[For those who don’t hold the 1939 “Wizard of Oz” close to their hearts as one of the greatest movies of all time, that’s what Professor Marvel told Dorothy when she asked him to predict her future.] I broke into Medium in January, 2020, with a piece about living with…

My granddaughter saw the real issue right away — This is not a post about Millennials or Generation Z. When I refer to “Youth” in the title, I am referring to someone under the age of 10. Well, under 9. My granddaughter Ramona, the youth in question, is just coming up on eight and a half years old. So…

Dying Is More like Using Leftovers, Preferably Well Blame it on Sylvia Plath, who in her poem Lady Lazarus, wrote: Dying Is an art, like everything else. When I was sixteen, I was enthralled with those lines and, indeed, that poem. At 64, having outlived Plath by more than three…

I’ve always been a bad minimalist — As I get more serious about my end of life, I look around and realize just how much stuff I own. If I ever published my personal essays, I would totally copycat my title from Roxane Gay: Bad Minimalist. I am intrigued by minimalism and try to incorporate some of…

I’ve had cancer for 15 years, and I now see the exit door up ahead — My life with an incurable, progressive cancer now in its 15th year is always shifting. It is almost (almost) easier — after so many years (15), after so many appointments (hundreds), after so many blood draws (beyond count) — to say out loud, “I now know what dying feels like…