For her eighth-grade honors project she had chosen, all on her own, to spend her time shadowing the hospital’s pediatric palliative care team, the doctors and nurses who care for the sickest children and their families with such tenderness, and today, because of that, she sat in the front row of the great auditorium as the guest of honor.

When I stepped up to the podium and the great room fell into a respectful hush, I looked out at that sea of white coats, and then I found my daughter’s bright and shining face, and I began.

I told them about the day my husband surrendered his surgical license, and how, for a long time, he believed that without his hands and his scalpel and his title, he had lost his purpose and his worth.

I told them how wrong he had been.