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Staring Contest
“Let’s take a moment to settle in.” I relax into the sagging seat of my therapist’s couch, palms on my thighs, eyes closed. Dr. Jane talks me through a brief relaxation exercise, encouraging me to let...
View ArticleThis Idea Must Live
We were all there: my mother and father, Jaylan’s mother and absence of father, his grandmother and I and Jaylan. The new nurse was there, too, the one whose name we couldn’t remember, and the new...
View ArticleLove’s Not Time’s Fool
The girl wanted to do everything at the right time, so she found herself wearing a diamond and a dress that made her look like a beautiful frosted white cupcake, which is just how all the other girls...
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The Mask
Credit-Vanderbilt University In a closet, on a high shelf, Jaylan’s radiation mask. It gapes at the ceiling, tape softening the edges of the yellow Kevlar shaped around the eyes and mouth. Tape...
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These Things Accumulate
“The Clearing,” by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison It’s difficult for me to write about cancer. The irony of that statement is that cancer is the topic du jour; my family’s recent experience with...
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Marriage or Medicare?
Photo credit: Rose-Lynn Fisher, “Tears of Ending and Beginning,” 2013 Every fallen petal diminishes spring so the wind showers down a thousand just to make me sad I’ll keep my eyes on the ones that...
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The Caregivers
“The Architect’s Brother,” by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison ~ For Bunny and Helen At last, in the MRI waiting room, I’m alone. It’s been eight weeks since we were last here. As usual, they have been...
View ArticleHow to Love Your Husband
~For Jaylan “Why do they call it growing pains?” he wonders. “It’s not as if my bones are expanding.” I heat a flat stone we collected from the Hoh River seven years ago, smooth oil over the heated...
View ArticleForgive Me, I Forgive You, I Love You, I’m Sorry
I wrote about his death, and he read it. I walked through a door we had silently agreed should remain shut into a room we’d agreed, by never mentioning its name, not to enter. I opened the door and...
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