a prophetic voice-

For my sister, Kathy... In those young days, those long-ago, long-since-past days, the gap of years loomed large, a nearly-nine-year chasm we could barely leap across and separating us in ways both ordinary and mysterious. And now we are no longer young. In your still-youthful face I see reflections of both Mom and Dad, as I do in mine, though the features have taken on a different mien, configured in a different shape on each of us. The intervening years have brought the sharing of those darker gifts we would gladly have eschewed-      the heart-rending, life-twisting loss of first-born sons...      the body's cruel betrayal as cancer's icy touch seared its way,           unseen and, at first, unfelt... But in the shining gifts of sister-love, of Christmases shared and long conversations on the phone, of laughter in the midst of pain, of chemo cuts, of precious time to simply b...