I've been asked many times what I was thinking when I was told by Tom's doctors that he wasn't going to make it. I came across this quote today that really resonated with me. It captures the essence of what I was feeling during those dark times.

"Hope locates itself in the premise that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act...Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists" -Rebecca Solnit, "Hope in the Dark."

For Tom, this quote captures the feeling he describes during one of his interludes in The Perfect Predator when he had been wandering in the desert for 100 years and saw a mirage. Dare he push himself with the last of his reserves towards it, knowing that it could represent false hope? Or in the spaciousness of uncertainty, is there room to act, clinging to the last sliver of hope that it could represent a way out?

For both of us, hope is what propelled us. What fueled us. What gave us a small shred of comfort. Because in the spaciousness of uncertainty is when miracles are made.