A Grace Given

by Kent Gilges

Cider Press Publishing, 2008

279 pages, $18.95

To order: ciderpresspublications.com

Elie Gilges was just 10 when she died. She couldn’t walk, she never learned to talk, and she was fed through a tube.

According to the world’s standards, she was a “vegetable.” Some perhaps would say her life had no worth.

In A Grace Given, a book about Elie’s life written by her father, Kent Gilges, we come to a deeper appreciation of suffering.

When she was 6 months old, Elie was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At first her parents were told it was inoperable; Elie might have only days or weeks to live. After seeking a second opinion, the couple learned there indeed was hope for Elie in an operation to remove the tumor.

While the operation was successful, Elie suffered a stroke afterwards. It caused severe brain damage, and although they were told anything was possible, Kent and wife Liz’s worst fears were realized: Elie would never develop properly or lead a normal life.

“(God) knew my greatest fear and gave it to me,” writes Kent Gilges. “And yet, by becoming real, I learned my fears were baseless. What I had feared most was not worthy of fear at all but of admiration and love. The gift of life is never worthy of fear. Even in the worst condition we can imagine, even for our children and those we love, the gift of life is profound and worthy of reverence.”

As the story unfolds, Gilges takes us on a journey across the country and across the ocean: from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — where they lived when they first learned of Elie’s tumor — to New York, where family and doctors awaited, to Lourdes in the hopes of a miracle, and on to Italy for a hoped-for visit with Pope John Paul II.

Gilges is a superb writer. Yet his writing is not so difficult as to cause the reader to stumble. As the book unfolds, one understands that it’s not only a story about the life, worth and gift of a severely disabled child but also a love story. It’s the story of a parent’s unconditional love for his child, for a husband and wife’s love for one another, and of God’s unconditional love for all his children.

Many books regarding children’s illnesses are written by mothers; it’s unique to get the perspective of a father on the matter, as this book provides.

Although Gilges is not Catholic, his wife is, as is her family. Their faith resonates throughout the book; Gilges sounds very much like a Catholic based on his thoughts on suffering alone, which are very Catholic.

“In the years that we have lived with Elie’s terminal illness,” Gilges writes, “I have often sensed in other people the belief that it would be better if Elie were to die sooner rather than later. … For whatever reason, these people feel she is a hardship, that it would make our lives easier or steadier if she were gone, that it would strengthen our marriage by giving us more time together, less stress. …

“These people are fools. … Suffering is a gift.”

Tina Dennelly writes from

Oakdale, New York.