“Don’t push your luck, Sue,” a jogging friend said to me, apropos of something or other. His comment surprised me. Luck? What was he talking about? What kind of luck did I have? Take jogging. I was followed on a placid, tree-lined road in a rural part of Warren by a weird guy in a…
My cousin Polly died in her sleep on November 19, 2016. And I wept for all we had lost. Polly Wittenberg Rothstein was one month past her 80th birthday. This is not a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal obituary. It is simply my remembrances of a cousin loved for who she was and for…
•My Faith My Way (2016/09/01); •The Grief that Howls (2016/11/01); •Cancer: Emperor of All Maladies (2015/11/15); •Kids, Cars, and the Unpredictability of Life (2011/02/02).
I recently read an article written by The New York Times columnist Jane Brody1 regarding the loss of a spouse and the healing that takes place. It was titled Recovery Varies After a Spouse Dies. The early research maintained that “the vast majority of surviving spouses adjust well.”2 New research suggests, however, that a more…
Cancer! What a word. The sound of it alone shivers the soul. Although every major illness creates the same reaction, I am most familiar with cancer. I know its nightmare best. I am a medical sociologist who has lost two children to cancer: Valerie at 9 and Stacy at 37. I have endured the illnesses…
My husband Ed and I along with most of our extended family and friends will celebrate the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, with dinner at our home. On the eve of the holiday, we will light yahrzeit candles in memory of our loved ones who have died. I will also recite one of the…
THE VALERIE FUND is 40 years old! And so, in honor of our wonderful nonprofit foundation established in memory of our younger daughter Valerie, Ed and I gave a speech at THE VALERIE FUND’s eleventh WALK/RUN. It was held at Verona Park in Verona, New Jersey this past June 11th. We had loads of sunshine, we spoke in…
The following true story happened a year or so before our younger daughter Valerie was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer. I have never forgotten it since it demonstrates the hold that memory sometimes has on time. ∞∞∞ Dressing for Aaron’s Bar Mitzvah was hazardous duty with my two little kids around and I…
I’ve often thought about time as a concept and how it relates to memory. Marcel Proust, the French novelist, critic and essayist called memory “the great preserver.” He called time, on the other hand, “the great destroyer.” One preserves, the other destroys. Some pair, huh? According to Proust, time, the more powerful can override and change memory. As…
A GLIMPSE OF BEHAVIOR I gave the following Grand Rounds speech to doctors and medical students at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in April 2016. My husband Ed suggested I post it on my blog Unexpectedlives.com. I agreed. I thought about what I would say in the days before the speech and A Medical Problem…