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The red field poppy is an annual flower that blooms between May and August. Its seeds are scattered on the breeze and can lie dormant in the ground for years. If the ground where the poppies are buried is churned in the early spring, the seeds germinate, and with good light and rain, the poppies will blossom within weeks.

Throughout World War I, in many of the French and Belgium battlefields, the fighting so agitated the soil that spring brought blankets of red poppies scattered between the trenches. Think of this – in Flanders alone – made famous by McCrae’s In Flanders Fields– over 500,000 men died. In the Battle of the Somme, which took place over 140 days between July and November 1916, three million men fought, and over one million were wounded or killed. Over 1 million men is an unimaginable number. This means over 7,000 bodies dead or wounded daily, with only primitive field hospitals for care. After such an apocalypse, I would have been astonished that such beauty as the red poppies could still exist. I wonder how many soldiers saw the beauty, too, even in those darkest of moments? Or was their capacity to know beauty completely extinguished by all the devastation?

I have never been to war, but I have lost many people I have loved. At times, the pain and emptiness from this death has been so raw, so devastating, so defeating, that it felt there was nothing else but hurt and darkness. During the Battle of the Somme, imagine what else would have been there with the pain – terror, hatred, deafening noise, burnt flesh, the scream of wounded horses, exhaustion, courage, chaos, anguish. If I had been at the Somme, there would be the dead whose lives I would had taken with my own hands.

Still, time passes. Responsibilities continue. Battles end one day. Life’s persistence, its loveliness, its resilience once again catches me out. The sad darkness in which I am cocooned becomes a bit murkier, a bit less dark. Emerging tentatively, gingerly from the shroud, I am not the same me. Each loss makes its presence known. Still, one day something unexpectedly makes me laugh and laugh, and the laughing feels so good, and I am astonished that I still know how.

I write to think about questions that preoccupy me. In Landslide’s case, I am looking at love and loss, and how we find the resilience to overcome. By the time I started the novel, my mother and three close friends had died. Husband had battled cancer. I had gone through unexplained, early menopause which also felt like sorrow and loss. Before death and hardship came again, I needed time to process all that had already come. Since starting Landslide, I have lost Husband’s father, mother and sister and two close friends.

The idea for Landslide’s creative framework came one day while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s song of the same name. It was this idea of how life can unexpectedly, irreparably change in a second. It is this moment of inattention causing the accident. It is the doctor appointment with news that irreversibly alters your life. Until that second, you had one life, and then a landslide brought it down. Landslide is by no means my conclusive thoughts about loss and love. But in the process of writing the novel, I have gained a certain measure of peace. It has certainly enabled me to be present for those who have died since with much greater grace and love.

Husband’s mother and sister died within three months of each other. Now, we are taking on the care of Grandpa, Husband’s father. Grandpa’s faculties are receding. Three years ago, Grandpa was a keen Scrabble player. Even six months ago, he still fielded quite a good game, although it was true that his word usage had simplified. Now, we turn all the letters face up, inside the Scrabble lid. This way Grandpa can make words using all the letters from the bag. Sometimes he forgets to make words on the board, and instead we line up our words in the box in tidy rows. I don’t mind. I am happy, if he is happy, enjoying the game in whatever form we can play it. It is nice to have things we can still do together, no matter how modified.

Another thing that Grandpa can no longer do with us is share family dinners. It used to be that Grandpa would come late afternoons for supper, arriving about an hour before the boys got home from school. Now, come 4:00-4:30, if he has not returned to his apartment, he starts looking for his car which he hasn’t had in years. He forgets he is no longer in Boston. He becomes increasingly restless and disoriented.

So instead of dinner, Grandpa now comes late morning, and stays for lunch. I do the day’s cooking while he is with us. Grandpa used to love to cook, and he likes to see me cook now. Cooking while we visit allows me to multitask. Multi-tasking means preserving at least some of the day for things other than Grandpa.

Our lovely, gentle dog walker Abel now joins us for lunch. Abel spends time with Grandpa while I cook, and our main Grandpa caretaker enjoys a break. For safety, Grandpa now needs constant supervision. Abel is so patient and kind as they talk. Abel never tires of discussing Grandpa’s civil engineering textbooks that we keep on our coffee table just for this purpose. After studying the textbooks’ diagrams and illustrations for a bit, Abel and Grandpa always read Grandpa’s biographical blurb at the front. This blurb highlights Grandpa’s distinguished career as academic and scholar. Each day, Abel and Grandpa read it, and Grandpa uses this as a framework to tell Abel about different aspects of his life.

Most of what Grandpa says is highly repetitive, but every now and then Abel asks a different question, or the same question in a different way, and I learn another little nugget about Grandpa which I never knew. Today, for instance, he told Abel that he regretted not continuing chemical engineering instead of switching to civil as a graduate student. At a time when Grandpa is slowly being erased, to learn something new about him is a surprise and a gift.

Long after Grandpa retired from Northeastern, Grandpa continued to update his textbooks to reflect changing civil codes and developing technologies. He worked with his favorite PhD student to craft clever homework problems that got increasingly harder as students progressed through the problem sets. Grandpa was always sensitive to gear his teaching and his textbooks so that they stretched the best students while providing a solid foundation for the rest. I loved to listen to Grandpa’s calm, authoritative voice as he collaborated on the latest calculations. I loved to peek in at him as he worked at his tidy desk, making his edits and changes with palpable exactness.

Lost in the chaos and noise of young children, I found the intellectual oasis of Grandpa’s office reassuring. When I felt I didn’t have it in me to build one more block tower or take one more toddler to the toilet, seeing Grandpa serenely working reminded me that there was another world out there far from tantrums and Pampers. It reminded me that I was at home with young children because I wanted to be, and because I was lucky to have a choice.

