The Grandmother Who Never Expected to Hold a Child Again

Margaret Ellison sat in a plastic chair at Riverside Community Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, convinced she had outlived every good thing. Her husband, Carl, had died of pancreatic cancer three years earlier. Her only son, David, had been killed by a drunk driver eighteen months after that. She had packed away the crib in the attic, donated David's clothes, and stopped setting extra places at Thanksgiving.…