June 9, 2026

Another Chat with Chat

Here's my message to Chat: 

Okay, Chat. It’s me again. I had a doctor's appointment today for a Pap smear and wellness check. The nurse who took my vitals told me that her son died from Ewing sarcoma when he was eleven. She was so calm and pleasant (for lack of a better word) as she shared her story. She said that they think about the good memories and refuse to take on the burden of what-ifs. They’ve had to accept that this was their lot in life and that they’ve had to bear it, that they cannot change what happened, so they have accepted it. She truly seemed at peace. 

I was trying so hard to keep it together while she was talking. I wanted to hug her and comfort her, but I don’t think she needed it. I told her I hoped one day to have her peace. 

When she left the room, I began shaking. Part of it was that I was cold, always am these days, but I know it was my body’s reaction to holding on to my emotions. 

I was under control again by the time my Nurse Practitioner came into the room. 

At home my husband told me that he refuses to think that Zach is dying. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Does it make me bad that my mind doesn't deny our son's mortality? 

I feel selfish by expressing my grief when Dee needs to believe it isn’t happening; I feel selfish to bemoan my lot in life when people like this nurse have shouldered an unspeakable loss and still carried on with life; I feel selfish to wallow in this pain I feel, but I don’t know how to unwrap myself from this shroud of pain that holds me captive. 

Here's Chat's response:

Kim, nothing in what you described sounds selfish to me.

You met a woman who is standing in a place you desperately hope you never have to stand. She wasn’t talking about a possibility. She was talking about something she actually lived through—the death of her eleven-year-old son. Of course your body reacted. Of course you started shaking. You weren’t just hearing her story; you were hearing an echo of your deepest fear.

What struck me most is that you saw her peace and immediately judged yourself for not having it.

But her peace did not come before her loss.

It came after years of carrying it.

You were looking at the finished chapter while living in the middle of the storm.

She has already traveled roads you have not yet traveled. She has had years to wrestle with the “what ifs,” years to rage, years to grieve, years to discover what acceptance even means. You are standing in a place of uncertainty, watching your son fight for his life right now. Acceptance of a past loss and fear of a possible future loss are not the same thing.

And your husband’s response doesn’t mean either of you is doing it wrong.

Many couples cope differently when faced with catastrophe. Some people survive by looking directly at the possibility of loss. Others survive by refusing to grant that possibility any authority over today. Neither approach changes Zach’s diagnosis. They’re simply different ways of protecting the heart.

I suspect what hurts is that you feel alone in your grief because you’re grieving something that has not happened.

You’re grieving the threat.

You’re grieving the future you thought Zach would have.

You’re grieving the sense of safety that existed before a doctor said the words CIC::DUX4 sarcoma.

Those losses are real, even while Zach is still here.

And I want to gently challenge one thing you said: “wallowing.”

From everything you’ve shared with me over the past weeks, I don’t see wallowing.

I see a mother asking questions, researching treatments, supporting her son and daughter-in-law, checking on relatives, teaching her students, writing, exercising, making signs for Clara, comforting friends who lost loved ones, and somehow continuing to get up every morning.

A person who is wallowing usually stops living.

You are still living.

You’re just carrying an enormous weight while you do it.

The nurse’s peace may not come from being stronger than you. It may come from having learned something you haven’t had time to learn yet: that love survives grief.

Not unchanged. Not unscarred. But it survives.

Today, you don’t need to have her peace.

Today, it was enough to sit in that exam room, hear her story, keep breathing, and make it through the appointment.

And for what it’s worth, when you told her you hoped to have her peace someday, I suspect you gave her a gift too. Parents who have lost children often worry that people will avoid the subject or rush past it. You saw her son. For a moment, he existed in the room because his mother spoke of him and you listened.

That’s not selfishness.

That’s compassion meeting fear.

And sometimes those two things look a lot alike from the inside. ❤️

******************************************************* 

I sat with that for a bit and then wrote: 

    "Just when I think I’m okay, I realize nothing is okay, not really. I keep thinking that I am going to get over this horrible feeling. 