Grandpa made beef stew today! In our family, Grandpa is a renowned beef stew chef. Grandpa started making beef stew when he took over the cooking from Grandma. Grandma cooked until Husband’s sister went to university. From then on, almost all cooking was done by Grandpa. The only thing about Grandpa’s cooking was that he had a limited range of dishes that he prepared, most featuring beef or salmon. When Grandpa was young, his father was in the poultry business. Boiled chicken was a constant childhood meal. Grandpa never eats chicken now.

Recently, Grandpa has cooked little. He still makes small things, like heating Campbell’s Hearty Vegetable Soup in a pan on the stove. Even then, we keep a keen eye out, lest he forget to turn off the flame.

Today, however, Grandpa made delicious stew start to stop. Grandpa began by helping me chop potatoes and peel carrots. It was as if his muscle memory activated his brain. Soon, a pile of uniformly cut vegetables was waiting. Just as I was about to start sautéing onions. Grandpa insisted he could take over, and with me as sous-chef, before long an aromatic stew was slipping into the preheated stove.

Dinner – which Grandpa was well enough to stay for – was a celebratory affair! We all thought that Grandpa had outdone himself, and that his beef stew had never tasted so good. Grandpa soaked up the praise, quite chuffed. After dinner, we even played a quick Scrabble game, with words being placed on the board, and not on the box top.

I am happy. The boys are doing their homework. The dishes are clean. It is just gone 7:00. Relaxing in an armchair, I sip chamomile tea and enjoy the stillness. In the background, Grandpa’s classical music plays. The music lingers softly, as if a part of Grandpa remains in his absence.

I knew I wanted to marry Husband by our second date. It took Husband a wee longer to figure the same. Until we were married, Husband and I always lived 3,000 miles away from each other. First, I was in London and Husband was in New York. Later, Husband was in New York while I was in California being with my mom as she died. Before marriage, we had never spent more than two consecutive weeks together. At the three-week point on our honeymoon, we joked it was good that we were still getting along.

So how did I know that husband was the one? My soulmate, my lover, my children’s father, my friend? And so quickly? It was just this intuition, this sense. Later, as Husband and I grew more serious, Husband wanted to know more about how I knew. I talked about his generosity, humor, intelligence, deep goodness. Only later, did I come to see how much he was touched by beauty, how poignant was his heart, how deeply romantic his soul. Only later, did I see how absolutely supportive he would be of me, and how much his support has enabled my dreams. Only later, would I see how much I would come to value his integrity.

I believe in elves. I believe in the forest-living, magical creatures perhaps with pointed ears, perhaps with long straight silken silvery hair; certainly, with silent feet and a quiet, luminescent virtue. In that place where childhood is still alive inside, where laughter plays like sunlight on water, I intuit them. I sense them on dappled forest paths warm from sun. I hear them in the soft sound of leaves whispering. They are so near that I can catch their iridescent sleeves, if only knew where to stretch my arms. They are fleet of foot and flitting. I hear their laughs like jingling bells gently chiming. They congregate deep in the ancient forests, impervious to the Siberian cold, the Amazonian heat. Their wisdom is deep and long like time.

My elves are good. They possess pure, unadulterated goodness. I believe in such authentic goodness. I believe it is a powerful and dominating force in this world. I believe in good, despite all the hatred, racism, violence, and arbitrary loss that exists right alongside. I credit the magical, the sense of possibility outside known reality, spooky action at a distance.

Most of my life I have known my father-in-law as Grandpa, because Husband and I had children quite quickly after getting married. He has been a lovely Grandpa and a wonderful father-in-law. Going to Grandpa and Grandma’s house became about all these wonderful rituals that that my children just loved. When they were infants, Grandpa would rock them to sleep, singing Clementine. As they got older, the children knew that homemade waffles would be for breakfast each morning, and that beef tenderloin would always be for dinner on the first night.

There was always a show to create with Grandpa dancing, with Grandma playing the violin, and with the children each doing a little musical or other performance. The youngest always featured their somersaults. As they grew, planning shows, designing sets, and practicing pieces could take days. When not in theater mode, daily painting, block building, and visits to the Science Museum were our activities in the colder months while summer was all about the beach, outside barbeques, planting little gardens, art and always music. Indeed, activities that the children might have long ago outgrown at home were still enjoyed years later at Grandma and Grandpa’s. In this way, being with Grandma and Grandpa extended my children’s childhood.

This is why it is so strange now to see this incredibly intelligent, loving, vivacious man hollowed out. Increasingly, the Grandpa that remains fixates on money and taxes. He can spend hours counting the thousand dollars we always keep in his wallet to deter any requests to go to the bank. Husband and I watch him count and recount his bills. We listen to his same conversations over and again, and we think we would never want to be like Grandpa is now. We think if we were like him, we wouldn’t want to keep on living. Yet Grandpa wants to keep on living. He tells us that he intends to live for a very long time still.

That sly Grandpa got me! I was multitasking – making apple crumble, playing Scrabble with Grandpa, and returning emails. I was playing my words quickly, and without much attention. Youngest was half watching our game, mainly scanning YouTube. About three-quarters of the way through, Youngest added my and Grandpa’s points, and calculated that Grandpa was winning!

Without my really noticing, Grandpa had made some clever plays. He had connected “cement” and “joist.” Then he played a strategic “structural” connecting to “zebra” with his “S” on a double word score, and for the bingo. My words, in contrast, were uninspired and color-oriented – green, yellow, red.

Grandpa, apprised of his lead by Youngest, became immediately pleased. A twinkle glinted in his eyes which are now often vacant of expression. Youngest joined Grandpa’s side against me. Now I was playing for real, stove off, phone silenced.

It was to no avail. Grandpa’s lead was too large, and Youngest was giving smart pointers. Youngest and Grandpa high-fived in celebration! They recounted the victory to Brother as soon as he was back. Husband heard the news when he came home late for dinner. Grandpa had eaten by then but was still here having a dessert and tea. Apple crumble is one of Grandpa’s favorites, especially just warm from the oven.

