grief
Losing a family member is one of the most traumatic life events; Families must support one another to endure the five stages of grief and get through it together.
The Raw, the Painful, the Shameful
When am I embodying an authentic self? Is it when I am in the flow of writing or painting, and nothing exists but the page or canvas I am filling? When that flow happens before my brain has registered what my hands are doing, they having taken on a life of their own?
By S. Venugopal 5 years ago in Families
An Ode to My Father
When I was sixteen, my father was diagnosed with brain cancer. I remember in vivid detail getting called to the office out of a theatre class, hearing the news, and returning semi-composedly only to completely break down in the middle of a peer’s presentation. He passed away three weeks and six days later.
By Aidan Clifton5 years ago in Families
An Ohio Burial
It was an early morning in central Ohio. The sun was rising as we passed the ring of the 270 outer belt, heading north. The hours stretched before us on what seemed to be a pilgrimage I was honor-bound to make. My father drove, and I could watch the dew rise from the fields of corn as we passed. Growing up, I knew only the cities and suburbs of Cleveland; the vast agricultural swaths in between metropolises was still quaint and foreign to me. Cleveland: where we were now headed, where my father had been raised, where his last remaining blood relative, other than my brothers and I, had been prepared for burial, and was now waiting for us to arrive.
By Cassie Bogdan Slemmer5 years ago in Families
Mouth Wide Open. Top Story - December 2021.
The book I brought with me that day was only 98 pages long. Long enough to pass the time sitting in the overly lit, bustling waiting room, but not so long and intricate that it required focused commitment while sitting in the uncomfortable pleather covered chairs. Perfect, I thought, for the longest, shortest, scariest, and loneliest 56 minutes of my life, waiting for news that would decide the future. And it was perfect, as just a few minutes after closing the back cover, they called me back to you. You were still groggy from anesthesia when the doctor arrived and said the words to us. In those extra moments it took you to process ‘pancreatic cancer’, I was alone with the knowledge that our time together had just gotten cut short, back when alone was something I had mistaken thought I had experienced in full.
By Becca Lory Hector5 years ago in Families
