“Here I sit by a fire pit at a lovely resort in Arizona contemplating...” Three years ago this month I wrote that opening to a blog post. Today I can write the same thing; I’m at the same place. But much of my personal life has changed, mostly related to the loss of my husband …
Category: writing
Gratitude Party on Turning Seventy-Eight
When I turned 72, I used this same "gratitude" blog title. Musing over the past year and a half since Marv died, I can write with the same sentiment today. To catch up, I spent Christmas in Aruba with my daughter and family. You may remember we were there two years ago also, just a …
Once a nurse, always a nurse…
Thank you, Joost van Beek and team at Nurse Recruiter, for selecting my blog to be among their top nurse blogs for 2019. This is their second year for examining nursing blogs, and I've made their cut this year for a second time. I appreciate their dedication to this project! This organization groups their top …
Grief at Sixteen Months: Traumatic Flashback
“I heard what happened out there,” the male nurse said, standing on my right side as I lay on a bed in the Emergency Room last week. “Is there anything I can do for you?” Sniffling and dabbing my tears, I said, “No, not really. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve been …
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Grief at Fifteen Months: How Long Has It Been?
I ran into some folks the other day who'd come to pray with Marv two days before his death. I'd not seen them in the interim. "How long has it been?" the man asked. When I said, "Nearly fifteen months," he and his wife shook their heads, as if questioning whether it could be that …
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Buses, Pickpockets, and Crowbars
My trip from the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City coasted along from the Iowa hotel, to the airport shuttle to Cedar Rapids, to the flight to Chicago, and on to the L train headed to the Loop. Problem number one began with the announcement of L track repairs. After settling comfortably onto my …
Grace Notes #17: Grief at One Year
What was there is no longer there: Not his touch, not his words: "I prefer you without clothes" Not the intimacy, legs and arms intertwined with need Not the pillow talk, eyes searching eyes for meaning The diagnosis threatens to separate us We resist. We persist. We don't give it the power it wants. At …
Grace Notes #16: Grief at Eleven Months
Big news! I finished a first draft of the book I'm writing about our cancer experience. In March, when I was in Arizona, I started compiling blog posts written during that time which will serve as the frame of the story. Then I added emails that I'd written to family and friends. Way last November …
Immersed in Memories
In preparation for writing my next book, I completed a tedious and heart-tugging task today. My book will be about the "adventure" Marv and I undertook last year with his seven-month process of living with a terminal cancer diagnosis and my life afterward. The starting point for the book with be the blog posts I …
Back to where it started: Chicago
My friend Marianna’s book is out! Read about her earlier years as a nurse practitioner in a Chicago high rise. We met up in Chicago last week for her reading back at that agency. Exciting!
Write Along with Me 