It was one of those nights that small towns whisper about—a Michigan blizzard so intense it swallowed the roads. In the midst of it, a stranger named Derek lifted my 91-year-old mother in his arms and carried her through the storm, saving her life when her own sons had failed to do so.
My mother, Ruth, is tiny—ninety pounds, four-foot-ten, living with dementia. Some days she’s clear and bright; others, she drifts into confusion. She has two sons: me, Michael, living in Florida, and my brother Tom, just twenty minutes away from her assisted living home in northern Michigan.
