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Latest Voices
A Hard Lesson in Humility
The Child Who Was Never Conceived
Lost Memories
Throughout my pregnancy, I didn’t know if I was having a boy or a girl–I wanted to be surprised. When my baby was delivered, the doctor yelled, “It’s a girl!” A daughter–what I’d hoped for! Although I would have loved a son equally, in all honesty I’d hoped for a daughter. I thought long and hard about her name, wanting something significant, and chose Olivia, which means peace, and Rose, because I had a passion for roses. Olivia Rose.
What do I do with that name now?
Ruled by Angst
An Editor’s Invitation: Parenting
A Moment in Hospice
She is a collector: stamps, coins, wine glasses of various shades and shapes, Donald Duck memorabilia. These are her childhood treasures rediscovered from boxes in the attic. Her mother kept them all, not knowing they would serve a purpose someday. On the nightstand is a recent photograph of this radiant woman with chestnut curls.
The person before me now is an empty vessel and nothing more; her limbs limp, her breaths shallow, her eyes closed, her age: fifty-four. The dressings need to be changed around-the-clock to slow the march of decay. The wound tunnels deep, exposing her sacrum
Point of Departure
It sounded like a simple question. Do I still have cancer, or not?
The surgeon got clear margins, and cancer wasn’t in the lymph nodes. But my oncologists strongly recommended chemotherapy in case microscopic cancer cells remained, undetectable by any test.
Coping with the Present
An Abyss of Not Knowing
She looked at me with desperation in her eyes. “I just don’t know,” she said.
“What’s wrong? What don’t you know?” I asked. With tears in her eyes and increased urgency in her voice, M insisted, “I just don’t know…I don’t know. I don’t know!” Hands turning white from gripping the armrests of her wheelchair, she slumped over, shut her eyes and shook her head in honest confusion and fear.
