Towards morning but still fully dark I am wakened by the soft pad of a cat stepping carefully across the bed to look into my face: “Are you awake?”

I used to write then, up at the lake, those nights I could not sleep, but it has been a long time since I felt like writing through the dark hours . . . maybe because of the “dark hours” we have gone through in our own life.

In those years we lived in The Not-So-Deep-Woods, my husband and I navigated our way through a faltering marriage and health conditions hard to imagine unless you are the one living them. Thank heavens we could not see ahead, to know how much scarier the journey would get, how much loss we as a couple, and especially Carl, would face.

Still, the darkness of loss lets you see more clearly that there is light too, the light of friends and family and happy times, the understanding that if you hold hands and move forward you can in the end be all right.