What it does.

I remember when I was five, my little legs dangling over the padded funeral parlor bench. I sat and stared at my gray and white saddle shoes that I hated. I cried and cried because everyone was crying around me, and because those shoes hurt my feet.

Literal pain is something that I know well. Blisters from little gray saddle shoes, broken ankles and fingers, torn muscles -- that is the kind of pain I can grasp, manage, endure.

Swabbing a sponge in a loved one’s mouth to help quench thirst, holding a hand as they struggle to breathe, praying to understand as they communicate with a shaky hand and pleading eyes -- that is the kind of pain that I cannot grasp, manage or endure.

I have seen and felt this heart-wrenching kind of pain more than most people should have to. In my family, this kind of pain has hit us over and over and nothing has been more powerful than the love that we have for each other. There is peace found in that kind of love and in those things that we do for each other even when we think we cannot grasp, manage or endure -- and we do it anyway.