Bitter. Sweet.

If birthdays are more or less evenly distributed across the calendar (and setting aside stories of terminally-ill people who hold onto life to reach a landmark), statistics would suggest that most families get a bit of breathing space between losing a loved one and their birthday.  Our family got a 1-2 punch:  April 23 was the uppercut that followed the gut shot of her death.

Still, Leslie had a favorite expression that even when you can’t change what happens to you, you can decide how to respond to it.  With that in mind, Caroline and Emily and I decided to make a bitter day quite literally sweet, by turning to family tradition.

In the morning, we spent time as a family making batches of our favorite hot fudge sauce – our annual holiday gift.  Then, in the afternoon, we went into the neighborhood delivering jars of fudge to friends and colleagues.

At Lab, we stopped in Leslie’s classroom, where we were charmed by students’ notes on a poster board (recall that current 4^th graders never had her as their teacher).

We cheered on a very pregnant classroom rat to deliver her pups on Leslie’s birthday.

We left gifts, as well, for the carers who battled her illness, then kept her comfortable when the fight was lost – her oncologist and that doctor’s amazing PA, her palliative care doc who stayed with us through hospice, and her hospice nurse.

We wish we could have reached everyone who has visited, shopped, cooked, run errands, called, written, commented here, and sent “karma rockets” our way.  Since we couldn’t, we invite you to join us in celebrating Leslie’s sweetness and rich life.  Here’s the fudge recipe – it’s equally good on ice cream and straight from a spoon.  Leslie’s scientific nature would demand that I tell you it really does need Dutch Process cocoa.