

For years, my reaction to Page’s behavior was embarrassment, anger, resentment. Why him? Why me? I was sure he saved his most humiliating stunts for when we were in public. People stared. Page was strange. Did they think there was something strange about our whole family—about me?

As I got older, however, I began to understand that he had no control over his actions, that I could not judge him as I judge others. He wasn’t trying to be difficult or strange. He was simply lost, never to be found.

As he drifted further away, I gave up trying to recover the brother I had been denied. Shame and anger turned into acceptance. In time, if I caught anyone staring at the frowning, clucking little fat man with hearing aids in both ears and pockets bulging with flashlights and magnifying glasses, I stared back defiantly.

Just before we left for the nursing home, Mom had penciled the words “VISIT GRANDMA” for Page in large letters on a napkin. Yet no one expected him to grasp our purpose, to understand that this might be our last visit.

As I drove, other memories floated through my mind: memories of 80-year-old Grandma, arms like sticks, pushing her old power mower up the slope of her backyard, dismissing able-bodied volunteers with a shrug. Grandma’s thin, shaking fingers carefully unwrapping Christmas presents to avoid tearing the paper, which she folded neatly by her side. And, of course, talking. Always talking.

The sound of Grandma’s voice accompanies every memory of her. She spoke not in sentences or even paragraphs, but in entire chapters, convoluted and strung together by breathless “ands,” “buts” and “anyways.” We seldom asked questions for fear of opening the faucet. Instead, we listened, playing polite audience, nodding at appropriate moments even as we calculated how to steer her back to the subject (if we could remember it) or blurt out a quick thought of our own. “Oh, I know I talk too much,” she would sometimes sigh. “Your mother tells me I do.”

While Grandma could not listen and Page could not talk, they understood each other perfectly. In his silent fortress, Page was unaware of the impenetrable wall of words Grandma built around herself. She kissed him and smiled at him and, more important, accepted him just as he was. She never showed disappointment that he was not “normal,” but rather regarded him with fascination, patience and warmth.

One day Page broke a flashlight and brought it to her, hoping she could fix it. I remember her perplexed, earnest face as she fumbled with the cheap plastic gadget. She poked and wiggled the thing and finally, looking sorrowful, shook her head and handed it back to Page. He walked away, to return a few minutes later and try again. She fumbled some more, then gave it back; it was still broken. The next morning Grandma drove to the store and bought him a new one.

We arrived at the nursing home and stepped into her room. The strokes had left Grandma trembling and unresponsive. The hollow, gaping mask that stared up from her pillow was the face of a wizened stranger. Her mouth hung open. Her wide misty eyes blinked and stared but appeared not to see.

I patted her small, frail hand, and my mind filled with images from a not-so-distant past. This very hand used to produce steaming loaves of the best bread on God’s earth. This patient, loving hand didn’t stop waving from Grandma’s front porch until our car, packed with grandchildren, disappeared around the corner. Now lying limply by her side, her delicate, cool hand felt so soft I was afraid I might accidentally hurt her.

We stood around the bed, smiling uncomfortably, mumbling everything would be all right. My older cousin was the most at ease. “They treatin’ you all right in this place, ol’ girl?” he asked. I watched her face closely for a sign of recognition. Nothing. Silence didn’t suit Grandma.

Stripped of her verbal armor, Grandma seemed exposed, vulnerable and—as I realized with sadness—suddenly approachable. For the first time, I was free to talk all I wanted. But I could think of nothing to say.

“We love you, Grandma,” I said finally, wondering if I was reaching her. My words hung in the air, sounding distant and insincere.

Page was standing quietly next to the window, his face brilliant red, tears streaming from his eyes. Just then, he pushed through the group and made his way to the bed. He leaned over Grandma’s withered figure and took her cheeks gently in his hands. Head bowed, he stood there for an eternity, cradling her face and soaking her gown with his tears. Those of us with healthy ears were deaf to the volumes being spoken in that wonderful, wordless exchange.

