Shorthand: Essays

When I was twenty-five, my mother died. Cancer, of the pancreas. She was sixty-two. She died in her bedroom, in our old house on Shields Street. Fort Collins, Colorado. The house where I grew up. I was in the room with her, so was my father, so was my sister. It happened exactly as the woman from hospice had told us it would. My mother's hands and feet went ashen and cold, her breathing slowed until it stopped, and then she was dead. The nurse confirmed this with a stethoscope. This collection of personal essays starts with the death of my mother and expands into questions of family, grief, sexuality, and love.