For those of you who received this as an e-mail, you will just need to skip re-reading this — But it is the story of my day–
     Sometimes it feels like these last fifteen weeks have been an eternity.  This week, while driving Mama home from a CAT scan, she suddenly said, “Sometimes I just feel like I HAVE to see your Daddy.  I just feel like I will look up and he will come walking in.” And the tears began to fall.  I said to her, “You know, Mama, I really do understand how that feels — not to the extent you do, I am sure, but there are times when I just feel almost desperate in my grief.  That it seems so unending, somehow.  But that has had its sweetness, too, because it turns my heart towards the hope we have, and towards the Father, and that ALWAYS helps me.”  And the good thing is, Mama has found that true, too.  
        Today she and I made the trip to University of Baltimore Hospital for a follow-up with her doctors.  The news is wonderful.  She is doing great.  Everything is as normal as it can be after an esophagectomy.  The four people most involved with her treatment all came in today.  Dr. Gamliel (the surgeon), Dr. Doyles (the Chemotherapist), Dr. Sumtha (the Radiologist) and Tiffany (the P.A. for her Radiation therapy).  Each one of them was more than ecstatic with her progress.  They don’t need to see her back for six months, and in another year, hope to go to once a year.  Dr. Gamliel has a special affection for her, and he keeps turning the praise for her success back to God.  He is Jewish, and has been almost reticent about talking about God, but today he said, “The longer I am in this business, the more religious I become.  I cannot take the credit for the healing.  That is from above.  And I can do the same thing for different people and it all works out differently.  I know that it is a higher power.”
        In the course of our conversation, I said to him, ” Who would have thought that she would do so well?  Isn’t it amazing, when you think about last year at this time and all she has been through?  I look at how great she is doing and I am so thankful!”
        He said, “You want to know who would have thought?”  He raised his hand towards Heaven.  “And I thought so, too.  I felt the fire when I first met you and I knew that you would do your part to get well.”
        And so, on a day like this, we really miss that Daddy.  He would have been driving around Baltimore, looking for a cheap parking place, striding down the sidewalk so fast that we could barely keep up, waiting impatiently in the waiting rooms while he felt that people were purposefully making him wait, and shuffling his feet in the presence of the doctors who were trying hard to help Mama, zipping out ahead of us to bring the car from where ever he had parked it, then sailing along in his precious car while we tried not to see the risks he took on I-695, I-97 and Route 50 and the bridge, and coming home to Yoder drive, pulling up and heading first of all to the mail box to see if the mail had gone, then trotting over the nursing home to see if there was any lunch left to bring over for him and Mama. We really do miss him so much.  But he would be so proud of Mama.  She grows stronger every day, and she is embracing life and the changes with courage.  She will always miss “her” Mark.  Dr. Gamliel told her today that losing him is really like an amputation.  He will never come back, and things will always be different, but she can cope, and she can learn to get along, and she can even enjoy living, but it will never be the same, and there are times when it will hurt.  And that is true.  All of us are finding it so.