Please listen here. Spread the word about my book. Refusing chemo is an option. This podcast was sponsored by the Chicago Writers Association in concert with my book being given the Book of the Year Award for Indie Nonfiction. I am beyond grateful and will write more about that event later. (Enjoy the podcast with …
Tag: Dying from Untreated Small Cell Lung Cancer
Writing Workshops: Helpful?
Have you ever had your writing critiqued in a writing workshop? If not, you’d be in for an experience like none other. My first encounter was in one of the first writing workshops I took in the year 2000. The piece was my first attempt at writing poetry; in fact, it was one of my …
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 #5 – Outrageous
At book club last week, we finished Joan Chittister’s The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully. Many things in the book resonated with me, but I needed her chapter on “Future” right now as I emerge from the two-month mark of being a widow (there, I said the word I don’t like, but it seems …
Grace Notes #4: Skating
When Marv had his first cancer, prostate, in 1999, I fell off the rails. As I was telling that story to a mutually grieving friend last week, I thought back to what a therapist told me at the time: "Sounds like you're bouncing along the bottom." Here’s the situation as I described it in Caring …
Grace Notes #3: Numb
During the prelude yesterday morning in church, when, as is custom there, most people were chatting across pews or visiting in the aisles, I suddenly wanted to dart up to the front, cocoon myself in a cozy blanket, lie under the baby grand, and absorb the vibrations while singing along in my heart: Why should …
Grace Notes #2: “You’ll do fine.”
Every time in the last few months that I voiced apprehension about going on alone, Marv would simply say, "You'll do fine." It's a month today that he passed away around four in the morning on July 25. I cannot describe the last month in any coherent way. But the recurring theme in my head …
Grace Notes #1: Afterward – Trusting God
A Chicago friend sent a photo of this cover from Fourth Presbyterian’s bulletin: I’m in Nouwen’s “trusting” stage. Our Celebration of Life Service for Marv is Saturday at 11am at Westminster Presbyterian. It’s been just twelve days since he passed away. Many family members and friends are coming to town, plus new friends and church …
God’s Grace #21: Transition
My husband, Marv, took his last breath around four yesterday morning, Wednesday, July 25, 2018. Even though heavily medicated he seemed to know that he had to get up at his usual time and go somewhere. Spooned behind him on our king-sized bed, my left arm tucked around his side, I suddenly felt the absence …
Write Along with Me 