Juliet lost her husband, Jeff, to ALS in 2020, 19 months after his diagnosis. Together Jeff and Juliet enjoyed being on the water, live music, pets, and traveling. She was his primary caregiver, and finds meaning and healing in helping individuals and families who are living with or have lost a loved one to ALS. Juliet lives with her rescue pup, Sailor, on the eastern shore of Maryland, in a home that Jeff chose because it reminded him of his beloved Green Lake in Michigan.
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary, the fifth one I have spent without my late husband, Jeff, who died of ALS in 2020. Jeff Sarnacki’s daughter, Makelle, holds her daughter while enjoying a…
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Autumn has a very specific feeling where I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Right now, the daylight is getting shorter, the temperature is more brisk, and the lush greens of summer have…
While my late husband, Jeff, was living with ALS, a close family member was diagnosed with colon cancer and required immediate surgery. Fortunately, the cancer had been caught early, and the surgery was…
Often I do some of my deepest thinking when I’m alone in the car. I regularly drive 35 minutes to ride my horse, and I like to spend that time in silence. That’s when…
I remember the first caregiving task that I completed for my late husband, Jeff, after he was diagnosed with ALS in the fall of 2018. His symptoms had started with a foot drop,…
After the loss of my beloved dog Rudder when he was 12 years old, a close friend observed with concern that she hadn’t seen me cry. It was true, I hadn’t shed any tears…
It was seven years ago this summer that I unwittingly and unwillingly became a part of the ALS community when my late husband, Jeff, began exhibiting foot drop and slurred speech, symptoms that were…
My late husband, Jeff, and I shared a love of the outdoors, even though our preferred activities were often different. I loved to hike and kayak, while Jeff, who’d been injured when a car…
I remember the emptiness I felt the first September after graduating from college. I’d been a student for 16 of my 21 years at that time, and the void of not going back to…
Sometime in my mid-40s, I wrote a list of goals I wanted to achieve before turning 50. I no longer have the list, but I remember a few things on it: Learn a second…
The weeks immediately following my late husband’s ALS diagnosis were the scariest and most unsettling of my life. Even with Jeff’s physical symptoms pointing toward ALS, nothing could’ve prepared us to actually hear…
When I was growing up, many of my neighbors participated in the U.S. Naval Academy Sponsor Program, as we lived just a few miles from the school’s campus in Annapolis, Maryland. Under the program,…