Grandpa’s shrieking about arrest was funny in a macabre sort of way, but mainly it was profoundly upsetting. I had spent probably 30-40 days of my life with Joan, many of those days sharing hospital turns. On a day when Grandpa was very ill, Joan had been with me. We stood vigil together all through the night, she unwilling to leave me alone no matter how much I had insisted, and then unwilling the next day to take money for the evening, as she had stayed on her time, not mine.

Yet upsetting or not, what can I do? Except deal and move on? Except hold it together so everyone else can hold it together. Actually, I tried to lose it, but I didn’t get very far. When I finally got home that night, I became apoplectic when I discovered Youngest still hadn’t learned his Spanish vocabulary, despite having had two hours to look it over. Husband berated me for being out-of-control. Out-of-control?? I stormed out of the house, into the cold, into the night, into the car. I contemplated a hotel. A friend talked me down.

Husband and I were polite when I returned. The next morning, he asked me about my hormones. Husband who always gets it without exception; inexplicably, this time, he didn’t get it at all. He hadn’t stood vigil with Joan, or shared tea with her, or talked about her grandkids. He hadn’t made all those calls to her family, stunned and saddened when no one came to sit with her while we waited for her to be transferred to the morgue.

Sometimes people get used to what a trooper I am. Sometimes people get used to the fact that I keep handling all that comes. Sometimes people don’t remember that, my personal connection with Joan notwithstanding, sitting in a small flat with a dead body isn’t fun. It was horrible, in fact. I felt shocked and shaken by it all.

Maybe we are all interconnected, the seven billion of us on this planet now, all the people who have come before, and all who will come. Link by link, perhaps we all connect over space and time. Some connections are obvious – families, friends, work colleagues. Connections to great grandparents are clear, because we share genetics, and because our great grandparents raised our grandparents who raised our parents who in turn raised us, passing on cultural and family norms.

This idea of interconnectedness becomes more tenuous when we think of our local dry cleaner or the checkout girl at the nearby grocery store. When we pay for clean clothes or food, our money goes on to feed and house and educate their families, just as people who use our work help pay for our gas and our dishwasher soap. But perhaps the most interesting are the connections we have to strangers, about which we are unaware. The balloon that escapes our hand distracts the driver who then fails to see the traffic light, killing the mother crossing the street. We are oblivious of this death, but our hand still had a part.

If we are all threads in one great and enormous cloth, then perhaps my difficulties are the cost of another’s gifts. Perhaps my hardships create the learning that not only benefits myself and my family, but also helps people whom I will never meet. Maybe that is my answer to why bad things happen to good people. We are only one thread in a cloth whose design is so vast and intricate, that we will only ever know but a small part of its immense pattern.

Husband got cancer over twenty years ago, when my first two children were fifteen months and three weeks old. He underwent extensive radiation and chemotherapy followed by a bone-marrow transplant. Twenty years ago, the bone marrow procedure had an even greater mortality rate than it does today, never mind the stats he was facing from the cancer itself. It was intensely scary, although, I realize now how little I was afraid at the time. I never worried about how I would support my children if Husband died. I never thought about what it would be like to raise my kids without their father. Instead, I was subsumed by care for babies, visiting doctors and hospitals, waiting for results, getting yet more tests. All the while Husband was feeling so poorly. Still, he was determinedly, uncomplainingly, single-mindedly powering through. His positivity was a force that carried us all along.

Years later, only disparate details from that time remain sharp – the squelch of sweet smelling sanitizer, my hot breath through the face mask, the cracks and discoloration of the gray-white hospital ceiling, the ache of my lower back as I rose from hours sitting in the brown vinyl hospital chair, the vomiting, the screech of metal as I scraped the entire side of the car against the hospital carpark post. I remember finally flooding tears when Husband was released from the hospital, and I realized that even though he was now home, there was still no end in sight to his illness. It would take a long while for his decimated immune system to repair itself. I remember during bleak moments writing Husband’s funeral eulogy in my head as I walked.

Now that we are older, we know many people who have faced cancer or who have journeyed through it with a close friend or family member. Back when Husband was diagnosed, however, he was young enough that we were real outliers. While our friends advanced careers and had additional babies, we were waiting on PET scans and lab results. It was very lonely, as it felt like nobody could relate to our experience. Similarly, I struggled to connect with a world outside of hospitals and young children. I so wanted to be excited about a friend’s newest client, or the recently discovered exercise class. Instead, such preoccupations felt banal compared to the fight for Husband’s life. Many times, I found myself astonished that the world was continuing normally. In contrast, we were deep in an alternate existence, as if we had traveled through a wormhole.

A strange aspect of our alternate cancer existence was that, even though Husband and I were together every day, sometimes it felt as if we were each in our own worlds, aware of each other like the earth and the moon, yet on different orbits. We were constantly together but apart, each doing independently what was required to make it through. It was hard for me to really, deeply understand what it was like for Husband to be facing death, knowing that if he dies, he leaves his young family without husband, father and provider. It was hard for me to know how it really felt to be so constantly sick and in pain, especially as Husband was so doggedly positive. For my part, Husband had no idea what it took for me to support him though the illness, while raising young babies. I had to hide my stress, my difficulties, because when he saw I was struggling, it made his own struggle harder. He needed me to be strong, so all his energy could be focused on getting well.

Nothing is malarkey. That is what our oncologist – a renowned researcher and tenured Harvard professor – told us when we asked about whether visualization and meditation would aid in Husband’s cancer recovery. Nothing is malarkey. This doesn’t mean that he advocated discarding chemotherapy, or that he found meditation effective for all his patients. What he meant was that fighting cancer was a complex physical and mental battle, and that different people found diverse tools valuable for maximizing their chances of survival. For some, what worked was visualizing a healing light killing cancer cells. For others, laughter was the best medicine, so watching slapstick was a regular afternoon activity.

