Somewhere, unseen over an ocean-like horizon, the images and the canvas end.

When Jen Kiffor of Davidson gave birth this past February to her first child, Julian, she looked forward to watching the creation of a masterpiece decades in the making. Just weeks later, though, reality cruelly eclipsed the 25-year-old mother's vision.

"I want to at least make it until his first day of school," Kiffor said at the time.

That's because just two weeks after Julian's birth, doctors at Duke University Medical Center in Durham told Kiffor that a growth they'd found in her kidney was something called a primitive neuroectodermal tumor, or PNT, a rare form of cancer most often found in children.

Kiffor didn't make it to Julian's first day of school. She didn't even make it to his first birthday. Jen Kiffor died Nov. 10 at Presbyterian Hospital Huntersville.

"Her liver began shutting down the night before," said friend Katrina Koory. "The doctors predicted she would fall into a coma ... and slowly shut down following her liver failure. She ended up going quicker than expected."

'Always there'

That February day at Duke, Kiffor and her husband, Zack, knew the news was bad before anyone spoke.

"All of the doctors and nurses came into the room and said they needed to talk to us," Jen recalled in an interview with the Citizen in April. "When that happens, it's never good."

And it wasn't. The disease, doctors told the Kiffors, was incurable.

The nursing job at Carolinas Medical Center that awaited Jen, who had just graduated from nursing school, would now go to someone else. Zack's job as a teacher at Gateway Academy in Huntersville also would be put on hold. Fighting this illness, which only became more mysterious as the Kiffors scoured the Internet for any information they could find on PNT, would now be the couple's focus. Along with Julian, of course.

As days turned into weeks during Jen's stay at Duke, relatives took turns caring for Julian. Zack, meanwhile, devoted himself to the care of his wife.

"He was always there," Jen said. "He left the hospital for four hours one night. That's it. He slept in the bed with me."

As the effects of the disease gradually atrophied Jen's muscles and sapped her energy, she said she drew strength from her husband, a dynamic that was easy to spot after spending just a few minutes with the couple.

"He's really strong," Jen said, before turning to look at her husband through eyes quickly filling with tears. "You know," she told him, "I don't think I could do this without you."

Zack looked back at her and, in a matter-of-fact tone, replied: "You're the one who's doing it, honey."

Time missed

The first signs that something was wrong came weeks before Julian was born, but the Kiffors figured Jen's fatigue was related to the pregnancy. Weeks after the birth, when Jen's symptoms worsened, her doctor had her admitted to Carolinas Medical Center, where tests produced a series of misdiagnoses, none of them good. In fact, when doctors suggested lymphoma as the likely culprit, "we actually were excited about that," Zack said, "because at least there's a treatment for that."

By the time Jen left CMC March 9 after six days, her doctors again were unsure about what exactly was making her sick. The next day, the Kiffors traveled to Duke, which became their home for more than a month.

It wasn't until March 22 that specialists came up with a definitive diagnosis of PNT. Chemotherapy followed, and Jen was discharged from Duke on April 18. Julian rarely left the Kiffors' sight after that.

"We pretty much missed two months of him getting bigger," Jen said in April. "I missed two months of his doctor's appointments."

The time missed, Zack added, was time that couldn't be reclaimed.

"It was amazing," Zack said, "When we didn't see him for a couple days, he'd change so much. ... He has clothes that he never wore, because we never had a chance to put them on him."

The miracle

Jen's final months would be a mixture of simple pleasures and a monumental battle against the disease.

"The best moments are playing with Julian in the morning, and hearing him giggle and laugh," Jen said in April.

Everyday activities, like walking with Zack and Julian around their Summer's Walk neighborhood in Davidson, or going to the grocery store, took on new meaning.

"It might not sound like much," Jen said, "but it helps get my mind off things."

Among the things on Jen's mind constantly was her prognosis. The irony of finally getting a firm diagnosis was that it actually made her future more nebulous. Because PNT is so rare (just two dozen people have been diagnosed with the condition since 1917), doctors were wary of predicting how long Jen might live with the disease.

Jen was counting on five years. That could get her to her goal of watching Julian go to his kindergarten class for the first time.

"I don't think it helps being a nurse," she admitted. "I'd love to be able to think, 'Oh, everything's going to be fine,' but I know it's not. But I'll fight for as long as I can."

She could hope. She could pray. She could dream.

Jen looked across the room on that April day, as though searching for something invisible, something incomprehensible, something impossible.

"Miracles do happen," she said.

Then she and Zack turned and gazed at Julian, sleeping soundly in his baby carrier, seemingly perfect except for a one-inch scratch on the left side of his forehead, and they knew.

They'd already experienced their first miracle.

And he was a masterpiece.