Carolyn Surrick has written a searing, deeply moving tone-portrait of love, loss, finality and forgiveness. Her description of her father’s and step-mother’s final days, and her own conflicting responses to their fates, is fearless and unflinching — a poetic smorgasbord rich with the bittersweet truths intrinsic to embracing deeply flawed loved ones. Her words illustrate how, for better, for worse, in sickness, in health, and especially before, during and after death, the commitment to clear-eyed love is above all an act of courage. I feel grateful she wrote this. I feel more human for having read it.Tinker Lindsay, author, “The First Rule of Ten”