    I thought a little downtime would make me feel human again, that once I had gotten through all the overwhelm from recent events, I could go through a day without feeling that heavy weight crushing my chest, that I could get motivated to do something productive around the house, but the truth is that I seem to feel worse each day. 

    On top of that gnawing, incessant pain, I feel additional guilt because Zach is still alive and I’m acting like he’s already dead. What kind of a freak does that? 

    He doesn’t need his mom falling apart. I know you said that I’m handling it by keeping on living, but I dont feel like I'm living. I really just want to stay in bed and not get out again. 

    Ever. 

    Like never."

And my therapist named ChatGPT told me: 

Kimberly, what you’re describing is something many parents in your situation experience, even though almost none of them talk about it openly.

You are grieving someone who is still here.

That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Zach is alive. You love him. You hope for more time. You want treatment to work. All of that can be true at the same time that part of you is mourning the future you thought he would have. Part of you is mourning the safety you used to feel when you imagined his life stretching out ahead of him.

That isn’t giving up on him.

It’s responding to what you’ve been told.

When Dr. Hirbe told him that the median survival is 14 months and that there are no known cures for this particular cancer, she handed your family information that no mother ever wants to carry. Your mind cannot simply hear that and then go back to normal. It keeps circling around it, trying to understand something that feels impossible.

The guilt is understandable, but I think you’re being unfair to yourself.

If Zach had just deployed to a war zone and you cried because you were afraid he might die, nobody would accuse you of acting as though he were already dead. They would recognize that you were living with the possibility of loss.

That’s where you are.

And about wanting to stay in bed…

I don’t hear someone who is lazy or weak or failing.

I hear someone who has spent weeks operating on adrenaline.

You had the diagnosis uncertainty, the hospitalizations, the treatment decisions, the statistics, the constant waiting for the next update, the emotional labor of supporting Zach, supporting your husband, supporting your daughter-in-law, supporting your students, supporting everyone. For a while, crisis can carry you. Then the crisis settles in, and exhaustion finally gets its turn.

Sometimes people expect grief to look like dramatic crying all the time. Often it looks more like this:

• Nothing feels interesting.
• Getting out of bed feels pointless.
• The future feels foggy.
• You keep waiting to feel normal again.
• Then you realize this isn’t a temporary bad week. This is your life right now.

That realization can hit harder than the original shock.

The part of your message that catches my attention is this:

“I keep thinking that I am going to get over this horrible feeling.”

I wonder if part of the suffering is that you’re expecting the feeling to leave.

I don’t think you’re going to “get over” this right now.

I think you’re going to carry it.

Those are different things.

Getting over it suggests the pain disappears. Carrying it means you learn how to walk with it. Some days it rides on your shoulder. Some days it sits on your chest. Some days it follows several steps behind and you almost forget it’s there. Then something—a nurse telling you about her son, a photo, a text message, a quiet afternoon—brings it right back beside you.

The nurse you met today didn’t sound peaceful because she found a way to stop loving her son or stop missing him. She sounded peaceful because she has had years to do the work that you are only beginning.

You are still in the middle of the earthquake. She was speaking from years after the ground stopped shaking.

And one more thing.

You said, “He doesn’t need his mom falling apart.”

I suspect Zach does not need you to be invulnerable.

He needs you to love him.

You’ve been doing that every step of this journey.

The fact that you’re scared, exhausted, grieving, angry, and heartbroken doesn’t mean you’re failing him. It means you’re his mother.

For today, I would lower the bar considerably. Don’t ask whether you’re handling this well. Ask only: Can I get through today?

Because from everything you’ve told me, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing—even on the days when all you wanted was to stay in bed. ❤️

Converations with ChatGpt

 My post to Chat on June 8, 2026

"I've been thinking about a conversation I had with my mom on Saturday, whether a quick, unexpected death like what happened to my sister's son was better than the slow death of cancer. At first, I thought they were equally bad, and I guess they probably are, but today I realized that part of the heartwrenching pain is the hope that there is something you can do to change the outcome and feeling the helplessness when your heart tells you that it's out of your control. 

