(Excerpt from original essay)
I have always tried to dodge the word.
Even as a child, I would try to blur it out
if I stumbled upon it in a book or heard it
trip and fall from someone’s mouth. It wasn’t
a word meant for me. It was a word for those
other people -- the whispering PTA ladies
at the bus stop, Walter Cronkite hiding behind
those thick black glasses and that odd empty
desk, the priest who slowly climbed the steps
of the house next door after our neighbor hung
herself in her kitchen. So, how would I ever
be able to explain death to my own children?
That question had haunted me ever
since I gave birth to my four year old
daughter after thirty-three hours of
life-affirming labor. Then, when my son
was born after a breezy, eight hour labor,
it was signed, sealed... delivered. I would
never speak the word outloud.