We took this to mean that everything constructive had the potential to increase Husband’s long-term survival by some fraction of a percentage point, and we did it all: support groups, meditation, nutrition, comedy, visualization, garnering support from friends and family. We read every bit of research we could find, and then grilled our doctor about the studies. We were informed and involved medical consumers. Obviously, we had no exact way to measure how much eating better or reading the latest medical studies improved our numbers. Regardless, as Husband was fighting for his life, we wanted to claim every smidgen of percent that we could.

What we did know was that cancer patients with defeatist attitudes usually had worse outcomes. Being proactive while Husband recovered from one chemo and radiation treatment in preparation for the next, we were able to maintain a much stronger and more resilient frame of mind. We felt we were always doing something to make Husband better, while chemicals and radiation coursed through his body. Proactivity gave us back a sense of control. We were no longer passively waiting for the next treatment or battery of tests.

Grandpa almost died this week due to medical neglect. After two days of diarrhea last week, I had taken Grandpa to the GP who thought he was likely dehydrated and counselled us to have him to eat and drink more, no mean feat as whatever was making Grandpa sick was also killing his appetite. On day three, when Grandpa staggered unsteadily to the toilet, we were told to take him to the Emergency Room.

Once there, it took Husband hours of cajoling before he convinced Grandpa to let the doctors draw bloods and to put in an IV line. The next step should have been to get a stool sample. Except the next step didn’t happen for almost fifty hours! By this time, Grandpa’s heart had started failing; his kidneys were critically stressed by a bladder that wouldn’t void; and his food intake had stopped completely. Then, the doctors removed Grandpa’s IV line, because Grandpa had told them to take it out! They listened despite the hospital having Husband’s Power of Attorney for Grandpa’s care, and despite Grandpa being obviously not of sound mind. Grandpa was now so delirious and agitated that he kept mumbling and pointing upward, eyes closed, like he was seeing the heavenly light. He seemed just like my mom before she died.

We should have been more on top of it. The day after Grandpa went into the hospital, I had twenty women to lunch. The day after that we had volunteered to host a grade-wide drinks party for my middle son’s year. Preparing for these events was time-consuming and distracting; Husband provided back-up support all the while fielding constant business calls. Over those two days, we had both spent hours at the hospital with Grandpa, but we lacked the focus to really register what was going on.

Now, we became unrelenting, squeaky-wheeled, and threatening. We located the head of nursing and got her to personally assume responsibility for Grandpa’s care. We questioned the residents and got them to delineate exactly how they planned to get a stool sample; why they hadn’t already put Grandpa on prophylactic antibiotics until they were able to more accurately identify the infection; what other medical steps they could take like sonograms and scans to identify what was going on Grandpa’s gut. Simultaneously, Husband had our Harvard cancer doctor – and now our friend – track down Grandpa’s doctor to find out what in the hell was going on. In the meantime, Grandpa went into A-fib, and was rushed down to the cardiac floor.

Our efforts had an immediate effect. Stool was collected, prophylactic antibiotics administered, our wayward doctor became suddenly very responsive, and after a catheter-insert struggle, they finally got Grandpa to void. But all this came at a huge cost, as his gut infection had several extra days to ravage completely unchecked. What should have been and in-and-out hospital stay, turned into eight, life-threatening days of trauma and exhaustion.

What happened to Grandpa in the hospital proves to me yet again the importance of medical advocacy. Good medical advocacy improves odds for a successful medical outcome. Advocacy can take many forms. We have only recently moved to Chicago after having lived abroad for fifteen years. We are also still new to being responsible for Grandpa’s full-time care. Because of this, we did not have good doctors for Grandpa in place, nor did we understand that our closest hospital was as bad as it was.

When Husband’s sister had her brain hemorrhage, I asked the nurse what questions she would be asking if she were me, and then I typed them down. Having a written list to which I can refer when seeing the doctor means that our time together is maximized, and I don’t forget to ask everything I want to know. I like to make friends with the nurses, to learn their names, and to thank them continually for all their efforts on our behalf. I find this makes the nurses more engaged. While it can be impossible for a nurse to form a bond with a surly, complaining, half-crazy, elderly patient, they certainly can form a bond with me, and that bond helps them care for difficult Grandpa with greater grace. It means that Grandpa is less likely to be strapped to his bed at night because no one could bother yet again to remind him that he has a catheter in place, so going to the toilet isn’t an option.

Before his dementia, Grandpa was brilliant – a MIT PhD graduate, professor, author. Now he needs us there for comfort, for orientation, and to make sure the doctors are doing their jobs.

“Psychology Today” describes resilience as “that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.”

Life has a way of creating hardships. Bad things happen. Mistakes are made. Often, they are our mistakes, but we also suffer from the mistakes of others. I thought Husband expressed this well to our Eldest when he was experiencing his first professional challenge. “You can’t believe how creative God can be with his train wrecks,” Husband told Eldest. “They come when you least expect it, from all directions, at the most unforeseen times.”

It is hard not to sink under the weight of bad news or heavy burdens. It is hard not to condemn ourselves, even if the world is more forgiving of us than we are of ourselves. It is especially hard to control our emotions, to not get emotionally invested in the probabilities of possibilities, to stay with the facts. For me, the trick isn’t so much to avoid the train wrecks – although admittedly that is good to do. Instead, the trick is to remember that when bad things happen, we move toward problems, learn from mistakes, and seize the new opportunities that this learning presents.

“But I feel that I need to go back to work now,” Eldest lamented, cutting short a long-awaited and well-deserved vacation which was all the more precious as it was some of the few days a year we are together as a family of six. “That’s right,” Beloved concurred. “When there is a train wreck, you go and sit by your train. You oversee it getting hoisted up and put back on the tracks. If that’s not possible, then you supervise the debris getting cleared. You reroute people and cargo, until all is flowing again just as it should.”

