A grey rainy drizzly day and I’m all tucked in my nest reflecting on the the year nearly finished and season ahead.

Mindlessly I switch the TV to a movie, ‘My Sister’s Keeper.” It was loosely based on a story about the family who conceived a daughter to save their older daughter who had leukemia. In that family everything turned out well. In this movie they delved deeper into issues and conflicts of that decision.

There are so many sides to the issue and although I could empathize with the mother in this movie, I could see how she had lost her way through this familiar battle.

When you have a child at deaths door, you never want to give up. You are the warrior. You will do whatever it takes to fight for your child. You will stand guard. You will search for every medical intervention. You will stand your ground with nurses and doctors. You will repeat your child’s story over and over until someone hears. You will stay up nights and listen to their every breath. You will not care what the establishment thinks of you. You will never give up hope because the alternative is to painful to face.

This mother had to face the fact that shear will, endurance, strength, love, and denial would not keep her daughter alive.

The tears begin flowing like the rain outside. Not only because it was sad that the daughter died but because the mother, try as she might, after all the years she spent caring, watching, battling, it was not enough. I felt her struggle, her defeat, her helplessness, her loss.