"The hardest thing I've ever gone through"

I exchanged IM's with Ed today, and that's how he described sitting in his daughter's hospital room, wearing a mask, listening to her on the phone. She and her fiance are changing their plans, moving their wedding date up to as soon as she leaves the hospital. I didn't have the heart to ask why.

He mentioned how impressive his wife has been. "One tough cookie," he wrote admiringly. The ultimate movie fan, Ed described her as "more Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment than Sally Field in Steel Magnolias."

It's not lost on me that both those movie heroines lost their daughters by the last reel.