I felt a rush of warmth deep inside me. It surged upward like an inexorable flood, filling my eyes until the room melted in a wash of colors and liquid shapes. As the picture blurred, my perception snapped into brilliant focus. How wrong I had been about Page. Far better than the rest of us, he knew the true meaning of our visit. He knew it perfectly because he grasped it not with his head but with his heart. Like a child unrestrained by propriety or ego, he had the freedom, courage and honesty to reach out in pain to Grandma. This was love, simple and pure.

I saw that Page’s condition, for all the grief it brings, is in one sense a remarkable and precious gift. For among the many things my brother was born without is the capacity for insincerity. He cannot show what he does not feel, nor can he suppress urgent emotion. Inside him is a clear channel straight to the center of his soul. As I stood next to him, consumed by his expression of unselfish love, I stopped wondering why Page could not be more like me. At that moment, I wanted to be more like him.

We kissed Grandma, one by one, and slowly filed out of the room. I was the last to leave. “Bye, Grandma,” I said. As I turned to look at her one last time, I noticed her lips come together, as if she was trying to speak. Somehow, if for an instant, she mustered the strength to say good-bye. That’s when I knew Page had reached her.

That afternoon by Grandma’s deathbed, when none of us knew what to say, my speechless brother had said it all.

 

A Good Rest

When my husband was away at basic training, my four-year-old daughter and I stayed with my sister. Since my daughter already called me Mommy, she started calling her aunt Mom—the way her six-year-old cousin did. One day, someone called. I picked up the extension and overheard the person ask my daughter if her daddy was home.

She said, “No, he’s in the Army.”

“Is your mom home?” he asked.

“Yes, but she’s asleep with Uncle Danny.” Tonya Aleisawi

The Ugliest Cat in the World

BY PENNY PORTER

March 1993

The first time I ever saw Smoky, she was on fire. My three children and I had arrived at the dump outside our Arizona desert town to throw out the weekly trash. As we approached the pit, which was smoldering, we heard the most mournful cries of a cat entombed in the smoking rubble.

Suddenly a large cardboard box, which had been wired shut, burst into flames and exploded. With a long, piercing meow, the animal imprisoned within shot into the air like a flaming rocket and dropped into the ash-filled crater.

“Mommy, do something!” three-year-old Jaymee cried as she and Becky, six, leaned over the smoking hole.

“It can’t possibly be alive,” Scott, 16, said. But the ashes moved, and a tiny kitten, charred almost beyond recognition, miraculously struggled to the surface and crawled toward us in agony. “I’ll get her!” Scott yelled. As he wrapped the kitten in my bandanna, I wondered why it didn’t cry from the added pain. Later we learned we had heard its last meow only moments before.

Back at our ranch, we were doctoring the kitten when my husband, Bill, came in, weary from a long day of fence-mending. When he saw our patient, that familiar “Oh no, not again!” look crossed his face. This wasn’t the first time we had greeted him with an injured animal. Though Bill always grumbled, he couldn’t bear to see any living creature suffer. So he helped by building perches, pens and splints for the skunks, rabbits and birds we brought home. This was different, however. This was a cat. And Bill, very definitely, did not like cats.

What’s more, this was no ordinary cat. Where fur had been, blisters and a sticky black gum remained. Her ears were gone. Her tail was cooked to the bone. Gone were the claws that would have snatched some unsuspecting mouse. Gone were the little paw pads that would have left telltale tracks on our car. Nothing that resembled a cat was left—except for two huge cobalt-blue eyes begging for help. What could we do?

Suddenly I remembered our aloe vera plant, and its supposed healing power on burns. So we peeled the leaves, swathed the kitten in slimy aloe strips and gauze bandages, and placed her in Jaymee’s Easter basket. All we could see was her tiny face, like a butterfly waiting to emerge from a cocoon.

Her tongue was severely burned, and the inside of her mouth was so blistered that she couldn’t lap, so we fed her fluids with an eyedropper. After a while, she began eating by herself. We named her Smoky.

