There they were, piled high behind the glass, sitting on the tray.

That huge glob of chocolate icing, swirled on top of that yummy vanilla cookie.  I’d gone to Lexington Market in Baltimore, to get crab cakes, but like a magnet, those special cookies pulled me over, calling my name; actually calling Leroy’s name, like they had done so many years ago.

When we were up at the cancer center for treatment, especially for chemo, I would leave him in his chair, hooked-up with all the tubes and bags hanging off the T-stand, to get him his favorite cookies.  They somehow made the chemo easier to take.  Leroy was a chocaholic from way back and these cookies, with that incredible chocolate frosting, were magical.

And, as I drove down 95, thinking about all those chemo visits and all those cookies he consumed, I realized how important they were to him.  The magic wasn’t in the dough or  even in the icing.  The magic was in the “mood” they put him in…He was able to forget about the chemo, the cancer and the cancer center.

He was just Leroy, eating a big chocolate iced cookie, just like he’d done a million times, before cancer patient followed the comma after his name.