Here is something that I wrote to a family who has experienced what a year in the life of a child with cancer does:

After years pass rather uneventfully, it is pretty amazing to see how incredibly life as you know it can be yanked out from underneath you, leaving nothing but a narrow rope for you to stand on. All light bulbs around you explode, leaving you in total darkness, unable to see where or when you are going to land if you fall, or once you reach the other side. You have no safety net, but you must continue walking on that tightrope, in the dark, holding on to everything you love, hoping that somehow everyone will be ok.
A year has gone by. It's hard to know how much of the tightrope you have left to cross, but you have become steadier as you try to figure out where it leads. You still don't know where you are going, but as you have been walking, you have discovered that although you may teeter here and there, you have done just fine without that safety net.