Reasons why a mother might read “Jabberwocky” to a dying child.
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Tag Archives: death and dying
Reading “Jabberwocky” to a Dying Child
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Jabberwocky", "Moses", death of a child, Lewis Carroll, Luis Alberto de Cuenca | Comments closed
Crucial Support in the Face of Death
In “Women of Brewster Place” a character charges into a scene of despair and refuses to let death triumph.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anna Karenina, Gloria Naylor, Leo Tolstoy, Women of Brewster Place | Comments closed
Tolstoy’s Kitty and a Dying Patient
My favorite episode in “Anna Karenina” is Kitty showing Levin she can handle a dying patient better than he can.
A Bombed Cathedral, My Lost Child
A bombed cathedral and a George Herbert hymn come to mind as I think of my eldest son, who died 23 years ago today.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Antiphon 1", Coventry Cathedral, death of a child, George Herbert, Psalm 23 | Comments closed
On Proust and Living Life to the Fullest
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Archaic Torso of Apollo", "Lying in a Hammock", In Search of Lost Time, James Wright, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Swann in Love | Comments closed
Reading Proust before Dying
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | Comments closed
Hamlet: Shakespeare Grieving His Son?
In which I explore why O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” opened up wellsprings of grief I didn’t realize were there.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anne Hathaway, grieving, Hamlet, Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell, William Shakespeare | Comments closed
Finding a Relative in Gaskell’s Novels
Imagining my great-grandmother as heroines in a Gaskell novel brings both her and the novels to life.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Victorian families, Wives and Daughters | Comments closed
A Stevenson Poem for My Mother
My remarks and a Stevenson poem at an occasion remembering my mother.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Where Go the Boats", Robert Louis Stevenson | Comments closed