When her mother is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Terri returns home to Minneapolis after twenty-eight years of being away. She finds herself reunited with her estranged sisters on a journey that proves more painful than she could have ever imagined. But with the help of a cardinal sent from Heaven, Terri finds the courage to lay her mother to rest, let go of her painful past, and live and laugh again after heartbreaking loss. Counting Cardinals is a memoir written in free verse poetry, depicting the events that transpired over that stillest of all summers.