If you follow this blog, you know that my mother died last month. We enjoyed an unparalleled mother-daughter relationship. Memories of things like taking her fly fishing for her 80th birthday (above and right) are precious to me, and she would want me to push on with my gifts to embrace life. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I was out of state, tending her, for almost eight weeks. I returned to a stack of mail the size of a compact car, lots of good news from my literary agent (who kept tabs on me during this trial), and the need to process a transformative change.

Like a good daughter, I was with Mom at least twenty hours a day, dozing in ICU each night to a medical equipment symphony. I grieved. The hospital staff respected my privacy and replaced tissue boxes. I ferried my 87-year-old Dad back and forth and ensured that he was eating.

My emotional swings were penetrating and broad. I noted reactions and feelings, aware that this experience would bring new depth to my writing. I read my fiction backlog and studied photos (on my iPad Air—keep that Kindle-type app close at these times!) of locations in book 4, plotting twists and turns of the story. This literary research kept me tethered to the land of the living while surrounded by the certainty of death.

My faith and graduate degree from Dallas Theological Seminary are a solid foundation for the context of eternity. But nothing prepared me for my personal loss, even though I recognized years ago that my octogenarian parents were statistically living on borrowed time.

I closed the book on a relationship nourished by daily calls and regular visits, but turned a page on a new story. So glad you’re here.