Three weeks later, we coated Smoky with a salve that turned her body a curious shade of green. Her tail dropped off. Not a hair remained. And the children and I adored her.

Bill didn’t. And Smoky despised him. The reason: Bill was a pipe smoker armed with matches and butane lighters. When he lit up, Smoky panicked, knocking over cups and lamps before fleeing into the open air duct in the spare bedroom.

In time, Smoky became more tolerant. She’d lie on the sofa and glare at Bill as he puffed away. One day he looked at me and chuckled, “Damn cat makes me feel guilty.”

As Smoky’s health improved, we marveled at her patience with the girls, who dressed her in doll clothes and bonnets so the “no ears” wouldn’t show. Then they held her up to the mirror so she could see “how pretty” she was.

By the end of her first year, Smoky resembled a well-used welding glove. Scott was famous among his friends for owning the ugliest pet in the county—probably, the world.

Smoky longed to play outside where the sounds of birds, chickens and chipmunks tempted her. When it was time to feed our outdoor pets, including our Mexican wolf, the occasional skunks and assorted lizards, she sat inside, spellbound, with her nose pressed against the window. It was the barn cats, however, that caused her tiny body to tremble with eagerness. But since she had no claws for protection, we couldn’t let her go outside unwatched.

Occasionally we took Smoky on the porch when other animals weren’t around. If she was lucky an unsuspecting beetle or June bug would make the mistake of strolling across the concrete. Smoky would stalk, bat and toss the bug until it flipped onto its back, where, one hopes, it died of fright before she ate it.

Slowly, oddly, Bill became the one she cared for the most. And before long, I noticed a change in him. He rarely smoked in the house now, and one winter night, to my astonishment, I found him sitting in his chair with the leathery little cat curled up on his lap. Before I could comment, he mumbled a curt “She’s probably cold—no fur you know.” But Smoky, I reminded myself, liked being cold. Didn’t she sleep in front of air ducts and on the cold brick floor? Perhaps Bill was starting to like this strange-looking animal just a bit.

Not everyone shared our feelings for Smoky, especially those who had never seen her. Rumors reached a group of self-appointed animal protectors, and one day one of them arrived at our door.

“I’ve had numerous calls and letters,” the woman said. “All these dear souls are concerned about a poor little burned-up cat you have in your house. They say,” her voice dropped an octave, “she’s suffering.” Perhaps it should be put out of its misery?

I was furious. Bill was even more so. “Burned she was,” he said, “but suffering? Look for yourself.”

“Here kitty,” I called. No Smoky. “She’s probably hiding,” I said, but our guest didn’t answer. When I turned and looked at her, the woman’s skin was gray, her mouth hung open and two fingers pointed.

Magnified tenfold in all her naked splendor, Smoky glowered at the visitor from her hiding place behind our 150-gallon aquarium. The effect was awesome. Instead of the “poor little burned-up suffering creature” the woman had expected to see, a veritable tyrannosaurus Smoky leered at her through the green aquatic maze. Her open jaws exposed saberlike fangs that glinted menacingly in the neon light. Moments later the woman was gone—smiling now, a little embarrassed and greatly relieved.

During Smoky’s second year, a miraculous thing happened. She began growing fur. Tiny white hairs, softer and finer than the down on a chick, gradually grew over three inches long, transforming our ugly little cat into a wispy puff of smoke.

Bill continued to enjoy her company, though the two made an incongruous pair—the big weather-worn rancher driving around with an unlit pipe clenched between his teeth, accompanied by the tiny white ball of fluff. When he got out of the truck to check the cattle, he left the air conditioner on for her comfort. Or he picked her up and held her against his denim jacket.

Smoky was three years old on the day she went with Bill to look for a missing calf. Searching for hours, he would leave the truck door open when he got out to look. The pastures were parched and crisp with dried grasses and tumbleweed. A storm loomed on the horizon, and still no calf. Discouraged, without thinking, Bill reached into his pocket for his lighter and spun the wheel. A spark shot to the ground and, in seconds, the weeds were on fire.

