Will Davis
Will Davis
uncles couple holiday
I grew up in this era where your parents' friends were all called aunt and uncle. And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times. We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.
should-have careers people
I really just wanted to be a writer, but people tell you, 'You should have a backup career,' so I thought, 'OK, I'll act.' That was the foolishness of my vision for my life - that my backup career would be completely undependable.
unique thinking people
The thing about losing any loved one, I think, particularly in a long disease, is that you know that other people have gone through it and are going through it, but I think for every person it feels unique.
childhood would-be clean
I thought the best thing that I could do would be to clean up my own act, in terms of whatever .. childhood wounds were left.
taken cells years
Even if the Bush Administration had flung open the gates to stem-cell research years ago, we would not be at the point of offering treatment today. Christopher Reeve would still have been taken from us. But we would be closer.
country father taken
America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.
grief way
It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.
father cells alzheimers
Laura Bush went on national television during the week of my father's funeral and spoke out against embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that where Alzheimer's is concerned, we don't have proof that stem-cell treatment would be effective.
love thinking people
People love the way they're capable of loving-but that's not always how you want them to love or how you think they should love.
memories long forever
The memories stayed with him for so long, and stayed vivid. And it didn't matter to me that he'd already repeated that before. I could hear it forever.
people wonder behinds
Some people, when they die, leave so much life behind that we wonder how they did it.
moving writing bedtime
I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it.
mother father eye
My father never feared death. He never saw it as an ending. I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death. But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes - - eyes that had not opened for many, many days - - and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love.
father heart eye
Decades later I would look into my father's eyes and try to reach past the murkiness of Alzheimer's with my words, my apology, hoping that in his heart he heard me and understood.