The only advice I feel comfortable giving to anyone is to accept God’s gifts. They are out there. You just have to pay attention to what is going on around you. I give this advice not because I always paid attention, but while writing this book I realized what God has given us and that He has always been there, whether we thought so at the time or not. It would be nice if I could tell you that I had some very altruistic motives for writing this book, but I didn’t. However, I did find it very comforting to write, and in doing so, filled a tremendous void in my life since Lynda died. It gave me a good reason to get up each morning. Having completed it, I hope that our life story might help other families going through similar trials. Thom Barrett was born in the Bronx in 1937 when it was still fashionable to live there. His grandfather achieved great wealth in the automobile business but lost it all by the end of World War II. Thom was an advertising executive in New York City, Atlanta and Tampa and retired in 1995 from the same company he worked for since 1967. At seventy-six, he is not the oldest, first time author, in the family. His paternal aunt, Ursulla Barrett Johnson, was published for the first time at the age of eighty-two. Thom attended Mount Saint Michael High School in the Bronx and Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.