My creative non-fiction piece “The Living Room” was published in Dreamers Magazine (issue 8: March-June 2021) and is now available on their site, Dreamers Creative Writing. If you know me or knew Susan, this is, as I’ve been told “a tough read.” Nonetheless, I hope you’ll read it. A couple of people have expressed concern […]
Tag: Cancer
Humor: A Hard Way to Write an Essay
Jennifer Crystal challenged our Grub Street class to write a 500-1,000 word essay “using humor to make a point.” In speech and writing, I pepper people with puns and jokes. But humor for revelation? In our assignment from Writing Well, William Zinsser demonstrates comic devices. To question women’s public adornment with hair curlers in the […]
Christmas Eve, 2012
[I wrote this on Christmas Eve, 2012] The theme song of Star Trek The Next Generation, Susan’s ringtone, starts to play. Kim answers the phone. “Uh, hello?” Who could be calling from Susan’s phone? The phone is on Kim’s desk where it’s been since Susan died, exactly three weeks ago. Caller: “Hi!” Kim: “Um, who’s this?”
Should have been
Today, August 2, 2013, Susan should have been 56 years old. Instead, she died of cancer seven months and one day ago. By next month, she might have told you she was 57. She always aged herself a year, almost a year in advance. Sometimes she thought she was actually turning a year older than […]
