Boviosity!

I think I'll go hug my daughter extra-good tonight.

And my son, too, for good measure.

You think when you lose your child that you'll dream about her all the time. I've only dreamt of Caroline a handful of times in the four years since she died. I dreamt about her this morning, on her birthday. We were at the end of her days again, the time when she couldn't move and even her mouth was clamped shut because of the tumor. The doctors wanted us to let her starve to death. Their children weren't hungry, so far as I know.

In those last weeks I would hold her in my lap, with a roll of paper towels and a couple of cans of vitamin drink on the bedside table, and I would slowly dribble the drink between her clenched teeth, and then wipe the spill from her face. It took about four or five hours a day to feed her, because only a few drops at a time would go in.

There I was in that place again, only something changed in the middle of it, and Caroline was gone, and it was me being fed through a mouth that refused to open. In my dream I knew it was God holding me and doing the feeding, though now I don't know how I knew this.

Tony Woodlief's daughter Caroline would have turned 8 yesterday. I have never read or imagined anything as immediate and heartbreaking as Tony's writings on his daughter. They always leave me speechless and shaken. Yet he doesn't leave me feeling guilty for enjoying my own, healthy children. I don't know how that happens...not that I'm inclined to feel guilty, but that he shows such raw agony and yet invites the reader into it, rather than pushing you away from it.

Just read it.