“A medically assisted death, such as I recount in my essay “Mercies, Or, the Mostly True Tale of a Narratively Assisted Death” (Intima Spring 2023), is the antithesis of a traumatic ending in an ER. It is highly anticipated, fully orchestrated and well rehearsed – on everyone’s part but my own.”
Read moreGetting it Right, Even When it Feels Wrong: A Reflection by poet Ceren Ege
In his video “Inside Anxiety and Depression,” William Doan’s words “writing is drawing” were a reminder of my existence as a poet and artist, and how the latter is an identity I felt uncomfortable with for a long time. I squirmed at the creation of “art” out of another’s suffering, even though my father’s illness felt like the only thing worth writing about. Now I sit with a different question: whether anyone’s suffering is entirely separate. I think owning suffering defeats the very aim of why we move it to articulation—to release it, to divide the burden of it, and to comprehend it with others.
Read moreDiscerning Different Shades of Grief by Jeffrey Millstein, MD
In my essay, “Remembrance,” I discovered my own grief for a recently deceased long-time patient while continuing to care for her widowed husband. John Jacobson’s piece “Now and Then” (Fall 2018 Intima) brought me deep into the chasm of a different type of grief, from loss of someone who was, and to a more attuned place from where to offer empathy.
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