Frantic, Bill didn’t think about the cat. Only after the fire was under control and the calf found did he return home and remember. “Smoky!” he cried. “She must have jumped out of the truck! Did she come home?”

No. And we knew she’d never find her way home from two miles away. To make matters worse, it had started to rain—so hard we couldn’t go out to look for her.

Bill was distraught, blaming himself. We spent the next day searching, knowing she’d be helpless against predators. It was no use.

Two weeks later Smoky still wasn’t home. We assumed she was dead by now, for the rainy season had begun, and the hawks, wolves and coyotes had families to feed.

Then came the biggest rainstorm our region had had in 50 years. By morning, flood waters stretched for miles, marooning wildlife and cattle on scattered islands of higher ground. Frightened rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and desert rats waited for the water to subside, while Bill and Scott waded knee-deep, carrying bawling calves back to their mamas and safety.

The girls and I were watching intently when suddenly Jaymee shouted, “Daddy! There’s a poor little rabbit over there. Can you get it?”

Bill waded to the spot where the animal lay, but when he reached out to help the tiny creature, it seemed to shrink back in fear. “I don’t believe it,” Bill cried. “It’s Smoky!” His voice broke. “Little Smoky!”

My eyes ached with tears when that pathetic little cat crawled into the outstretched hands of the man she had grown to love. He pressed her shivering body to his chest, talked to her softly and gently wiped the mud from her face. All the while her blue eyes fastened on his with unspoken understanding. He was forgiven.

Smoky came home again. The patience she showed us as we shampooed her astounded us. We fed her scrambled eggs and ice cream, and to our joy she seemed to get well.

But Smoky had never really been strong. One morning when she was barely four years old, we found her limp in Bill’s chair. Her heart had simply stopped.

As I wrapped her body in one of Bill’s red neckerchiefs and placed her in a child’s shoe box, I thought of the many things Smoky had taught us about trust, affection and struggling against the odds when everything says you can’t win. She reminded us that it’s not what’s outside that counts—it’s what’s inside, deep in our hearts.

That’s why Smoky will always be in my heart. And why, to me, she’ll always be the most beautiful cat in the world.

 

Glass Half Full

I have long been teased about my large nose, and I sought some reassurance from a friend.

“Is it really that big?” I asked.

“No, your nose isn’t big,” he replied. “It’s just that your face is too far back.” Tony Murray

My Fourteenth Summer

By W. W. Meade

July 1998

One evening I sat in Miami’s Pro Player Stadium watching a baseball game between the Florida Marlins and the New York Mets. During the seventh-inning stretch. I noticed a teenage boy and his father one row in front of me. The father was a Mets fan, by the looks of his cap; his son’s bore the Marlins’ logo.

The father began ribbing his son about the Marlins, who were losing. The son’s responses grew increasingly sharp. Finally, with the Marlins hopelessly behind, the boy turned to his father in a full-bore adolescent snarl. “I hate you!” he said. “You know that!” He spat the words as though they tasted as bad in his mouth as they sounded. Then he got up and took the steps two at a time toward the grandstand.

His father shook his head

In a moment he stood and squeezed out of his row of seats, looking both angry and bereft. Our eyes met. “Kids!” he said, as though that explained everything.

I sympathized—after all, I was a father now. But I knew how father and son felt. There was a time when I, too, had turned on the man who loved me most.

My father was a country doctor who raised Hereford cattle on our farm in southern Indiana. A white four-board fence around the property had to be scraped and painted every three years. That was to be my job the summer after my freshman year in high school. If that wasn’t bad enough news, one June day my dad decided I should extend the fence.

We were sitting at the edge of the south pasture, my father thoughtfully whittling a piece of wood, as he often did. He took off his Stetson and wiped his forehead. Then he pointed to a stand of hemlocks 300 yards away. “From here to there—that’s where we want our fence,” he said. “Figure about 110 holes, three feet deep. Keep the digger’s blades sharp and you can probably dig eight or ten a day.”

