This excerpt was sent to me by my sister Jill, who received it from her dear friend Kelly Bates-Felany, who lost her mom last January to ovarian cancer. It is from “Saving Graces” by Elizabeth Edwards. They are comforting and inspiring words to many of us who have lost a parent.

Pg 119

I wrote to Steve, who was so disconsolate over the death of his mother that he could not even summon anticipation for the upcoming birth of his first child.

Thank you for talking about your mother. My son died in April. I ask God daily to take me instead of taking my boy. I often think of what he would feel if God granted my wish and Wade lived and I died. He would, I think, be much like you, disoriented and lonely. I speak to you now as I would speak to Wade if he stood in your place.

You are my precious son. In the months I had you inside me and the years I had you beside me, I imagined for you every happiness. As you were my firstborn Child, I had to learn to be a mother. I learned the names of trees so I could teach them to you. I would finish the books I read to you even after you fell asleep, with the same cadence and inflection listening in the pauses to your deep breath. I would hunt for old lullabies to sing to you, picking out the tune on the piano until I had made the song my own, your own. And later I stayed up all night typing your papers as you dictated. I searched the stores for the special box for your first corsage. And I bored you with parables so that you would know instinctively the way to be a good man. You never failed me.

There was never a point in my parenting you when I would have chosen to hurt you the way you hurt now. And I grieve to think that in death I have caused you this pain, that I have made you feel even that the birth of your child will be insufficient joy. I meant to give you life. And when I died, knowing I had done all I knew to do to give you that joy, I died satisfied. My most important work was done. And now my death undoes that, unwraps my work, and leaves you with the tethers to character and strength and compassion that I worked so hard, so lovingly, to tie.

But son, the best of me did not die. I gave the best of me to you. All I valued and all I cherished, all I knew and all I dreamed, I gave to you. It can die, of course, if you let it. Or it can live the full and magnificent life I hoped for you. And you can teach that baby all I taught you about living well, and I will live on again. My legacy – my life’s work – is in your hands. Take hold of life, son. It is all I really hoped for in life or in death.