In his kitchen, until he was unable, Grandpa carved with precision. He would cut each beef tenderloin slice into near equal widths, and the widths were thin, the way I liked them. He was equally good with turkey, but it was the perfectness of his beef plates that really pleased me. I equally loved watching him prepare apples for aromatic crumbles that filled the house with the scent of cinnamon and brown sugar. Each time Grandpa made crumble, he approached each apple always the same way, using the same knife and cutting board, and laying the apples in even layers in the same deep glass crumble dish. He could pare in one long unbroken curl so that the table increasingly become littered with red and green apple swirls which I would nibble as I watched. He always sat in the same chair at the little round kitchen table that had to be pulled out to get four around. The table tucked into the cozy nook between the refrigerator and the stove. Inevitably, a cup of hot black tea with extra sugar steamed next to him as he worked.

Appreciating Grandpa’s exceptional carving skills was a secret that Grandpa and I shared. Grandpa remarked once that I was the only one ever to comment on his carving. Although he never said as much, I could see that it pleased him that I saw he was expert. When it was time to slice, he liked it when I would come near. He would talk through the difficult bits where slicing became trickier, and we shared together the quiet triumph as he laid each perfect piece symmetrically on the platter.

Long after Grandpa retired from Northeastern University as a professor in civil engineering, Grandpa wore ties and blazers. Not every day, and all the time, but frequently. To me, this formality embodied a certain politeness and civility that distinguishes many of his generation and was very much in keeping with his being a Bostonian academic. To me, his ties and tweeds reflected respectability, and good, well-held values. It pleased me to see how he dressed up for a doctor’s appointment or for lunch out.

In the depths of winter, Grandpa’s tweed blazers gave way to down vests and Patagonia fleeces in colors of hunter green and navy blue. Over several years of Christmases, I introduced Grandpa to sports outerwear, until eventually almost his entire winter warmth collection had come from me. It was a rich and wonderful present vein to mine, and I did so comprehensively. It was nice to be able to give him gifts that he found so useful. Knives was another little gift seam that rewarded richly. As were pajamas, gardening gloves, and button-down shirts.

It can be tricky to think of presents for someone who has everything he needs, and whose needs are simple. It was so lovely to see his pleasure when I found him things that he really liked. He would be astonished at what a good idea the gift was, something he could really use, and he hadn’t even realized. He would say I was so clever thinking up something so smart. I would bask in his complement and in his delight.

It took calling the police before we could get Grandpa into the ambulance. First, he accused his caregiver of trying to kidnap him. To avoid such a fate, he escaped into the lobby of the Senior Living Facility and started screaming “Help! Help!” I tried to reason with him on the phone. Usually I can talk him down, but this time my reasoning had no effect. Instead, I rushed over to find Grandpa barricaded in the Director’s office. The Director was constructive and kind, but I was also keenly aware that Grandpa’s current senior living arrangement does not have a dementia lockdown unit. Grandpa is only allowed to stay because he has 24/7 care. If Grandpa starts acting sufficiently erratic, he could get kicked out. The next best living choice for Grandpa feels like an institution, as opposed to his current lovely apartment with its panoramic views. The next best choice is also at least 25 minutes further from our house, and significantly more expensive.

Once I joined Grandpa in the Director’s office, I again tried to reason with Grandpa. He responded by accusing me of trying to kill him. Even after patting me down and checking in my purse for a gun, he refused to go out the door without a police escort. I tried to coax him, even to physically pull him, but alas. Instead, he stayed fixed in his chair by the director’s desk, writing chaotic notes in shaky handwriting that made no sense at all.

The police came with the ambulance. By law, the ambulance must take Grandpa to the nearest hospital which was the place that almost killed him before. To get him to the better hospital, I was told that once at the bad hospital, I’d have to arrange for a private ambulance to transfer him onward. The whole idea felt overwhelming. Luckily, on route, the kindly ambulance driver broke protocol. His dad had dementia, too.

As the ambulance moved down the streets, I felt like crying. It wasn’t that I believed that Grandpa thought I was evil; I knew it was the disease talking. In fact, now that we were in the ambulance, Grandpa seemed to have completely forgotten about the kidnapping and murder threats. Instead, I felt overwhelmed by the driver’s kindness, by Grandpa’s care suddenly feeling too unrelenting and too much. I was upset, too, that another day of my life was getting frittered away without the opportunity to do anything for myself.

Grandpa had a urinary tract infection. For people with advanced dementia, it turns out that such relatively minor ailments can set off paranoid incidents. The good news was that his new doctors immediately got on top of it. The other good news was that the food court at the new hospital was quite decent. So, as I wiled away large parts of the next three days in the hospital, at least I caught a good meal from time to time. I tried not to be aloof on the phone with Husband when he called from Europe; I resented his absence all the while insisting that it made no sense for him to cut the business trip short.

Instead, once again, I told how the nurses how Grandpa’s father ran a chicken feed company, and how his mom served boiled chicken every day for dinner, so now Grandpa hates chicken. I told them how Grandpa was voted the best Conga dancer in high school and loved to dance. Before the hospitalization bouts, I was still taking him to Arthur Murray twice a week. He couldn’t learn new steps, but he certainly could dance the steps that he knew, as long as he had a skilled dance partner who could follow his abrupt transitions from one dance step to the next. I also told them how his dear wife of almost 50 years died last August and that his only daughter died in December. He has had a terribly rough year of it. Especially as his recent move to Chicago to be close to us has only served to confuse him more.

Long ago- to get through Husband’s cancer – I learned not to get lost in the probabilities of possibilities. There was a 30% probability that this next round of chemo would be ineffective given that he failed his first line treatment. If his disease failed to respond to the chemo, then that would decrease the chances of a successful bone marrow transplant by 25%. The bone marrow procedure itself had a significant mortality rate.