In a tight voice I said I didn’t see how I could finish that with all the other stuff I had to do. Besides, I’d planned a little softball and fishing. “Why don’t we borrow a power auger?” I suggested.

“Power augers don’t learn anything from work. And we want our fence to teach us a thing or two,” he replied, slapping me on the back.

I flinched to show my resentment. What made me especially mad was the way he said “our” fence. The project was his, I told him. I was just the labor. Dad shook his head with an exasperated expression, then went back to his piece of wood.

I admired a lot about my dad, and I tried to remember those things when I felt mad at him. Once, when I’d been along on one of his house calls, I watched him tell a sick farm woman she was going to be all right before he left or he wasn’t leaving. He held her hand and told her stories. He got her to laugh and then he got her out of bed. She said “Why, Doc, I do feel better.”

I asked him later how he knew she would get better. “I didn’t,” he said. “But if you don’t push too hard and you keep their morale up, most patients will get things fixed up themselves.” I wanted to ask why he didn’t treat his own family that way, but I thought better of it.

If I wanted to be by myself, I would retreat to a river birch by the stream that fed our pond. It forked at ground level, and I’d wedge my back up against one trunk and my feet against the other. Then I would look at the sky or read or pretend.

That summer I hadn’t had much time for my tree. One evening as my father and I walked past it, he said, “I remember you scrunchin’ into that tree when you were a little kid.”

“I don’t,” I said sullenly.

He looked at me sharply. “What’s got into you?” he said.

Amazingly, I heard myself say, “What the hell do you care?” Then I ran off to the barn. Sitting in the tack room, I tried not to cry.

My father opened the door and sat opposite me. Finally I met his gaze.

“It’s not a good idea to doctor your own family,” he said. “But I guess I need to do that for you right now.” He leaned forward. “Let’s see. You feel strange in your own body, like it doesn’t work the same way it always had. You think no one else is like you. And you think I’m too hard on you and don’t appreciate what you do around here. You even wonder how you got into a family as dull as ours.”

I was astonished that he knew my most treacherous night thoughts.

“The thing is, your body is changing,” he continued. “And that changes your entire self. You’ve got a lot more male hormones in your blood. And, Son, there’s not a man in this world who could handle what that does to you when you’re fourteen.”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew I didn’t like whatever was happening to me. For months I’d felt out of touch with everything. I was irritable and restless and sad for no reason. And because I couldn’t talk about it, I began to feel really isolated.

“One of the things that’ll help you,” my dad said after a while, “is work. Hard work.”

As soon as he said that, I suspected it was a ploy to keep me busy doing chores. Anger came suddenly. “Fine,” I said in the rudest voice I could manage. Then I stormed out.

When my father said work he meant work. I dug post holes every morning, slamming that digger into the ground until I had tough calluses on my hands.

One morning I helped my father patch the barn roof. We worked in silence. In the careful way my father worked, I could see how he felt about himself, the barn, the whole farm. I was sure he didn’t know what it was like to be on the outside looking in.

Just then, he looked at me and said, “You aren’t alone you know.”

Startled, I stared at him, squatting above me with the tar bucket in his hand. How could he possibly know what I’d been thinking?

“Think about this,” he said. “If you drew a line from your feet down the side of our barn to the earth and followed it any which way, it would touch every living thing in the world. So you’re never alone. No one is.”

I started to argue, but the notion of being connected to all of life made me feel so good that I let my thoughts quiet down.

As I worked through the summer, I began to notice my shoulders getting bigger. I was able to do more work, and I even started paying some attention to doing it well. I had hated hole-digging, but it seemed to release some knot inside me, as if the anger I felt went driving into the earth. Slowly I started to feel I could get through this rotten time.

One day near the end of the summer, I got rid of a lot of junk from my younger days. Afterward I went to sit in my tree as a kind of last visit to the world of my boyhood. I had to scuttle up eight feet to get space enough for my body. As I stretched out, I could feel the trunk beneath my feet weakening. Something had gotten at it—ants, maybe, or just plain age.

I pushed harder. Finally, the trunk gave way and fell to the ground. Then I cut up my tree for firewood.

