Tag Archives: death and dying

Crucial Support in the Face of Death

By Robin Bates | Published: May 4, 2023

In “Women of Brewster Place” a character charges into a scene of despair and refuses to let death triumph.

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Tolstoy’s Kitty and a Dying Patient

By Robin Bates | Published: May 3, 2023

My favorite episode in “Anna Karenina” is Kitty showing Levin she can handle a dying patient better than he can.

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A Bombed Cathedral, My Lost Child

By Robin Bates | Published: April 29, 2023

A bombed cathedral and a George Herbert hymn come to mind as I think of my eldest son, who died 23 years ago today.

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On Proust and Living Life to the Fullest

By Robin Bates | Published: April 9, 2023

As I read Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” I imagined what it must have meant to a friend, who read it when he was dying.

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Reading Proust before Dying

By Robin Bates | Published: March 9, 2023

A dying friend decided to read, in his last months, Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” As I read it, I’m beginning to understand why.

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Hamlet: Shakespeare Grieving His Son?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 5, 2023

In which I explore why O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” opened up wellsprings of grief I didn’t realize were there.

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Finding a Relative in Gaskell’s Novels

By Robin Bates | Published: February 19, 2023

Imagining my great-grandmother as heroines in a Gaskell novel brings both her and the novels to life.

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A Stevenson Poem for My Mother

By Robin Bates | Published: August 20, 2022

My remarks and a Stevenson poem at an occasion remembering my mother.

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Don’t Mourn, Visit Paris Instead

By Robin Bates | Published: August 18, 2022

At my mother’s memorial service Saturday we will hear the same Prévert song we heard at my father’s.

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