At the beginning of Beloved’s cancer journey, I couldn’t sleep nights thinking about the likelihood of these possibilities. The more tired I became, the more emotionally invested I became in terrible outcomes, so invested that it was as if probability had already come about. This thinking created havoc, not only for me, but also for my children. I would arise from such nights exhausted, emotional, and irritable. Instead, I learned to stick with the facts. I learned to live in the now, to take it test by test, day by day.

Some days, when I was really struggling, I would live hour by hour. Then, when even the hour felt overwhelming, I would ask myself what needed to get done in the next 10 minutes. 10 minutes by 10 minutes I would force myself forward, going through the motions. Sometimes “the motions” was all that I had that day. Sometimes all I had was that little voice that said tomorrow, I’ll try to do better. My mom used to say that character is what you do on the third and fourth tries. Sometimes, for me, it was try six or seven or eight.

I have learned to take life day by day. Except when I don’t. Even now, there are days when I wake up so worried that if feels like the worry is a snake constricting my chest. Just a little more pressure, and my heart will burst.

For me, worry happens when I obsessively dwell on some real or imagined issue. Eventually the dwelling gives way to an overwhelming feeling of unease which obfuscates all else like a dark dense mist. Almost always I worry about the potential for something to happen, as opposed to what is actually happening. When current facts are actually troublesome, I tend not to fret. Instead, I go into proactive, problem-solving mode, where apprehension is buried by resolve.

Research suggest that worrying can have benefits. In moderation, worrying can show someone you care, motivate you to action (I worry about my bone density loss, so now I do more impact and weight bearing exercise), cause you to focus on issues that might have otherwise eluded your attention (worrying about the environment has spurred me to be much more diligent about recycling.)

Grandpa worries. The older he gets the more he worries – about money, about taxes, about doctors, about the weather, about getting home, about food, about his bowel movements. Over and again, he expresses the same worries every day in almost every conversation. Grandpa’s worries are problems we can do something about. “Grandpa, Husband is doing your taxes now. Perhaps we can keep a chart of your bowel movements, that way you can know each day that you have had a poo.” Except Grandpa doesn’t really benefit from my action steps. His worry has changed into a more general anxiety. Instead, what benefits Grandpa most is talking. Talking for him means circling, circling, circling back to the same conversations. Some days, it is hard to keep listening. Some days, I can anticipate word for word everything he is going to say. Still, I keep listening. Grandpa has always been my good friend in addition to being my father-in-law. Just because our relationship has become more difficult, it does not mean it is less valued.

Did you hear the giant sucking sound? That was yet another of my days being sucked down the care-giving drain. My “eeeyuck” that came along with it was me getting up close and personal with Grandpa’s penis as the urology department ran tests to try and figure out why Grandpa can’t pee. I am slowly getting de-sensitized to his shriveled member. Even Grandpa doesn’t seem to mind my full viewings anymore. Such desensitization is just one more step down a path where the unimaginable becomes commonplace – like in war where dead bodies are no longer remarkable. Not that his penis is like dead bodies.

But dealing with his dementia can still feel like a war of sorts. Today it feels like a war on Husband’s and my life versus his. When I took him to the geriatrician last week, she said that Grandpa’s ears were full of wax and that he needed to go see an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. Incredulous, I asked the doctor why she couldn’t clean out the wax in the office right then with some Q-tips. She demurred, saying his wax-clogged ears were way past the Q-tips state. I asked for alternatives. She gave me ear drops which Grandpa has resisted. So, to the ENT we will go to get the wax vacuumed out. I also need to take him back to the urologist at the end of the week…and on and on and on….

We have switched all of Grandpa’s care to the good hospital, but going to the good hospital is further away. The good hospital is good for Grandpa, but less good for us as it takes much more of our time to get him there. Having Grandpa come over every day is good for Grandpa, but it cuts into my ability to get work and other non-caretaking tasks done. Where do you draw the line? Refuse the wax removal at the cost of his hearing?

So far, we haven’t drawn lines. The days when Grandpa doesn’t come over feel like the liberty of a soldier out on leave. But if two days go by without us seeing him, then he begins to take over more and more of my thoughts. Similarly, he becomes increasingly confused and agitated. As his memory holds only distant facts. Seeing us helps keep him connected in the present. Watching his joy and relief at our reunion reminds me each time how much we love him, even in his enfeebled state. He will wrench our hearts when he finally passes.

This morning I woke up panicked. What if five years from now Grandpa’s care needs have only increased? What if the mild depression that comes like weak mist each time I sit by his bed during another hospital stay becomes denser? More debilitating?

Today, I can handle Grandpa and the demands of his care. Today, I don’t shrink from Grandpa’s penis. Yesterday Grandpa’s penis definitely made me balk. Tomorrow? When the caregiver is out, and Grandpa poos in his pants? Will I be able to clean up the mess? Wipe his bottom? Even the idea of it constricts my stomach with dread. Gross and yuck and it is just too much! Especially as it is highly unlikely that Grandpa will cooperate.

There is a real probability that Grandpa will soon lose bladder and bowel control. The doctors have told us this. But that is not today. I remind myself this as my heart thump, thump, thumps in my chest.

Today, with assistance, Grandpa still uses the toilet. While the idea of wiping his bottom causes me to recoil, today I am ok with helping Grandpa to the toilet. Today I can wait by the door periodically asking how it is going, while listening to his fart noises. With kindness, I can assist with his belt buckle after, as his sour breath blows across my face. Patiently, I remind him how to turn on the tap. These are today’s facts. This is today. Today is where I will stay.

Someday we will be old. Someday we will require care, too. We can bravely say from the surety of our middle-aged youth that if we ever got like Grandpa, then we wouldn’t want to live. But likely that won’t be true. Grandpa still gets much pleasure from a buttery, drippy-with-maple-syrup pancake, from patting what he calls “the big dog,” from seeing the children even though he doesn’t really talk to them much anymore. He likes very much to talk with Husband and me.