The afternoon I finished the fence, I found my father sitting on a granite outcrop in the south pasture. “You thinking about how long this grass is going to hold out with rain?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “How long you think we got?”

“Another week. Easy.”

He turned and looked me deep in the eyes. Of course I wasn’t really talking about the pasture as much as I was trying to find out if my opinion mattered to him. After a while he said, “You could be right.” He paused and added, “You did a fine job on our fence.”

“Thanks,” I said almost overwhelmed by the force of his approval.

“You know,” he said, “you’re going to turn out to be one hell of a man. But just because you’re getting grown up doesn’t mean you have to leave behind everything you liked when you were a boy.”

I knew he was thinking about my tree. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of wood the size of a deck of cards. “I made this for you,” he said.

It was a piece of the heartwood from the river birch. He had carved it so the tree appeared again, tall and strong. Beneath were the words “Our Tree.”

Leaving the Miami stadium that day, I saw the man and the boy walking toward the parking lot. The man’s arm rested comfortably on his son’s shoulder. I didn’t know how they’d made their peace, but it seemed worth acknowledging. As I passed, I tipped my cap—to them, and to my memories of the past.

Mother Courage

By Linda Kramer Jenning

June 2009

Every morning, Becky Ziegel gets anxious. Just before ten, sitting at her kitchen counter with a cup of coffee, she tries to concentrate on the day ahead. But her eyes keep drifting to the cell phone at her elbow. Where is the text message from Ty?

“If I don’t hear from him,” she says, “it’s panic time. I’ll call him, and if he doesn’t answer, I’m in my car. I’ll drive over to his house with my heart pounding so hard, I can feel it in my neck.”

Now a chiming sound signals a new message, and Becky’s shoulders relax as she reads it: “Brain and bodily functions seem to be working as ‘normally’ as possible.” She can head upstairs to her sewing room knowing that her son made it through another night.

“I’d be dead if my parents weren’t within driving distance,” says Tyler Ziegel, who is 26 and lives in his own place about ten miles from his family’s home in Metamora, Illinois. Ty, a former Marine, is officially retired from the military, with disability compensation for the massive injuries he sustained in a suicide bombing in western Iraq. He lost part of his left arm and right hand, most of his face, and a piece of his brain. Today, he has recovered enough to function without constant care, but seizures and other health problems have sent him to the ER four times in recent months.

In 2006, two years after he was wounded, Ty wed his hometown sweetheart, Renee Kline, to whom he had proposed between his two deployments to Iraq. The event drew worldwide media attention. But the marriage unraveled, and the couple divorced after a year. (“We grew apart, went our own ways,” says Ty, with practical detachment.) Since then, Becky, like thousands of mothers of disabled vets, has been her son’s main caregiver. While Ty credits his whole family and his friends for rallying around him, he singles her out. “My mom has been awesome,” he says. “She’s been there for me through everything.”

“I unloaded him, and now he’s back,” Becky says, laughing. She drives him to appointments at the Veterans Affairs clinic in nearby Peoria and the VA hospital more than two hours away in Danville. She makes sure he eats well and takes his medications. She helps him with the housecleaning and bill paying. And, of course, she checks every morning that her son is still breathing.

“I’m the mom,” she says. “This is what I do.”

Becky is 49 and the mother of two Marines, both of whom joined up after high school. Ty shipped out to Iraq for his second tour in the summer of 2004, shortly after his little brother, Zach, left for boot camp. With both boys gone, Becky admits, she “did the happy dance.” She and her husband, Jeff, 56, a heavy-equipment operator, finally had an empty nest. “I was thinking, They’re grown; they don’t need me anymore. Who do I want to be?” She considered taking some college classes; she planned to visit friends she hadn’t seen in years.

One day in December, Ty was on patrol in Anbar province when an Iraqi insurgent detonated a carload of explosives beside the convoy’s troop truck. Of the seven men on board, Ty took the hardest hit. A buddy pulled him out and smothered the flames. Ty was evacuated to a military hospital at Balad Air Base, where surgeons worked to save his life.

