From the e-mailbox:

Rod, I received your book yesterday as a birthday gift from my old friend [name deleted]. I turned to the picture section and the first photo of Ruthie [see right — RD] filled me with a sense of wholeness, of a
person who was completely herself, completely content with the world and with her place in it. I wasn’t even surprised to read that this photo was taken after she had received her diagnosis. She was so obviously one of those rare kind of people who are filled with the Light. I hope you don’t find this disrespectful of her memory (or of your book), but I feel like I need to see that picture often, so I cut it out and put it on my refrigerator ! Ruthie’s beautiful brown eyes will meet mine now many times a day — a kind of kitchen saint, patroness of mothers and children and nurses and their patients. I have the feeling she would have like that.

She sure would have. How great to know this.