I once had a real show of what love is about from my son, Branton, who was then eight and totally unkind to his little sister, Susan.

One Autumn evening, I discovered Susan was ________. I thought she was in the house at first. By the time I ________ she was gone, Branton was comfortably on the sofa watching his favorite television program with a friend. After I’d searched every room for Susan, I began to be ________. It was dark by then, and she was only 5. Our house in the country had many ________ surrounding it.

Careful not to betray my ________, I announced, “Susan is gone.” There was a pause, then Branton ________ and looked at me. “I can’t find Susan,” I ________. “She isn’t in the house, and I don’t know where she is.” He was up as if a bomb had blown him off the sofa. “I’ll find her,” he said running to the door. Then he stopped and turned to his friend. “Get up, Jeff,” he ________, “We’ve got to find Susan. Hurry up.” Within two minutes he’d rung two doorbells to ask if the ________ knew where his sister was. Branton, still running at top ________, came up and passed me by, calling, “Susan, Susan.”

As we headed up the big path into the woods, I heard the sound of a child ________ out. It was Susan. I tried to comfort her we were coming — while attempting to ________ falling in the mud. Meanwhile, Branton ran on ahead, apparently ________ nothing. In another minute he had her in his arms. As I ________, I heard him saying repeatedly, “Susan, are you all right?” as tears streamed down his cheeks.

That night I told Susan, who frequently ________ Branton’s trick, that we all should know what Branton really felt about us.

I opened my eyes to find doctors standing by my hospital bed. They had some ________ news. They told me that my brother Adams healthy cells were beginning to ________ in my bone marrow (骨髓). I was showing________ of progress. I was able to walk around—________ without assistance, and my blood counts were going in the right direction.

It was “graduation” day. The ________ were sending me to the Hope Room, a halfway house sponsored by the American Cancer Society. I would live there for the next three months, ________ by my boyfriend, Seamus.

_____ out of the hospital in a wheelchair, I took my first breath of ________ air in weeks. But ________ I could enjoy this moment, my mother helped me ________ a face mask. I shot her an ________ look, but I know she was right. For the immediate future, anywhere I wanted to go in public I would need to wear gloves and a ________. No subways, no crowds. However, I can ________ my freedom, even if cancer continues to ________ my choices. My new freedom means not being waken up every couple of hours by a nurse with ________ in her hand. It’s not seeing doctors with their masks and their caring, and not being ________ an IV (静脉注射) machine 24 hours a day.

Freedom now is being able to eat a home-cooked ________ and then fighting to keep it down. Freedom also means being ________ with my loving mother and boyfriend. Freedom is the ________ to take the medicines on time. Freedom also means returning to the hospital several times a week to ________ follow-up examinations. But all is well worth. I love every one of my family and I love Seamus.

I have received many gifts in my life. I’ve never been the kind of person to say “it’s the thought that _______” when it comes to gifts. That was until a couple of weeks ago, when my kids gave me a present that _______ me away.

For years, I’ve been wanting to _______ our house, the place where my husband and I raised our kids. But to me, this house is much _______ just a building. In the front room, there’s a wall that has hundreds of pencil lines, marking the _______ of my children’s growth. Every growth stage is marked in grey, with each child’s name and the date when they were _______. Over the years, I’ve talked about how much I would hate leaving that wall behind when I moved, even though the _______ marks were made 10 years ago when my kids stopped growing.

So one day, while I was at work, my children _______ a professional photographer whose work is about _______ the beautiful things in life, from clear lakes and skies to diamonds and ball gowns. She came to our house and over several hours, took photos of the hundreds of drawings, ________ and little grey fingerprints. Somehow, she managed to photograph all those years of memories ________. Afterwards, she put all the ________ together into one image, transforming them into a beautiful ________ of my family.

Three weeks later, my children’s ________ gift made its way to me — a life­size photo of the pencil lines and fingerprints that represents the lifetime of all my family members, especially of my children’s love and ________.