Thank you for your cards, for your caring words, for your kindness during Jill’s long ordeal with cancer  (4.5 years). Your donations kept us from bankruptcy. Your words of support kept me, again and again, from breaking down. A long-haul terminal illness isn’t easy for anyone to watch, and I know for many of you it was tough and could be awkward at times because, ultimately, what was there to say?
 
I did not get Jill’s ashes until two weeks after her death. They came in a tidy, black box the size of a single-slice toaster. I set it on the floor of my car, in front of the passenger seat and I wondered, How can so much amount to so little in the end? I felt bone-deep sorrow for Jill, for all she suffered, and I wept–ultimately not out of grief but out of thankfulness that, at long last, our ordeal was over.
 
And then, drawing a deep breath as I glanced again at that little box on the floor, I drove to Home Depot to buy a cordless grinder–because life goes on and I needed the tool for a new project. I lay the boxed grinder next to Jill and for two weeks they sat together in my car. I had no place to put Jill’s remains. Jill would have laughed at this, our life together was so thoroughly immersed in DIY projects.