I was born Naomi Marie Blackwood, became Naomi Canton when I married Nicholas in 1981, and remained that person until three weeks ago, the day after his funeral. I’m 68 years old, with arthritic hands that still remember how to make the sourdough bread my son Brandon begged me to make on Sunday mornings, and the feel of my daughter Melissa’s hair when I braided it before she went to elementary school. I tell you all this so you can understand that before everything fell apart, I was simply a mother who believed she had raised good children.
Nicholas’s cancer took fourteen months to kill him. Pancreatic cancer: the silent executioner that gives you just enough time to get your affairs in order, but not enough time to truly live with it. At first, we kept it a secret, just between us. Our children were busy with their own lives. Brandon with his career as a financial advisor in Boston, which seemed to force him to miss every major holiday. Melissa with her perpetually failing wellness business in Denver, which somehow always needed “another” investment from Dad.
