09/03/2026
This is life insurance awareness month - I am sharing a post from Amy McCarty, Author.
Five years ago today was the last day Frank walked out of our house.
We kept what was happening very quiet while he was in the hospital. Only close family and friends knew. For 22 days, I stayed by his side while he fought a very hard fight.
And when he died, the fire in my soul seemed to die with him. A part of my life was done. The book was finished. The main character in my story died!
I was sad. My children were sad. Frank’s siblings were sad. His mom, Debbie, his cousins, his friends and coworkers were sad.
Even our house was sad.
The house where we had lived for nearly 20 years began making creaks and moans I had never heard before. It felt as though the house knew someone was missing.
Five years later, every one of us who was closely affected by Frank’s death has grown and changed in ways we probably could not have imagined then.
And somewhere along the way, I realized something:
My life doesn’t have chapters.
It has sequels.
There are parts of life so big that you don’t simply turn the page and begin another chapter. That book ends. You close it. You sit with everything it held. You think about the characters and how you met them and fell in love with them. You wonder what will happen to the characters in the next book.
And then you wait for the Author to begin writing the next one.
When I look back now, I can see the different books of my life. Some were beautiful. Some were ordinary. Some I would read over and over again if I could.
And some were incredibly hard.
Maybe that is one of the reasons we survive the hard books.
So that someday, when we see someone else standing at the beginning of one, we can reach back and say:
I’ve read this kind of story before.
Here is what I wish I had known.
Here is what helped me keep going.
And maybe … just maybe … what we learned in our hardest book can make someone else’s a little less hard
