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Cancer
On A Narrow Ledge
Lying awake in the gray hours of the morning, I heard a hissing little voice, insinuating, familiar, from the depths of my own being. What it was saying, over and over again, was simply, “Metastasis. Metastasisss.”
October 1989Caleb’s Journal
I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?
August 1989Hannah
Just as it is difficult to picture an angel without wings, it is difficult to picture a human with wings. But more than I once considered, it seems that, under certain circumstances, the two are readily interchangeable, just as some solids will transform directly into gases.
December 1987Lost Opportunities
Time with family, an interview with Todd Rundgren, a suicide attempt
October 1987The Words Left Unsaid
Words alone had not knitted us together; neither could silence tear the fabric. I remember a crisp fall afternoon when I started to tell my mother that I loved her, that seeing her suffer was more pain than I could bear, that — she held out her arms to stop me. “Don’t speak,” she said, “or we’ll both cry.”
June 1987Bedtime Reading
Soon after I met the man who is now my husband — it was our second date, I think — Peter explained one of his chief requirements in a woman: “Let’s go to the library. We’ve got to be able to read in the same room together.”
May 1987The Written Word
Writing words on paper is particularly arrogant. How presumptuous to believe that words on paper can capture meaning, freeze life, hold it for even a moment.
April 1987Minnie: Rest In Peace, Mom
In the second week of hospitalization my mother’s denial abruptly stops. I see a deliberate motion away from life, an about-face toward death, with a new-found dignity and acceptance.
December 1986God Bless The Child
Compassion filled the car with a tangible presence. He was dying; but it seemed to me they had all come to terms with it. All three of them had accepted the inevitable, and each moment together was precious. Neither I nor my saxophone would be forgotten.
October 1986
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