My heart is with you and your family during this rough time. Two suggestions. The Begum of Bengal-- "Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop engaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to hear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day a majestic Indiaman came plowing by with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hull burdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail, "Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?" In a deep and thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking- trumpet, "The Begum, of Bengal--142 days out from Canton--homeward bound! What ship is that?" Well, it just crushed that poor little creature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, "Only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point-- with nothing to speak of!" Oh, what an eloquent word that "only," to express the depths of his humbleness! That is just my case. During just one hour in the twenty-four--not more--I pause and reflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of your English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble. Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware; but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am a stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas and laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am the Begum, of Bengal, 142 days out from Canton--homeward bound!" Second, this is the poem he wrote to his wife, Livy, February, 1904, when she was on her deathbed. He wasn't allowed to see her, but could write her... Goodnight, Sweetheart, goodnight -- The stars are burning bright, The snow is turning white, Dim is the failing light, Fast falls the glooming night, -- All right! Sleep tight! Goodnight. There was also a favorite poem of Twain's that he carried in his wallet, I believe, by another writer. It concerned death, but as I remember it the poem was very ponderous and overdone -- but if I happen on it, I will forward that to you as well. Peace-- Tom Swenson