By Edward Horstmann

If I had been asked, during the summer before my junior year in high school, to describe the quality of relationship between my parents, I would have said that there was no meaningful connection to speak of. No displays of affection, no friends in common, no cause to support. We ate meals together, we watched a little television together, but we were in no true sense a family. We did not belong to any organization or faith community that might have given us a sense of purpose larger than the small plans that we made to get us from day to day. If you had visited us in our home at that time, you would have had no difficulty observing the utter absence of joy.

Then my father was diagnosed with cancer. And although he underwent major surgery following the diagnosis of hi

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