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Our Rag-Bone Hearts

Richard was introduced to mental institutions when insulin and shock treatments were in their experimental heyday. Inappropriate and excessive use of these treatments dealt him the blow ensuring that he would never again plead for his home or protest his lot.

The Only Child

Alzheimer’s sneaks up on you: a forgotten appointment, a misplaced handbag, a spoken sentence that makes no sense, an inexplicable burst of anger, the nagging fear that there may not be enough money for you to live on. The early signs of Alzheimer’s seem to be just natural signs of aging.

The Mad Girl Is Flip, Uses Words

Natalie

There is no simple way, no easy or uncomplicated way, to look into the face of a filthy old woman on the street. We are frightened or saddened or repelled, feel guilty if not resentful, and then we avert our eyes.

Family Genes

Chloe looked at Big Daddy, huddled and quivering in her grandmother’s lap. Big Daddy, once a plump, nervous, annoying Chihuahua, was now a frail, nervous, annoying Chihuahua. Every so often he would snort and wheeze and gag, like an aging coal miner.

Hidden Clues

I did not begin training as a psychiatrist with an open mind. As strange as it might seem for someone beginning a career based on insight, I had resolved not to change. I was frightened that my personality might be pasteurized by the process, that forces would make of me a blank slate on which others would feel free to write their life stories.

Attics

Ninety clear glass marbles, a suicide note, a deathbed confession

The Vet

Facing Mike on my doorstep, dressed in my Lands’ End polo shirt and my all-cotton cargo shorts, I felt I was being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. Looking at this man, who must have been born in the late forties or early fifties, a man who grew up, as I did, on hula hoops and Twinkies and later the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and who now looked immeasurably old and broken, I knew we were feeling a similar pain just then. I knew he understood that we’d been through the same time and had come out differently.

The American Dream

A tricycle, a mobile home, a company man

Sunbeams

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

Daniel Berrigan