I asked Sian last night, as she lay in the bed where I used to sleep on my vacations from college, whether it was hard on her to see her grandfather so ill in the hospital. 'No" she said. "I'm not emotional. " Then she thought about that...she might be a bit emotional, she said. I commended her on her bravery.

Today, she read an essay on peacemaking she'd written for school to her grandfather at his bedside. He could not talk. But he had a big smile on his face.

For a moment, that room full of machines, of monitors and gloves and harried nurses... became holy ground.