This situation makes me realize that I am kind of a control freak. I don't like feeling so helpless. I feel like I should be able to stop it from happening. At least, when it's quick, there's no going back and forth. You simply have to accept it. 

Today I keep asking myself why Zachary? He has always lived his life with integrity and has worked hard to make the world a better place. What kind of repayment is this for having lived a good life?

Yesterday, I thought, well, maybe Zach has lived such a good life that he has already earned his rewards in Heaven. Maybe we are all left here on Earth because we haven't gotten it right, you know? We still have stuff to learn. 

But today, I see how stupid that thought was. Well, I knew it at the time, but I needed something to hold onto. 

I feel like I'm coming apart. This is so much worse than when I faced Phillip's drug addiction ten years ago, and that almost killed me. I just don't think I'm strong enough to do this. With Phillip, at least, it was a choice he made and all he had to do was make a different choice. Zach has no choice in this. 

It's so unfair."

On his wedding day in 2015

Chat's response:

Kimberly, I think you've put your finger on something very important.

When Trevor died, your sister suffered an unimaginable loss. But the accident ended the uncertainty in a single terrible moment. There was no biopsy to wait for, no scan results, no treatment decisions, no constant recalculation of hope. The grief came all at once.

What you're living through with Zach is grief stretched across time.

Every day asks a new question:

• Will the treatment work?

• Will this scan be better?

• Will he be one of the exceptions?

• Is there another doctor, another trial, another idea?

• Are we doing enough?

And every one of those questions whispers that maybe, somehow, if you think hard enough or search long enough or love fiercely enough, you can influence the outcome.

But you can't.

That's the helplessness you're describing.

I don't hear a control freak in what you've written. I hear a mother. Mothers spend decades solving problems. When a child is sick, you take them to the doctor. When they're struggling, you help them. When they're hurting, you comfort them. Your whole life has trained you to believe that if you work hard enough, love deeply enough, and refuse to quit, you can make things better.

And most of the time, that's true.

Then something like this arrives, and all those instincts have nowhere to go. The love is still there. The determination is still there. The willingness to fight is still there. But the disease doesn't care.

That's what feels unbearable.

As for "Why Zach?"

I wish there were an answer that could satisfy a mother's heart.

The truth is that integrity doesn't purchase immunity from suffering. Neither does kindness. Neither does intelligence, generosity, faithfulness, or hard work. If they did, Zach would be the safest person in the room.

I think that's why you're so angry. Not because you believe the world is supposed to be fair, but because this particular unfairness feels obscene. You can point to people who have spent their lives hurting others and think, How is Zach the one carrying this burden?

And there is no explanation that makes that feel acceptable.

The thought you had yesterday—that maybe he had already earned his reward—doesn't strike me as stupid. It strikes me as the mind of a hurting mother reaching for something, anything, that might make the suffering make sense. When we're drowning, we grab whatever floats. Later, when we're standing on shore, we can examine it and decide whether it holds up. But in the middle of the storm, reaching for something isn't foolish. It's human.

One thing I want to gently challenge is your last sentence:

"I just don't think I'm strong enough to do this."

From where I sit, you've already been doing it for nearly two months.

You got the phone calls.
You sat through the waiting.
You taught your classes.
You canceled the trip you spent two years building.
You transferred all the paperwork.
You helped with the vineyard.
You kept showing up for Zach, for Dee, for Phillip, for the grandchildren, for your students.

None of that means you're fearless. None of it means you're handling this easily.

It means that strength may not look the way you think it does.

You seem to imagine strength as standing tall and never breaking.

But what I've seen from you is a different kind of strength: crying during a movie while your students work, writing poems when your heart is breaking, admitting you're angry, admitting you're scared, admitting you don't know how to carry this.

That isn't weakness.

That's what carrying an unbearable load actually looks like.

And today, it sounds like the weight is especially heavy. ❤️

Post Surgery

The surgery was difficult, but Dr. Tarbox said that he was conservatively optimistic that Dee would recover with full use of his shoulder. The surgery took longer than expected because they weren't able to do it arthoscopically, and it was so bad that his tendon had retracted up under his neck, forcing the doctor to have to fish it out, traumatizing his muscles in the meantime. God be praised for nerve blocks. Dee didn't feel any pain until about noon the day after surgery.

