You do not simply read this story.  You walk through it—barefoot, breath held, your own grief rising to meet you in the margins.

This is not a memoir.
It is a love story that dared to bloom in the shadow of death. A mother and son, tethered by more than blood, navigate the great unraveling together—with grace, grit, and a tenderness that time cannot dissolve.

When Nicky was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma at just thirteen, the world didn’t stop—it spun more wildly. The machines whirred, the chemo coursed, and still, he smiled. Still, she loved. What unfolds is not the tale of a boy lost to illness, but of a soul revealed in its most luminous form—through everyday gestures, brave conversations, the sacredness of being present when nothing can be fixed.

Each page becomes a vigil.

Michele Bell writes not from a distance but from inside the fire. Her prose does not plead for pity. It sings with the quiet wisdom born of survival, born of what she calls healing forward. Her storytelling doesn’t beg for your tears; it calls your spirit home. She does not lecture. She remembers, in fragments and flames, what it means to endure without armor.