Lost in a featureless wasteland of my own mortality, and finding no traction in the reams of scientific studies, intracellular molecular pathways, and endless curves of survival statistics, I began reading literature again: Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, Woolf, Kafka, Mo

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Back home in Chicago, my parents grew old. I didn’t see this happening and neither did they. They were busy birdwatching, attending new plays, trying new restaurants. Our relationship had mellowed and warmed with time. But then my father, my sweet, strong, and only father—he began to die, and then he died. Words that still don’t sound true five yea... See more