Maybe there’s a lesson here. Just because life is hard, just because it is highly compromised, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t still poignant and wonderful. Red fall leaves against a dawn-streaked sky are still exquisite, even if you see them while once again rushing to the Emergency Room. Experiencing someone’s absence is the other side of experiencing their love.

With Grandpa, as much as I don’t enjoy many aspects of his daily care, for me, taking care of my own is the right thing to do. Hopefully, when I am old, our children will assume guardianship for us just as we are taking care of our parents. On the days when everything I want to get done is put aside in the service of others, I try to remind myself that this service is also an accomplishment. Even if the accomplishment feels insubstantial, as empty as sunlight on my palm.

Today it took five attempts before they could Grandpa’s catheter past his enlarged prostate. Three people held him down and I tried to keep him calm while he screamed. Husband was in Europe – lucky for him, perhaps, but a wee less lucky for me. What was impressive about the catheter incident was that Grandpa never once swore during the many botched tube-up-the-urethra attempts. I would have sworn. I would have invented new %$#@ing expletives that would have made “%$#@” blush. But not Grandpa. And not Husband. Not liking to swear is one of the things that Husband has in common with his dad. That said, Grandpa DID call the doctor and the nurses disgusting rats who he promised to murder with a knife, no a shotgun, no a pickaxe.

I encouraged the murder fantasies, prodding him for specifics. Would he chop off this nurses’ hands first? Go for the back of the doctor’s head? (FIVE! %$#@ing attempts to jab a tube up his penis, remember!) Oh no, Grandpa was going for their penises, each and every one of them. Good for Grandpa, I complimented. An eye for an eye – or in this case – manhood for manhood. Never you mind that two of the four were lacking the appropriate appendages…

My mom died almost 25 years ago after a six-week battle with metastasized lung cancer. When she had first died, she was in my mind all the time. Either I was thinking of her directly, or she was there indirectly, ghosting behind my thoughts. Now, sometimes weeks go by, and I realize I haven’t thought of her once.

Today, however, I feel like she is with me all the time – in the unexpectedly balmy air, in the jaunty green hat showcased in the shop window, in a bus banner advertising an upcoming Japanese Ceramic exhibit.

In these instances, she is more feeling than thought, yet still we have a conversation. It is as if she’s touching my most quintessential self, that which is at the heart of my individuality, separate from myself as wife, mother, and friend. In return, I open to her the most honest and pure sense of me. It is a reckoning of the best sort as anxieties, frustrations, pleasures all come bubbling up. Always, she reminds me that imperfections and fragilities are also opportunities, that I am okay, even when evidence is to the contrary.

I believe in forgiveness. I believe in the idea that you can’t just judge a person’s action without also understanding the road they have walked to get to where they are today. Like us all, I have made my vast share of mistakes. Because of this, partly I’m wary to condemn least I be condemned myself. More importantly, when I forgive, I can learn and move on. Forgiveness frees me from being trapped in victim mode. No matter how much I might wish that difficult events had not transpired as they had, the past is the past. Most times, and there’s no way to go back and to change it.

For me, forgiveness isn’t about condoning wrong actions. Forgiveness does not forget about the past. It does not dismiss the pain that the misdeeds have caused. It certainly is not about continuing a relationship with someone who treats me poorly. Instead, forgiveness is about letting go, so wrongs and grudges don’t fester, keeping me stuck on a repeat loop of bad history, undercutting my ability to move forward.

Forgiveness is easier said than done. There have been times my anger lingers. In these instances, I have had to actively remind myself that not forgiving hurts me more than it does the trespasser. I remind myself that when I forgive, I am changing the power dynamic. After all, we cannot always control others, but we can control how we react to what others have done.

Landslide develops forgiveness from a slightly different angle. It expresses forgiveness as the idea that our resilience can be a way for someone we love to forgive themselves for the pain that they have caused. It is the idea that our resilience will ultimately be at the heart of their own ability to overcome.

Since I have known him, Grandpa has found the clip, plant, rake, and weed that goes with taming verdant vegetation deeply satisfying. He likes restoring a gentle order to the yard. He likes the actual physical exercise of horticulture, especially the sniping and clipping. It had a meditative quality that Grandpa has found very pleasing.

After Grandpa retired, approaching seventy, I think the decade that followed was probably Grandpa’s happiest. He had raised two brilliant, kind, successful children- Husband’s sister, now a world-renowned orthopedic pediatric surgeon. His children were having children, and his grandchildren lived close enough so that he could enjoy them regularly, while perhaps not so close that they created additional responsibility. He had a wife of 50 years, the pleasure of each other’s company they were both rediscovering, now that life’s pressures were mainly behind them. He had financial security, and the satisfaction that his whole life’s work had come to respectable fruition.

So, in this lovely place, Grandpa filled his freedom with quiet pursuits like swing dancing, cooking, Scrabble, listening to Grandma’s Classical Quartet Group when they would come often to play together, and gardening in all seasons. For Bostonian Grandpa, shoveling downy snow was just another expression of raking freshly fallen fall leaves, beautiful in red and gold.

I think the simplicity of Grandpa’s retirement was a gift after having lived a life with such real challenges. Husband’s sister was born with skeletal deficiencies, so that it took many operations and until she was well past two years before she could walk. After that, many of her childhood summers were spent recovering from surgeries, often in a full body cast.

Imagine having to care for your baby girl through operation after operation until she was 18 years old. Imagine having to do it on a professor’s salary, when having a child in a body cast all summer meant masses of additional care needs not provided by insurance. Imagine on top of that: expense finding the resources to pay for the best private education possible for your two children, and for music lessons, as music was most loved by the family. Imagine additionally, trying to give your son the attention he deserved when your daughter, seven years younger, needed constant medical attention. Imagine, on top of this, trying to build your career as professor and scholar. Know the reason that you are in Boston in the first place is that you moved to be close to Children’s Hospital, where there were the best doctors available for your baby girl’s condition.

