So, the wait is over. And the results are what we feared—the cancer remains active, and remission (and therefore the transplant) is no longer possible. It's taken me a week to write these words; right now I'm sitting in my parents' living room listening to Dad fill in my brother on the daily "how's Mom" report. I've been in Washington for nearly a week, seen my mother in two different hospitals, packed up all their stuff and moved it across Puget Sound, and spent a lot of time thinking and crying.

Last week (that seems so long ago!) Dad and I talked about the idea of "turning the corner" in regard to the acceptance of such abrupt and crushing news. And I like the concept a lot, but I feel like I keep turning the corner and then forgetting things and having to go back around. The five stages of grieving are an emotional gymnastic routine that has to be repeated every minute and with infinite variations: acceptance does a backflip into denial with a perfectly-stuck landing on anger.

And in the meantime, we are drawing tightly together, learning the ropes of soon-to-be absence, trying to remember to breathe, and finding what joy we can in whatever time is left. There are times when I can pretend it's still 9 months ago, that we're just finding out about leukemia, and that there is still hope for a cure. And then when I wake up from that moment back to the present, grief takes my breath away every time. As with so many things, the anticipation is almost worse than the event.

We pray for safe, calm, loving passage; for the strength to make it possible; for healing and remembrance and celebration of an amazing life. We turn a new corner every minute of the day, and it's beautiful, sad, scary, intimate, and exhausting.