Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [163]
…to Kathryn Z., who looked for the bright side when she noted that I would have no shampoo bills for a while (except for John’s).
…to the high-spirited Cristin C., whose extremely detailed advice about chemotherapy and radiation included “#8: When it comes time for radiation [when they mark the radiation field with permanent blue dots] don’t settle for tattoos in an ugly color. I went down to the local tattoo parlor to get some ink the same color as the freckles on my chest and a young woman with enough studs and metal in her face to attract a magnet treated me like I was the most important person on the planet and custom tinted a bottle of tattoo ink for which she refused to accept any payment.”
…to Krista S., who was right about everything except the most important thing: “I know,” she began, “well wishes from total strangers like me can’t mean much.” And how completely wrong was another well-wisher: “My name is Nancy F. and I’m nobody very important.” So many people wrote in the humble and generous spirit of Ginette R.: “I’m pretty sure you won’t personally see this e-mail, but I don’t care. Prayers travel further than any e-mails.”
…to Jane R., who seconded what Arthur Ashe believed, that “from what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.”
…to Marianne J., who encouraged me with her conviction that “if I were a cancer cell and I found myself in YOUR body, I would run like hell for the nearest exit!!!”
…to Edward C., who wrote that his late father, who had (but did not die from) throat cancer, used to say that the waiting room at the cancer treatment center was the most spiritual place he had ever been…and he’d been to Rome, Assisi, and Canterbury.
…to Elysse W. from Manhattan, who wrote that “I did go to St. Patrick’s today and light a candle for you. Believe me that’s something because I’m Jewish not Catholic. I just felt I needed to do something for you that was more than the norm.”
…to Lynn L., who had met me years before as an unknown mourner at Oakwood Cemetery, and although a “humanist-agnostic,” she promised to pray for Wade whenever she walked by his grave. A promise is a promise, she said, and she followed through and discovered prayer. She wrote to wish me well and to say she had been baptized on May 27, 2001.
…to Michael and Christina M., who sent wishes for my recovery, and a picture of their daughter Kaitlin, “because, in our biased opinion, she is simply beautiful.”
…to Wendy H., who cited Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live your life,” he said. “One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
…to Wendy F., whose mother died of breast cancer and who thought it would be a fine idea to have one room in the White House painted pink.
…to the Landskroner family, who invoked the healing power of children, and for the blessings understood by Bessie Burke Bennett, who taught first grade for twenty-six years and who, although she and her husband had no children of their own, invited her students—over 1,000 children in all—to spend one grand night each year in a big sleepover at their house.
…to Linda S., a former classmate who wrote me as “Mary Beth.”
…to Steve T., who set a place for me at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. You have no idea how wonderful this made me feel.
…to Nancy G., who sent me a glow-in-the-dark rosary that her kids liked when they were little. “I don’t know,” she wrote, “somehow it’s good to have something to hold onto.”
…to Steve C., who wrote to John and quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson—I do love Emerson—“You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
…to the so many lovely children who wrote me, seven-year-old Emily F. of Vermont; eight-year-old Brittni L. of Oregon, eleven-year-old Joseph H. of Indiana; eleven-year-old Zoe S. of Texas, who forcefully expressed her dislike of “cookie-cutter politician’s wives”; and to three twelve-year-old boys, Gabe H., Taylor P.-A., and Ansel N., in Ms. Fay’s class in Madison, Wisconsin, all of whom wrote