Image zoom Credit: Illustration: Caitlin-Marie Miner Ong. After my daughter Charlie was born, people asked me if I felt I had replaced my son Ronan the way they thought I had replaced one sad life with a happy one. As if people or relationships are pieces on a board in some weird game of life checkers or grief chess. A ridiculous idea, but not uncommon, I discovered; I realized that this notion, too, is linked to our faulty conception of resilience. What I wanted to tell these well-meaning people was this: When Ronan was 18 months old, exactly 9 months after his Tay-Sachs diagnosis, he was strapped into a special therapy suit called a Thera-Tog—strips of bendable fabric that held him together, like the pieces of a pattern.