Becky was getting ready to wrap Christmas presents when a Marine officer called with the news. When Jeff handed her the phone, she didn’t cry but pumped the officer for information. He could offer little more than a sketchy description of the attack and Ty’s injuries. The house soon filled with relatives and friends.

From Balad, Ty was flown 17 hours to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. The Fisher House Foundation—a national nonprofit that aids and temporarily houses the families of wounded soldiers—arranged for plane tickets for Becky and Jeff, along with Ty’s fiancée, Renee, and Zach, who was just home on leave. They got to Brooke on Christmas Eve.

A neurologist filled them in on Ty’s condition. Surgeons at Balad had removed the shrapnel-pierced part of his left frontal lobe. It was too soon to know if his mental capability or his personality would be altered, if he would be paralyzed, if he’d even wake up at all. Everything above his waist was severely burned. “They really didn’t expect him to make it,” says Becky.

When the family entered Ty’s room, they found him wrapped in bandages with a tube protruding from his head. “We couldn’t see his face,” Becky recalls. “But his legs poked out, and I could see the crossed-rifles tattoo. That’s how I knew it was Ty.”

Ty endured multiple surgeries. His left forearm and three fingers on his right hand were amputated—the thumb, index, and middle. He was kept sedated most of the time. Then, after several weeks, the doctors removed the bandages. “Bits of his face looked like him, only burnt,” Becky says. “I can’t describe the color—charcoal, brown. No ears, no nose.”

Later operations, including one that used a muscle from Ty’s back to cover the exposed part of his brain, changed his appearance even more. For a few months, he wore a lacrosse helmet to protect the area, until a molded prosthetic was inserted and his skull stitched closed. “He went through so many stages of healing that I just grew into how he looked,” says Becky, who says she was more concerned with Ty’s emotional well-being than his physical appearance.

After Ty survived the first critical weeks, his father and brother flew back to Metamora. Becky and Renee stayed behind, moving into a suite at the local Fisher House. The women rotated shifts at Ty’s bedside. They fed him and helped him shower. They stretched his remaining two fingers—both badly burned—to increase their range of motion. “I remember days I’d think, I can’t walk in that room and put on a happy face,” Becky says. “I don’t know how I did it. I just did. My kid.”

Ty, his perception fogged by sedatives and painkillers, only gradually became aware of his disfigurement. Following the doctors’ advice, Becky didn’t volunteer details but waited for him to ask. One day, when he wanted to blow his nose, Ty remarked, “As bad as I was burned, I’m surprised I still have a nose.” Then he saw the look in his mother’s eyes. “No nose?” he said. “I must really look like an alien.”

Once, as they entered a treatment room, Becky wasn’t able to block her son from a full-length mirror. It was the first time he got a good look at himself. Remarkably, he seemed more curious than horrified. As Ty healed, he and Becky made forays into San Antonio to shop and eat, and Becky would stare down gawkers. If Ty was bothered by the attention, he rarely let it show.

That May, Jeff came to visit and brought Becky a ring with three diamonds—past, present, and future—to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They strolled on San Antonio’s River Walk and took in the sights. Becky had been living at Fisher House for five months. One more anniversary would come and go before she got back home.

She’d never spent much time away from the patch of country outside Peoria where she was raised. The eldest of seven children whose parents separated when she was a teenager, Becky learned to be independent and hardworking and to put others first. She waited on tables during high school and later took a courier job at the hospital where her mother was a registered nurse. She married Jeff at 20, and they bought her grandparents’ old house, which is still her home.

“I never could have imagined living somewhere else and not having family and friends around,” she says. But her 19 months in San Antonio opened up “the little box” of her world. “Now I can go anywhere and make friends and find family.”

Terri Fulkerson, whose daughter was also in the burn unit at Brooke, would sit with Becky in the gazebo outside Fisher House after long days at the hospital and “talk mom.” “That girl could find humor in a rock,” says Terri. “She has a way of pulling laughter out of someone even if their dreams are crashing down around them.”

