To pass time here at the hospital, I usually have multiple colors of yarn and go from one crochet project to another.  Over the last month, I have completed one blanket, several premie baby hats, and promise to work on the blanket I had started for Jessica before Christmas. I also have the audible app on my phone and if I can’t fall asleep or need to do something quietly while Jen is resting, I plug in some headphones and listen to a book.

Awhile back I had also downloaded the app ‘goodreads” and looked through a list of recommended books.  I came across a book called “Truly Madly Guilty.”  Up until last evening the book had just been another fictional story, without much to take from. Last evening, I finally got to the chapter in which you learned what happened “The Day of The Barbeque.”  Essentially one of the couples small child nearly drowns in a fountain in the backyard.  And in this chapter, I was drawn to the words as the author describes the mother of the small child as she looks on at her little one laying there so helpless. The words, described so elegantly how I felt the day I learned Jennifer had leukemia. I shall with you now.

“So this is how it happens. A part of her thought as she rocked and begged. This is what it feels like. You don’t change. There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedy happens. It happens just like t his. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells, and looks, and feels exactly the same. ”

Special protection. You think it’s there.  You think there is no  way a tragedy, like your child having leukemia, can happen without some shield. But there is no shield. You cross into this parallel world, without warning. There is no change in the rest of the world. Just your world. Everything else still goes on smelling and looking the same.