Look at me go! It has been nine days since I last wrote. That means I have been feeling good for the last nine days. I have barely taken any of my anxiety medication, mainly just at night when the thoughts creep in to steal my sleep. 

I'm trying not to analyze what this means because I certainly don't want to say that I'm coming to acceptance. That seems like I'm okay with the current situation, which I most definitely am not. But I do want to analyze what might be helping me be "okay." What has changed?

The first thing that changed was my best friend since fourth grade stopped by to give me a hug and show support. I had no idea when I opened the door that seeing Wanda was going to spark such calmer emotions in me. Spending time with her reminded me of our lifelong bond and soothed my heart like I didn't think possible. Thanks, Wanda, for showing up for me, always.

The other thing that changed is going to the gym to work out. I started with the treadmill and circuit training on my own, but then the girls and I tried the Bungee class. The next day, I went to an In Motion class, followed by a Sweet and Low class, and a yoga class. Now, I've been to seven classes total, and I can tell I'm getting stronger. Having a goal to reach for must be one way to handle the stress. Moving my body must also create endorphins that help me cope. 

 Probably, the biggest reason I'm feeling so much better is the fact that Zach's new treatment plan is allowing him to enjoy his family and to resume his life. He has worked in his vineyard, mowed his lawn, played frisbee with the kids, taken them on walks, and played board games with them. Just knowing he is enjoying life has made these last days so much easier.

Tomorrow is the benefit put together by Healthy Dent County. Knowing that our community "has Zach's back" also makes it easier. The amount of donations and effort being put into this event is beyond my wildest dreams. I know it makes this mama's heart swell and makes Zach's fight easier to bear.

Lastly, just knowing how many people are praying for us and thinking about us has also lightened our load.

In short, nothing about this journey has become easier. The diagnosis is the same. The uncertainty is the same. The fear still visits.

What's different is that I've been reminded that I don't have to carry all of it by myself.

A friend showed up at my door. My body is getting stronger. Zach is living, laughing, working, and making memories with his family. Our community has wrapped its arms around us. And every day, people continue to pray.

Maybe that's what has helped me breathe again.

Thank you, Salem Community, friends, and family, for carrying pieces of this burden with us. You may never fully know what your kindness has meant, but please know that it has made a difference.

 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. ❤️