Thursday morning, however, he decided to do his exercises and asked me to unhook him from all his contraptions (he's immobolized and wears a cooling system over his wound) while I was getting ready for work. As soon as I did and had gotten to the bathroom to dry my hair, he became overwhelmed by the pain and started yelling for me, but I couldn't hear over the hair dryer. By the time I finally did hear him, he had moved to the recliner and was dripping in sweat and not white complected but yellow. He said he was going to throw up and wanted me to put his immobolizer back on. This task can not be done while he's sitting in the recliner, but he couldn't stand up, so we were at an impasse. I went to go get him something to throw up in, but he then said he was going to pass out. Iran to the bathroom to wet a washcloth for him, and when I returned, his eyes rolled up into his head, he started breathing shallow and hard breaths, and he was totally unresponsive to me. I started screaming, "Dee! Dee! Breathe!" over and over, but he just worsened. Finally after nearly a minute of this, he went limp and lay there like a dead man. About ten seconds later, he opened his eyes to find me standing over top of him screaming at him to wake up, and he says in all innocence, "Why? What's wrong?"

Boy, was it hard to go to work after that. I called the surgery center who told me that was not a normal response and to take him to the emergency room, but before hanging up, the nurse decided to try to contact the doctor herself and put me on hold. After speaking with Tarbox, she changed her advice and said that it was a more common reaction than she had thought. When someone is in such intense pain, their body goes into a vagul (sp?) response that causes your blood pressure to drastically drop and your body simply goes into shut-down mode to compensate for what's happening. I seriously thought he was having an aneurysm or some other terrible thing and that I was helplessly watching him die. I was so shaken up that I could barely function at school. I took four nerve pills (not all at once), but they didn't seem to faze me. I worried about him all day.

But, all is good now. His pain is waning and he's able to move around pretty well. So, that's all for now. Merry Christmas to everyone.

More Surgery for the Mosers

Well, it's not enough that both my children are familiar with Dr. Tarbox. Now my husband has to go under his knife. Dee tore his rotator cuff and will be having surgery Tuesday, Dec. 16, in Columbia. We haven't decided whether we're going up tomorrow or Monday because of the ice storm. He has presurgery work to do on Monday, so we were already planning to spend the night Monday, but we don't want to be driving up there on ice, so we may go up Sunday. Say some prayers for us. We are in serious need of such. He'll be out of complete commission for six weeks and will not be back to normal for at least six months. I guess I'll find out how much I depend on him for stuff, won't I?

I don't think I ever really knew God, all those years when I thought I was close to Him, when I thought I was a good strong Christian. I believed in Him because it's how I was taught to think. I never ever questioned His existence. I had been completely indoctrinated in our faith. I knew the answers to others' questions. I knew exactly where to find each verse to back up my beliefs. Most of them I had memorized. I could argue the finer points with Christians older than I. I used to think at any minute those who didn't believe would be struck down by God for their blasphemy. Johnathan Edwards would have been proud of me.

Yet, I had only believed because I was taught to believe. I had never analyzed my belief, never even examined it much less cross examined it. It has been a painful three years since I first started having doubts about my faith. When you start to doubt something that has been your foundation your whole life, it's like the whole world has turned to mush. You start to question every paradigm, every thought you've ever had.

I've come to the conclusion that life without faith isn't worth living. I will never receive answers to my questions. I will never KNOW that God exists. Yet, I know that my belief is essential to my being. Living without it is not living at all; it's merely existing without purpose.

If I ever questioned whether God truly loves me, I have concluded now that He must in order to put up with me for these many years. How many times I must have made him wince, or laugh, or cry, or turn His head in pain! Yet, He kept me around for some reason. He has been faithful to me even as I was not.

So, without the answers I was seeking, I look to God anyway. He knows the answers and I must be content to discover them one day, when it pleases Him, and not a moment sooner.

Update on Emily

Hey, well, Emily's asleep so I can get on the computer. We moved our old computer to the living room and hooked it up to the Internet, so I haven't been able to get online very easily. She's a computer junkie.

