Life is Choices
The instant that my mom died, everything about my life and how I viewed it changed. My own mortality, an elusive phantom dancing in the shadows, now rested heavily upon my shoulders.
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Pam
I watched as she threw her head back so that it hung over the edge of the bed, hair dangling to the floor; long, thick and silky hair; not like mine – frizzy, wild and hard to manage. That summer night in 1957, Pam showed me how to brush my hair. She held the brush deliberately, pulling it through her hair...
read moreMy Sister, Pam
Her hands were larger than mine; her heart too, for that matter. She was twenty-two months younger than I, but her life was shorter. She was my sister, Pam. Her long, bony fingers were clubbed at the tips, with splayed, purple-tinged nails that suggested the lack of oxygen in her blood. Her palms were salty. She had “Sixty-five...
read moreA Relay of Control
It was with sadness and dread that I received a phone call from one of our hospital discharge planners telling me a patient, Joyce, had gone home and wanted me to call her. Joyce was a former coworker with me in another agency and was, ironically, their first hospice nurse.
read moreThe Grey Hair Pin
Whenever my grandmother came to visit, I was obligated to share my bedroom with her. I can still picture her relieving her pendulous breasts from the confines of her corset, then removing the pins from the bun in her snow-white hair. But though peeking at granny while pretending to be asleep provided some satisfaction for my youthful curiosity, it did not compensate for what to me was a painful loss of privacy. There were always a few of Granny's gray hairpins left scattered on my dresser after she left, reminders of the sacrifice I was forced to endure.
read moreHair Is Overrated
“One thing I can tell you for certain is that you will lose your hair before your second treatment. And my advice is to buzz your head before it starts to fall out. ‘Cause if you wait ‘til it starts coming out it will be in your bed, it will be in your food, it will be in your shoes. Look me in the eye.
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