Anne has entered the end of life phase of her journey and is henceforth receiving palliative care A journey that began on May 8 of this year with a diagnosis of glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer, is entering a final phase. My darling wife Anne will no longer be tethered..
Adapting our apartment to Anne’s disability: The Great Escape revisited Have you ever seen the film The Great Escape? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film) The 1963 epic film depicts a heavily fictionalized version of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in World War II. Our apartment is currently being adapted for an ongoing “Great Escape”,..
Out of the Cognitive Jungle: A Poem of Laughter and Love Between tangled thoughts and shadowed mind’s domain, I wander, lost amid the wild unknown— Yet laughter, bright and sudden as the rain, Breaks through the brambles I have called my own. A chorus rises—family, all around, Their arms unwavering, their presence clear. In..
The Haiku and Haiga Chronicles: Exhaustion, Loss, and Prolonged Sorrow
Anne as an indomitable decorator: A feisty artist whom brain cancer can impede but never defeat Everybody who knows Anne knows that she’s a decorator; she calls herself the “Decorating Turkey.” Our sons have dubbed her “couth”; even the house in which we raised our rowdy boys in suburban Quebec City was “couth” and..
Checking Out? Leaving? A Tale of Hospital Discharge and the Hotel California “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”—at least, that’s how it feels on discharge day at the hospital. Getting Anne released proved to require a labyrinthine dance worthy of the Eagles’ greatest hit. Various staff..
Blackbird: A song of flight from illness and sorrow “Blackbird,” written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney, is one of the enduring gems of The Beatles’ 1968 “White Album.” The year my wife Anne, who is succumbing to brain cancer, arrived in Canada. McCartney’s “Blackbird” is an acoustic piece, featuring only his..
Basho in Bedlam and Being Unceremoniously Thrown Out Of Bed: An Excessively Precipitous Taper A victim of implacable, incurable brain cancer, of glioblastoma, my darling wife Anne has been subject to well-intentioned medical experimentation ever since was diagnosed and operated on just over two short months ago. It’s clear that her new “Annehood” has..
Relapses and Awakenings: Anne returns to the hospital unable to walk, talk, or eat Yesterday morning, Anne was unable to get out of bed. She could not walk, talk, or eat. She was also radically incontinent. After about 30 minutes of my lugging and cajoling, we finally reached the bathroom of our tiny..
Awakenings, The Panther, and Anne’s conditional liberation from the confines of brain cancer In his poem “The Panther,” Rilke paints a heartrending portrait of an animal so confined that its vision dulls into endless bars and its will stalls into a ritual of pacing. The poem is a gateway to the experience of the..