Best 12 quotes of Mary Potter Kenyon on MyQuotes

Can you remember another time when your chest felt like this?” My fingers splayed across my aching chest as I carefully pondered her question. Then I nodded vigorously as I remembered. Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked as I whispered hoarsely, “Yes, I do remember.After my husband died, it hurt like this. My chest felt full and heavy, and I thought then, Oh, this is what it feels like to have your heart break.

Don’t you believe that Jacob can be healed?” some persisted, pressuring Elizabeth to believe—just believe—and Jacob would be healed. The underlying message was that Elizabeth’s faith was not strong enough to save her son. I remembered then the same kind of statements David and I had heard when he was undergoing cancer treatment, when several well-intentioned people informed David that all he had to do to rid his body of cancer was to believe he was healed. I’d resented the implications then, and I resented them for my daughter now. People die. Good people like David die too young, and innocent little children die, and the strongest faith in the world cannot keep anyone on this earth forever. If only the same Christians professing their faith in healing could clearly see the flip side of that faith, that earth was not where we ultimately belonged. If Jacob died, he would be going Home.

I held back from seeing Jacob much during those weeks. He wanted only his mother, and I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him like that. I stopped by to pick up his siblings and take them away, but I rarely went inside the house. After several days of this, I knew I must face the sight that my daughter faced daily. Inside, I approached the couch tentatively. Would I upset him? A few times when I had visited, he’d hidden his face in a blanket. I reached out hesitantly, touching his thin arm, the skin hot and dry as paper. He didn’t move, but I could see the rise and fall of his swollen chest. Suddenly, my legs gave way, and I dropped to my knees in front of the grandson that I loved so dearly. My hand shook as I lifted it to his soft, fuzzy head. I felt as though I was in the presence of someone very holy. “I love you,” I whispered, and when he didn’t respond, an even softer whisper, “Tell Grandpa that I love him and miss him.” And then, with a groan, “Dear God, don’t let him suffer.

In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided me in the twisted, dark journey of grief. As I stumbled over the roots of hopelessness and despair, that light grew to illuminate my path, a path I sometimes felt very alone on. At some point in the journey I’d turned around, and there was God. That is grace.

I often wondered after David’s death: Had they known something then? Did their very souls recognize each other? Did Jacob, closer to God than anyone else I knew, somehow sense this was the last time he would see his grandpa? Had there been a message to the little boy in David’s long-held gaze? Did these two people—the six-year-old boy and the sixty-year-old man— realize something the rest of us didn’t?

Sometime during the night, my husband’s heart had stopped beating, and I was certain that mine would break in two. It had taken years of marriage and a bout with cancer, but we’d finally discovered the joy of a good relationship. David had loved me completely and I had learned what it was to truly love him in return. And now? Now, I had to learn how to live without him.

The length of the friendship never brought astonishment. After all, the majority of Baby Boomers could likely claim a long-standing friendship in their lives. No, it was always the letters: the-pen-on-paper, inside a-stamped-envelope, mailed-in-a-mailbox letter that was awe inspiring. “You’ve been writing a letter every week for almost thirty years?” The question always evokes disbelief, particularly since the dawn of the Internet and email. We quickly correct the misconception. “Well, at least one letter, but usually more. We write each other three or four letters a week. And we never wait for a return letter before beginning another.” Conservatively speaking, at just three letters a week since 1987, that would equal 4,368 letters each, but we’d both agree that estimate is much too low. We have, on occasion, written each other two letters in a single day.

The whole encounter was surreal. No one had mentioned cancer. I hadn’t requested special treatment for Jacob. Yet he’d just nabbed a private meeting with an actor from his favorite movie. I would later ask Mike, the comic book store owner, what had prompted him to invite Jacob to the supper and a private meeting with Mr. Bulloch. “It was Jeremy at the door. He recognized something in Jacob. Jeremy is a cancer survivor.

Tonight I attend my thirty-fifth high school reunion with some trepidation. I have not seen most of these former classmates for thirty-some years. I am not the same young girl they knew in high school. What they cannot know, what I am just realizing myself, is that I am not even the same person I was two years ago.

We continued talking as my purchases were rung up—about the first Christmas, the sadness of ending up in a cemetery on a holiday, and the pain of getting through that first year. “They tell me it gets better,” she said with a sigh. “Can I give you a hug?” I asked shyly before I turned to go. She nodded eagerly, and one small sob escaped her as I squeezed her shoulders tightly. I might look back on that first Christmas and remember it as the year I did so many things so badly, the year I forgot to feed my family. Or I might just remember it as the Christmas I learned what it meant to reach out to a hurting stranger.

We put on a pot of tea, a necessity between these two writing friends. We could no more imagine writing without this hot sustenance than we could without pen and paper. We sat at the table to talk shop, sort through our notes, and make plans for the book. Then we settled down in the sunroom, giggling a little at the unexpected absurdity of our activity, editing within arm’s reach of each other, like toddlers at parallel play.

You have no idea how well you are doing,” John complimented me just a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I’d come to a family gathering? That I’d remembered to bring food? That I was dressed, and my hair combed? That I was wearing shoes? I wasn’t sure, but maybe just making an appearance at a family event meant I was handling things well.