Six Weeks tells your story as you fulfill a promise to care for your terminally ill sister, confronting generations of family wounds while discovering reconciliation, grace, and the enduring power of sibling devotion. Why was this an important book for you to write?

When Nancy came home on hospice after being given about six weeks to live, we both understood we were entering the final chapter of our story together. Nancy and I spoke often about our family, the generations that came before us, and the importance of making sure neither the people we loved nor the stories that shaped us would simply disappear with time.

I wrote Six Weeks to honor that promise. It became a way to preserve the quiet acts of love, sacrifice, responsibility, and grace that rarely become part of a family’s history. At its heart, the memoir stands against erasure not only of Nancy but of the ordinary people whose lives quietly shape the generations that follow.

I also hoped the memoir would encourage those trying to balance difficult choices, competing responsibilities, or the demands of caring for someone they love. We don’t always choose what life places before us, but we do choose how we respond. I believe one of the greatest expressions of grace is using our abilities to help others when they need them most. In doing so, we not only honor those we love; we often discover the best part of ourselves.

What led you to structure the book around the progression of a single day, from dawn to night?

The structure reflects more than a single day. It mirrors the arc of a day, a life, and three generations of one family. Each follows a similar journey, receiving an inheritance of both strengths and fractures, learning responsibility through those experiences, and ultimately moving toward resolution and reconciliation.

Nancy’s final six weeks provide the present-day story, while the memories move through the generations that shaped us. Organizing the memoir from dawn to night created a natural rhythm that mirrors life itself. Morning holds promise, afternoon becomes the work and responsibilities of living, and night invites reflection, reconciliation, and ultimately peace.

That same progression unfolds across the generations. My grandparents’ lives passed forward both gifts and fractures that shaped my parents. Their generation, in turn, passed forward its own strengths, burdens, and unfinished stories to Nancy and me. Every generation inherits both strengths and fractures, then decides what to preserve, what to adjust, and what to reconcile before passing that inheritance forward.

By the memoir’s end, those parallel journeys converge. The movement from dawn to night becomes not only the completion of a single life, but also the culmination of a three-generational journey toward resolution and reconciliation. While every life eventually ends, its influence continues through the people it has shaped and through the choices they make with what they have inherited.

How did you decide which family stories were essential to understanding your relationship with Nancy?

Nancy and I often talked about how people become who they are. I’ve always been fascinated by the ways our lives are shaped long before we recognize it. One of the ideas that runs through Six Weeks is that we are the sum of decisions made by us and upon us by prior generations.

That led me to focus on the moments across those generations where lives changed direction, sometimes quietly and sometimes shockingly. Within those stories, we can often recognize ourselves sounding like a parent at just the right moment or responding to a crisis with an instinct we didn’t realize had been learned years before.

Much of who we become is formed through the people who raise us and the experiences that shape us. We inherit ways of thinking, solving problems, showing love, carrying responsibility, and coping with hardship from those who came before us. That inheritance presents each generation with a choice. We can pass responsibility to others, carry only what necessity demands, or embrace it fully. Those choices, more than our circumstances, become part of the legacy we leave behind.

My parents were shaped by my grandparents just as Nancy and I were shaped by our parents. Each generation passes forward both strengths and fractures. Along the way, we embrace some parts of that inheritance, refine others, and consciously adjust or reconcile the parts that no longer serve us until that inheritance becomes uniquely our own.

The family stories in Six Weeks were chosen because they reveal that journey. They show how those inherited traits, values, and responsibilities gradually formed Nancy and me into the brother and sister we became, and how that lifelong formation ultimately found its fullest expression during her final six weeks.

Did writing about ordinary caregiving tasks change your understanding of how love is expressed?

It deepened it.

Love can be expressed in many forms. It is found not only in words or defining moments, but in showing up, doing what is needed, and remaining present with consistency over time. Even when words are not spoken or can no longer be expressed, the acts themselves carry meaning.

Caregiving is one expression of that love. At its heart, it is using whatever abilities we have to help another person flourish, find stability, or face life’s burdens with greater confidence. Sometimes that means preparing meals, organizing medications, driving to appointments, or sitting quietly beside someone. Other times it means creating a trust, helping someone move, solving difficult problems, providing security, or carrying responsibilities that allow another person to breathe a little easier.

That pattern did not begin when Nancy entered hospice. It had been woven through our relationship for decades, simply taking different forms as life changed. The final six weeks did not create it. They brought it fully into view. Hospice became the culmination of a lifetime of expressing love through presence, responsibility, service, and the steady use of our abilities for one another’s benefit.

The cadence between us was always to give with an open palm, without keeping score. Yet reciprocity still found its way back through gestures, shared sayings, gratitude, humor, and moments of recognition. Writing Six Weeks reinforced for me that love’s truest nature is not confined to its apex moments. It is revealed in the consistency with which we remain, give, and care, even when nothing can be said.

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