In her new book, Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers, Elizabeth describes how the days, months and years that followed Wade's tragic death left an unbearable emptiness on the Edwards family.

"My life was just completely decimated, in a sense," says Elizabeth. "It's like you're hollowed out. Everything that we were doing or thinking about, it was all wiped away."

One way the family tried to come to terms with their loss was to write letters to Wade and place them in his casket at the funeral. "I sat down to write mine and, our relationship was so complex and complete with this boy that there was almost no way to write it. So, I just wrote the words 'you know' and put them in."

Elizabeth says that after Wade's death she prayed for God to take her. "That was the one thing that I didn't want was for me to [have] to bury him. It was okay for him to bury me, but not the other way around."

Elizabeth says that even though she'll never understand the "why" of Wade's death she has made peace with God. "My daily prayer is that I have enough faith that I will one day be reunited with him."