Stories & Shares

On doctor's orders, I had driven in from hours away to take my mother to the emergency room at her doctor's hospital in Brooklyn. Sitting in the exam room, we watched the ER doctor fight back his tears as he told us his findings—my mother had late-stage pancreatic cancer. She was a single mother to me, her only child. So over the course of the next five months, I became my mother's primary caretaker. I was witness to her death while I held her hand at her bedside. This profound experience was a gift that led me to my investigations in grief and loss, thanatology, and legacy.