His son had cancer. It wasn't sudden or unexpected, but he was distraught. He talks about it sometimes and the grief has gone through. He took maybe a week or so if I remember right, but came back to work pretty quickly. With his father he was gone maybe a week, again not unexpected.

The hard thing about cancer is that it goes on for awhile, and all that while you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We've experienced a lot of that in my family over the years and are going through it yet again with my sister. I teach with a woman whose child was born with leukemia. She comes to work each day for the most part. Not much choice sometimes. You do what you have to do.