How Faith, Love, and a Stubborn Goat Saved a Grieving Family
A grandmother’s fight to hold her family together, in her own words:
Hi, I’m Ellie Cunningham—mother to Gabe and grandmother to Caleb (10), Lily (5), Ava (4), and little Sadie (2). Several years ago, my husband, Paul, and I retired with big plans.
We pictured our golden years full of travel, pickleball, and quiet mountain evenings. We downsized to a cozy home in the hills, ready for the life we’d dreamed of.
Then life changed everything.
Gabe married his high school sweetheart young, then enlisted in the Army just before our first grandchild was born. I worried—he’d struggled with ADHD all his life, and the Army didn’t forgive distraction or short tempers. When he deployed to Afghanistan, two gray hairs became a silver patch that told the world what I carried inside.
Then the phone call came: an IED had taken his leg.
While Gabe recovered, his marriage collapsed. Shelby went to prison for drugs, leaving three-year-old Caleb without a mother. Gabe moved into our spare room, drowning in guilt. I tried to be strong, even when Paul suddenly died of a heart attack in our living room.
For months, I felt adrift—hollow and sluggish—but I kept moving for Gabe and Caleb. My faith, and my love for my family, gave me the strength they needed me to have.
After this is when my story begins in Before I’m Gone, Karen Randau’s novel about how my family found hope again—starting over on a rugged patch of land we turned into a mini-farm with chickens, a goat, and even an old-fashioned barn raising.
Before I’m Gone is about Ellie’s journey.
Her strength and resilience are a reminder that even when life shatters our plans, faith, love, and family can piece them back together in the most unexpected ways.
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