New Book on Family Battling Cystic Fibrosis

I'd like to introduce this CF community to a new book, "Sixtyfive Roses:  A Sister's Memoir," by Heather Summerhayes Cariou.  The foreword is by Celine Dion and 5% of the proceeds goes to the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Heather Summerhayes was six when her four-year old sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and given only months to live.  "Sixtyfive Roses" was the way Pam pronounced the name of the disease that forever altered the lives of her siblings and parents, who in turn helped alter the community's response to the disease by founding the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  With the help of the Foundation, research and new treatments, the fight to save Pam's life lasted for years, ending with her death at the age of twenty-six.

Sixtyfive Roses:  A Sister's Memoir is a beautifully written eyewitness account of the hope, pain and courage of a family in crisis.  It's a story about loving fearlessly, and the choices we make in the name of love; a story about fighting for your life and never giving up.  Ultimately, it's a story that illuminates what we must all come to understand about the nature of life and death.

“There is no happy ending.  But there is the day.  The sun, the rain.  The chance to say I love you.  The willingness to forgive.  The courage to remember.  The opportunity to be kind.  The ability to laugh and to be generous.  The fact that we can choose our joy in each moment, no matter what.  This, in itself, is the miracle.”