“I’m interested in volunteering at Hospicare,” I explained, my voice catching in my throat as I choked back tears. “I have experience teaching women’s health workshops and know how important it is to get bereavement support, so
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“It’s $110 a month,” Mrs. Schooley told us. “$110 a month?” I wasn’t sure we could swing it. “$110 a month, including heat and electric,” she said. That was one third of Vic’s graduate student stipend. I
Read more →I met Robin Botie in the oncology ward kitchen at Strong Hospital in Rochester in 2008. We leaned our weary bodies against Formica counters and whispered our sad tales while warming food in the microwave for the
Read more →On a bitter March afternoon after my Chinese government seminar at Cornell, I hurry down the hill toward Seneca Street. I stomp up the crooked wooden steps to Vic’s apartment, grateful to be out of the wind.
Read more →Her brows scrunched together and her hand covered her mouth to hide her feelings. Her eyes said she was saying something important, but I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids and heard nothing. Not a sound. Blank space.
Read more →If I only push harder, I’ll catch a tailwind and launch my book. This month it will be finished, I said in August. I said it again in September. Burn those engines on high heat and surge
Read more →On a September afternoon in 1966, when I was a 21 year old student at Cornell, I met an older man—he was 25—in a motorcycle shop in Ithaca. His muscular body arched over the skeleton of an
Read more →I squinted in the harsh morning light and shivered in anticipation. Standing outside a hotel near Carmel, NY on a May morning in 1997, I felt like a celebrity stalker. I was hungry for spiritual contact. My
Read more →“I asked Liz to marry me,” my older son David says on the phone. I hear the drone of engine noise, so I know he’s driving home from a weekend trip. “What did she say?” I tease,
Read more →When my husband Vic and I got serious about healthy eating in 1967, his mom Virginia gave me a copy of Let’s Cook It Right by Adele Davis. Vic was not thrilled with bran molasses cookies and
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