So, yes, the simplicity of Grandpa’s retirement was relaxing, restorative, after a lifetime of so much worry. In this simplicity, in this freedom, Grandpa found much art in life’s daily routine – the pleasure of acquiring a just-ripe avocado, getting just the right snack before settling in to watch the Patriots, or clip snipping his long green hedge, until it read straight with his old yellow level, the balance bubble at equilibrium in the middle.

From the time that I first posed the question seriously to myself as an adult, I discovered I wanted many children. Husband teases me that by our second date I was telling him that I thought 6 to 8 children would be a great number. Husband and I had our first two babies quickly, and three weeks later cancer came. Our babies after that were of the test tube variety. In the end, I went through artificial insemination three times and IVF four times to get my last two boys.

Until recently, I thought Youngest was conceived with Husband’s very last vial of sperm. We recently learned that there is one more vial left. If I had known there was a chance at another child, I wonder if I would have taken it? Try for a fifth child which could have easily been twins or triplets?

There are very few “what ifs” in my life. One of the many things I love best about Husband is that he also lives life full out. I would much rather stumble than regret. Life is so short. It goes by so quickly. No matter how much we each might try to insulate ourselves from pain, life’s passage brings hurt as well as happiness. Better the pain of trying full out, than the pain of skulking, of frittered dreams.

Grandpa and I had some of our loveliest times in the playground when the children were babies, when swings, slides, sandboxes and feeding ducks were still their most favorite things. Going to the park with young children can be a lonely affair, especially when the afternoon wind bites, chasing most inside. Still, it would have been a day passed mainly indoors playing blocks and paints and books with Grandma and Grandpa, and now everyone was teary and needed air. So, like it or not, off I would need to go.

On such afternoons, Grandpa would always volunteer to come with me. With Grandpa near, all the bundling into jackets and finding shoes always went more quickly and happily, and my voice would stay soft with patience. At the park, Grandpa would so delight at the children’s digging and balancing and laughter, as he pushed their swings high up, toes to the air, that I would be charmed, too. With Grandpa, I would marvel at their little achievements, abilities that had seemed commonplace just our last playground visit. With Grandpa, I would always get a little surge of confidence as a mother, as his delight would make me feel that I must be doing something well.

If one or the other was naughty or quarrelling, Grandpa’s calm, authoritative voice quelled everyone quickly. Even on cold days, often the park would be followed by ice cream. Unless, of course, Grandma had dinner waiting. Grandma was wonderful at heating up Grandpa’s beef stew and steaming whole heads of broccoli in her silver pot. After, always, it was right into an early bath. There Grandpa was again, plucking out for drying and dressing one of the many in the water. After, always, there were stories. Often all the children snuggled around Grandpa at once, on his green couch, in his homely office, with his large wooden desk perfectly tidied. While he read, I could catch my breath, clean up a bit, and even take a long, luxuriant shower.

My dear friend Kim has just died. Kim was once married to my brother, the mother of my niece and nephew. Kim and I met in sixth grade, and she was my oldest friend. There is something about sharing one’s childhood together that has a way of making them a part of you. Reconnecting again after Kim and my brother married was like picking up a conversation that had never stopped, even if two decades had gone by since I had seen her last.

Ainis Nin once said that each friend represents a world in us, a world that would not have existed, if that friend had not arrived. Because we were so different, I think this was especially true for Kim and me. Our friendship gave us each fresh perspective, and this perspective enriched both our lives.

Kim and I were friends when we were having our first kisses. We were friends when we discovered puffed sleeves and shoulder pads, and we wanted feathery hair just like Farrah Fawcett. Together, we could spend hours with curling irons, adding as finishing touches baby blue eyeshadow and bubblegum pink lip gloss.

One of the things I loved best about Kim was her ability to be really present in the moment. Kim was never the kind of person who wanted to have a high-powered career, or to engage in grueling physical feats. Instead, she had this incredible ability to enjoy the little things – a great song on the radio, a perfect piece of sea glass – so that the little things enlarged in resonance and importance.

Now she is gone – unexpectedly, without warning. Her heart gave out. She went to sleep, and never woke up. We were born just two months apart.

Now it is my friend Grace who is gone. Grace and I met soon after I moved to Chicago. Last Christmas, Grace was diagnosed with metastasized stomach cancer, and was told she had no chance of remission. From the moment that she got her diagnosis, Grace evolved emotionally, physically, spiritually at rapid speed. She so wanted to live for her children, for her husband, for her family, for her friends, for the wondrousness of life itself. She was willing to do absolutely anything and everything to heal.

Without having met our Boston cancer doctor, somehow Grace had gotten his message loud and clear – nothing is malarkey. In addition to joining a clinical trial, she changed her diet, started meditating, saw a healer, worked out with the trainer, formed what we came to call her Team Grace. She did this without blind, hysterical, dogmatic energy. Instead, she just let go of anything that was no longer healthy; the way Buddha gave up material attachments. Like Lao-Tzu, Grace increasingly seemed to align herself with the Force, the natural order of things. None of this ultimately stopped her from dying. But it did mean that her journey to death was rich and rewarding and full of personal growth.

I miss Kim and Grace dearly. Sometimes it feels like the pain of each additional death is cumulative, so that when my heart shatters again, it is not just for this friend, but for my other dead friends, too. It breaks for my Mom, for Grandpa and Grandma. It fragments for Husband’s wonderful and brilliant sister Arabella who died at only 48, a non-smoker from lung cancer. Now Arabella is no longer chief of staff at Shriners Hospital in Honolulu, now no longer mother to her five-year-old son, now no longer wife to her dearest husband.