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 …
Grace Notes #15: Grief at Nine Months
Ants on the bathroom counters. Kitchen cabinet door hanging loose from its top hinge. Battery dead in the Beetle in the garage. Mineral deposits on the home vaporizer rendering it almost useless. (I know I said I wasn't going to write Grace Notes anymore, but never say never. You'll see this situation requires them.) After …
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!
Thank you, WordPress Editors and WordPress Friends!
Imagine my surprise last week when my email box showed dozens, then hundreds of notices from WordPress announcing an uptick of activity on my last blog post on my scare with breast cancer. I'm grateful to Cheri Lucas at WordPress for featuring that post under Discover, "a daily selection of the best content published on …
Continue reading Thank you, WordPress Editors and WordPress Friends!
Please! No more cancer. Been there, done that.
I had a health scare last week that slapped me, once again, into awareness that I’m alone. I no longer have a husband; I no longer am married. After 56 years, I no longer have someone at home who's there for me the minute something goes wrong. There have been many challenges as I’ve assumed …
Continue reading Please! No more cancer. Been there, done that.
Grace Notes #14 – Grief at Six Months
Marv passed away six months and fourteen hours ago. I'm feeling it is time for me to move on. To leave these “grace” related posts on dying and death and move increasingly toward my “new normal.” I don’t mind that expression, although I know some do. They say there will never be another “normal.” But …
Growing Older – On Turning 77
“Can I help you?“ a butcher yelled from a packaged meat display. A few feet away, I was standing, clueless, in front of an impressive array of glass-encased chunks of red meat. “Yes, I guess,” I bellowed back. When he was situated across from me, I asked, “How many pounds of a chuck roast do …
Write Along with Me 