My friend T. gifted me with a sentence in her email to me today. She wrote: “You speaking of Lauren’s joyfulness, brings a happy feeling to my heart for you. She was your sunbeam. Whereas Rob is your moonbeam.”

Wow. Just wow. Sometimes you know something deep down in your bones. Rob is, indeed, my moonbeam. He was always the quieter one of the two. Laurie was a typical little girl, full of fun and mischief. Even when she was dying at age seven, she did not complain. When she was on oxygen at home, she scratched her initial onto her little painted table while she sat on the couch with it in front of her.

I didn’t keep the little table; it would have been too big of a reminder. I did keep her dollhouse for many years. Bob built it for her before her last Christmas with us, so she never played with it.

Fast forward in years….I am leaning more and more on her brother as I deal with my neurological problems. I gave up driving (he didn’t ask me to; I just knew it was time.) He takes me anywhere I want to go.

We don’t talk a lot; he is upstairs and I am down. He has an almost photographic memory, while mine is increasingly bad. Sometimes we eat out and I enjoy that enormously. We grocery shop together and he takes me to get a haircut or when I have an appointment somewhere.

We don’t talk about our mutual grief. It is enough to live it together. We have many sunny moments, but all-in-all, he is my moonbeam!” Tall and quiet and quite handsome, he is droll and a man of few words.

We live this life together in an unorthodox way. He will not leave my side. When he was quite young, my mother noticed his interest in armor. She said to him, “You must have been a Roman guard at one time.” Indeed.

Vicki Woodyard