Every walk is a sort of crusade*

Celia's story is the reason for a number of stretchmarks on my heart.
Living with her we learned - with visceral intimacy - the value of hope, not as an intellectual pretension or a spiritual delusion but as a lifeline of sanity and survival.
Still, after Celia's death, we continue to feel a sobering responsibility - and a shining opportunity - to keep looking for ways to promote a cure.

We spent Sunday morning listening to people reconstruct our daughter from memory, telling stories about the way she begged for bites of Jeni's pear riesling, bundled up and wondering with us about what she would have been like as a preteen.

Celia's story is also the reason for a number of good things.
For tremendous gratitude, so much for the family we do have right here, three perfect boys. And the friends who've been with us through it all, especially the ones who continue to show up, in every small way, pleading with us for a different future for the next family.

*Thoreau