Elizabeth Edwards pens inspiring memoir

America warmed to Elizabeth Edward and her affable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, John Edwards, for vice president. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer, which was diagnosed just days before the 2004 election. She shares the experiences, and the death of a 16-year-old son in 1996, in a new memoir. Here's an excerpt:

HOME, FROM A NEW ANGLE
This was meant to be a very different chapter. The beginning of our new lives, filled with pastures in which the dogs could chase deer before they reached the flower beds, packed with afternoons exploring the woods with the children, and filled with evenings together at our long kitchen table.
There would be stories of the next campaign, of course, and of the friends with whom we have reconnected here and across the country. That was what I had hoped to write. And then I broke my rib, and somewhere a snowball fell on an embankment and rolled and rolled until an avalanche took away the thoughts of any truly carefree days for me or for those who love me.
And so I write this chapter instead. You have to forgive me that, although so many have reached out to me and deserve to be here, this chapter is a tribute mostly to those closest to me: those with the most to lose from the most recent diagnosis that the breast cancer has spread to my bones and is now classified as incurable.

John and I sat in the car watching Jack’s baseball practice. John first sat in the bleachers, but when the sun set, a cold April night had replaced the warm April day, so now we sat together in the semi-warmth of the car facing the field and watching seven- and eight-year-olds practice punching their fists into their gloves and leaning forward onto the toes of their new cleats, their elbows resting on their knees, waiting for the next ground ball.

Coach Mitch, the model of the dedicated and serious parent-coach, was throwing the grounders, cheering them on when they handled one, reassuring them when it sped between their legs to the greening grass of the outfield. In one rotation, Jack was playing left field, or rather he was standing at the edge of left field, kicking up dirt and watching the wind carry it.

I remembered him doing the same thing last year when Coach Mitch coached Emma Claire and Jack. Jack would be kicking dirt in left field and Emma Claire would be looking for four-leaf clovers in center. I would call out from the bleachers: Baseball. Just one word. Just a reminder about why we were there.

I rolled down the window and did it again now for Jack. Baseball. Sometimes we all need reminders when we are distracted from the task in front of us.

Slideshow Elizabeth and John Edwards' public life Former Sen. John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, have faced public and private challenges throughout their marriage and his political career.

It was just the previous week that John and I were the ones kicking dirt, trying to put ourselves anywhere except where we were, which was in a small room at UNC Hospital, waiting, huddled, for a bone scan. But that was where we were, waiting for the inevitable crush of bad news from my doctors.

And could it only have been a week before that when John had come home from campaigning and all seemed so well? It had been late when I heard him come in, but I awoke. I lay in bed listening to the sounds to which I have become accustomed over the last thirty years, the sound of his unpacking his bag in the closet, stepping into the shower to rinse off the day, brushing his teeth, padding down the hall to kiss the sleeping children good night. I love those sounds, the comfortable predictability that comes with a long history. Honestly, sometimes I awake as he comes in but fall back asleep before he finishes his ritual. But not tonight. Tonight I turned toward him when he climbed into bed and reached across for me.

Long day? Yes, he answered, how’s your back? I had pulled a muscle in my back the day before, lifting a chest of drawers from behind a row of cardboard boxes in the storage room. I knew better: you lift with your legs not your back, but when you lean to lift— as I had to over the row of boxes in the storage room—you are always using your back. I had felt the pull as soon as I lifted.

Stupid me, I had thought. Why had I been so impatient? I should have waited for John to come home, but I had tired of seeing a lamp in the corner on the floor where I planned to have a lamp in the corner on a chest, so I had gone ahead alone. I remember moving into the house last summer. John was traveling, and I had wanted everything to look perfect when he came to the house for the first time. I put away thousands of books, unrolled rugs, made beds, unwrapped and washed dishes. And pulled a muscle in my back.

But it was worth it to see his face, get his kiss, when he came in to a house that was the colored-in picture of the house I had carried in my head for months, the picture I had described to him for just as long. The pulled muscle then was uncomfortable but worth it. And now, I suppose, I had done the same thing, on a smaller scale.

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