After a family movie night, the author's husband confided that he had been having a mild but persistent "ping" of abdominal pain. By Monday, they learned he had inoperable pancreatic cancer, and he had become a full-time patient.

The Company of Ghosts is a lyrical story about memories gathering and reassembling as a family is forced to navigate a sometimes puzzling and cruel healthcare system and is reconfigured by loss. It is also a meditation about how we carry with us our experiences with those who--for better and very much worse--cross our paths in a crisis. Compassionate strangers, callous physicians, and infuriating bureaucrats. New and lifelong friends. Forebears we have known only through artwork or cryptic asides. Empathic rescue beagles.

It is also a love letter to a husband and children and friends, weaving together the stories we steward about those we never completely lose. A last taste of lemon, a fly ball, or a penny flattened on railroad tracks, can capture decades of friendship and improbable hope, and become a portal to our pasts and our children's hoped-for futures.