First published at Adelaide Literary Magazine It’s been over six months since I wrote about my cousin’s death by assisted suicide and the way he, and his decision, affected me. At seventy-two, he had been diagnosed with a virulent form of dementia. While we’ve all experienced the death of family members, close or not, of
First published on Oldster Magazine I didn’t grow up with my cousin. He, along with his two older siblings, were raised on the east coast, while I, though born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles, where I still live. I sometimes referred to them as my overachieving east coast cousins. A bit sarcastic
A month ago, I was in Los Angeles and my husband was in New York on his way home from Madrid and Paris. He’s a writer, fancied himself a poet, though he’d been working on a film. Or so he said. It wasn’t long before I discovered he hadn’t been traveling alone. His companion was
The black hearse crossed in front of our car on the way to my first chemo appointment. “Think it’s a bad omen?” I asked my husband, “like a black cat?” That was nineteen years ago so it wasn’t a portend of things to come. I was, and remain, one of the lucky ones. And, don’t
One of my earliest memories of shopping is going up the escalator of a local department store with my mother gently poking me in the back to make me stand up straight. I’m not sure how old I was, maybe ten or eleven, old enough to be embarrassed and none too happy about it. My
I went to Africa alone. No companion, no tour, just an American woman of a certain age on her own. I had read Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham in high school and, like so many others, I wanted to be Jane Goodall; I was completely enthralled with the idea of this mysterious continent and the
Essay first published at LitHub “It’s Never Too Late to Start (or Finally Finish) Your Novel” The passage of time is relentless. We all know it. Whether you’re having fun or not. Whether the years are filled with sublime happiness or utter sadness, or, like most of us, with a combination of both. It just
