It was a decade ago this week that Mike was three chemo treatments into a year's worth of treatment to kill the cancer.

I left him in a hospital bed for a month of nights with untreated cancer because we just couldn't get to it. He was too busy dying. I didn't know there could be more pressing issues than cancer. But a calcium release from your bones into your blood stream? Not good. Renal failure and liver failure? They were toe to toe at the coin toss to see which would get to be the first fatal domino to fall. All the while, there were irregular heart palpitations and trouble in pathology with a firm diagnosis which necessitated more surgery.

It was just past midnight when I laid on the mattress on the floor in my daughter's room. My waking hours were devoted to Mike, so I slept in the room with my children, the sleeping hours a widow's mite offering to my kids.

The rhythmic sounds of life, deep and young, lulled me from a peaceful crib and a twin bed. It occurred to me as I stared up at the ceiling, both wide awake and exhausted, that I was in the pose of a corpse in a casket. I felt adrenaline rush.

Babies' breath enveloped me. The smell mingled with desperation and the faint hospital stench.

"Dear God, spare him, spare him," numb, as I heard the whisper I had spoken.

Prayer had become an involuntary reflex, instinctive. Food was out of the question. I was hungry and thirsty for only a miracle.

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Daniel Fast Reflections From the Beginning:
Day 1 :: Food
Day 2 :: Slow
Day 3 :: Foreign