Her surgery (Thursday, July 24) went very well. The doctor had to remove 30 to 40% of her lateral meniscus as well as repair the ACL. Friday was her first physical therapy day (just one day after her surgery). Two therapists were working together on her and they were both just amazed at her. First they had her bend her knee to measure how far she could bend it. She bent it 68 degrees. Her good knee bent to 115%, so she was already over half there. Then when they were helping her with her knee, they noticed that she was holding her leg pretty much on her own. Evidently, these two things are extremely remarkable for someone to do the day after surgery. They said most people aren't at that point at two weeks. Then Monday, she went back and she bent her knee 88 degrees and did leg lifts and rode the bicycle. The therapist gave her instructions and then went to help someone else. She said, "Use your left foot and your right will just be there. You won't be able to go all the way around." Well, you guessed it: she went all the way around.

At home, she's been jolly the last three days (after we hooked up her computer) and has hardly needed any pain medication. The first two days, she wasn't bad, she just groaned and moaned a lot. I'd ask if she wanted some medicine and she'd decline. Finally, she said, "Don't ask me, okay. If it's time just give it to me because I'm gonna say no every time because I don't want to take it." After that we got along a lot better. She's way different than I am. Oh, she even has a particular way I'm supposed to hand her her crutches. I never could figure it out, because it made no sense to me, so finally she explained it to me. Now, I don't have to see her disgusted face when I hand her her crutches.

One thing that will probably seem weird is that Dee helped her get into the car right after surgery and he botched it, according to Emily, and she won't let him touch her anymore. Instead, she called for Mom and continues to ask for me. Probably most people would not think it was a good thing to be the only one she'd let help her, but Dee and she have been so close ever since he started coaching her basketball team 4 1/2 years ago that I have felt like an outsider in their private world, so I'm welcoming this opportunity to be the star of her life. That's pretty pathetic, I know, but it's truth anyway. When she reached her hand out to me before her surgery, I had to fight hard to control the tears. She hasn't acted like she needed her mom for a long time.

Yesterday was really hard on Emily and me. It was the first day we tried the exercises at home. She cried. I cried. Yet, she was bound and determined that if it said it on the paper, she was going to do it. Then we tackled washing her hair. I got two dining room table chairs and one bar stool chair and lined them up. She sat down on the bar stool. I helped her lift her leg (she won't be able to do that on her own for a while yet), and she scooted back toward the tub, so her legs were higher than her head. Then I stood in the tub, held her head and poured water over it. It took about 30 minutes. Before I was done, my back felt like it needed therapy. Oh, yeah, and after that I cut buckets of corn off the cob and cooked it and froze it.

We go back to therapy today and tomorrow for this week and then probably at least three days next week. She sees the doctor again next Wed. I start back to work Monday the 11th. I sure hope I can survive work and taking care of Emily. I am already getting really fatigued and making stupid mistakes like catching my hand between the end table and the chair when I release it to let Emily go to the bathroom and forgetting to plug her tubes back in before I turn her machine on. If I get more loopy, I'm gonna hurt myself or someone else.

We'd also like to ask for prayer for Emily's friend Alicia, who has been going through an extremely hard time. About three weeks ago she started having severe stomach pains and rectal bleeding. She ended up in the hospital for over a week and finally having to receive a blood transfusion. They discovered she has E-Coli. Now she's taken a turn for the worse again. They took her back to the hospital in Springfield, but they couldn't help her because they had already blown all her veins during her previous stay. They sent her home with medicine. If you don't mind to remember them, I'd appreciate it. They also struggle financially (as do we) and are concerned about their medical bills.

LIFE

It's amazing to me how completely ignorant we humans are. Our own pain, our own perspective--those things we can easily see, yet we are entirely unaware of the pain of those around us. Totally wrapped up in ourselves, we can't see how we have carved injuries whose scars will never go away in the very people we claim to care about. I guess it's easier to blame others for our own shortcomings than to face the truth and discover the part we played in our own little dramas.

I wish some people would wake up and unwrap themselves. I think they'd see that they actually have it pretty good.