My late wife, Melissa, was diagnosed with stage IV synovial sarcoma — a rare type of soft tissue cancer — in January 2016. She died from complications of it on Sept. 11, 2017. But neither of us ever saw the point of asking, “Why me?” It just didn’t seem productive. Even if we could’ve come up with an answer, it wasn’t going to help us in any way, so we decided it wasn’t going to be a part of the conversation.

Instead, we focused...