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…
Robert—our daughter Stacy’s husband—and I were standing quietly outside the double doors that led to the medical center’s intensive care unit (ICU). It was early in the morning and Stacy was inside the unit on a respirator. The doors were closed. We had been asked to leave while the nurses took care of the patients….
A few weeks after I finished reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a 2010 biography by Rebecca Skloot, an article in the Newark Star-Ledger popped into my head. The article, about McKenna Claire Wetzel, and written by Sandy Kleffman in 2012, was headlined Killer Cells donated to find a cure for other youngsters. I…
How many of you saw the television version of Cancer: Emperor of All Maladies? Hmmm. Well, let me tell those of you who didn’t see the documentary just a bit about it. As you might know, both Valerie and Stacy, our only children, were caught in the web of cancer. Valerie was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma,…
Lunching out for me can be like those in-between times when the long, hard periods in life seem to vanish and the smiles take over. When I’m alone I’ll go to a diner, order a tuna salad sandwich, some iced tea with lots of ice, and then eat quietly while I’m either editing an article…