Becky also became expert at dealing with medical personnel. “I would never have dreamed of arguing with a neurosurgeon before,” she says. She supported the decision to transplant Ty’s big toe to his right hand to create a thumb, though doctors warned it might not work (it did), and stood by when they fitted him with a prosthesis for his left forearm and hand. When he became an outpatient and moved in with Becky and Renee at Fisher House, Becky watched therapists retrain him in skills such as making a bed and loading a dishwasher.

Becky was delighted to see Ty moving toward independence. Aside from headaches, he showed no signs of lasting brain damage. He was as blunt and stubborn as ever and had inherited his mother’s wry humor: He regularly rattled young medics by pointing to himself and warning, “Don’t smoke while shining your boots.”

With Ty making progress, Becky took some time for herself. She walked for miles on a track near the hospital. On the “your-son-getting-blown-up diet,” she shed 60 pounds. She let her short blond perm grow shoulder-length and dyed it auburn.

“I was finding me,” Becky recalls. “I felt better about myself.” She even began doing public speaking to raise support for Fisher House. Then finally, in July 2006, Ty and Becky headed home.

After Ty got married, his mother enrolled in the college courses she’d looked forward to for so long. Even after Ty and Renee separated, Becky held on to her new freedom. Ty stayed in the white clapboard bungalow he’d lived in with his wife. He’d been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but medication helped lessen his anxiety. He spent his time roughhousing with his boxer pup, tinkering with his truck and noodling on his guitar (he’d learned to drive again and to pick out tunes). At night, he’d hit the local bars with friends and even dated a bit.

Then he was struck with a severe sinus infection, which led to two ER visits. The second time, it was the day after Becky had had surgery for a tear in her shoulder. She called Ty and got no answer; Jeff went to check on him and found him dangerously dehydrated. Ty was rushed to the hospital. Jeff suffered a suspected heart attack and landed in the ER himself.

Zach sent an e-mail to Becky from Iraq, where he’d been deployed the previous fall: “What was God thinking? Why does all this stuff have to be happening to us?”

Becky typed back, “Because we can handle it.”

There’d be more to handle. Becky and Jeff couldn’t wake Ty up at his home one evening; at the hospital, he was diagnosed with seizures—a previously undetected result of his brain injury—and prescribed pills to keep them at bay. Yet a few months later, a neighbor found Ty lying semiconscious in his driveway; there was another trip to the ER, where his medication was adjusted.

Becky surfed the Internet researching seizures and has now learned to recognize the warning signals. When Ty began to nod off—a red flag—over breakfast at his grandmother’s recently, Becky persuaded him to come home with her. Hours later, he woke up and asked, “Would you feel comfortable taking me to my place?”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t,” she replied.

Ty complained to Jeff, in mock irritation, “She’s holding me hostage.” Still, later that night, he allowed, “When I’m at your house, Mom, I know everything will be fine.”

At dinnertime, Becky and Jeff are hanging out, waiting for a pizza delivery. The phone rings: Ty asking how to defrost a hot dog bun. Chuckling, Becky imparts some motherly wisdom.

Sometimes—not often—she feels almost overwhelmed by the hand life has dealt her, and she worries. “What if something happens? What if I don’t get there in time? It scares the hell out of me.” She finds comfort, though, in her circle of loved ones and her “second family” of wounded vets and their parents. She tries not to dwell on what she can’t change.

“Ty asked me once if I was angry about what happened to him,” Becky says. “But who would I be angry at? The bomber? He’s dead. Ty? I’m proud of him. I couldn’t pick anybody to be angry at, so I wasn’t angry.”

Her studies on hold, job offers let go, Becky fully expects to pick up where she left off sometime in the future. She imagines the day when Ty will need her less, even marry again. “The woman who ends up with him is going to be lucky,” she says. “I can’t wait till he has his own kids.

“I don’t expect to be at Ty’s beck and call for the rest of my life,” she adds, curling up on the sofa where her son often sleeps. “But you’re never done being the mom.”