I don’t write here every day. Sometimes I wish I could, but these last few days – well, I’ve been angry. Restless. And when the litany of complaints starts up in my head, there is a rational part of my brain that recoils in horror and says “Brianna, you are perilously close to whining!” Nobody Read more >>

Last week I flew to Kansas City to be with Josh. It was a spur of the moment thing, and I needed it badly. I originally planned to stay three days, but Mom was doing well so we extended it to five. And each day seemed at once infinite and far too short. I got Read more >>

The sun has been up for an hour; the paramedics left thirty minutes ago. Last night, I got home from my cousin’s 3rd birthday party around 7:30 to find Mom vomiting in the bathroom. She started a new drug to increase her white blood cell count, a shot in the belly once a day for Read more >>

Mom is having a bad day. She has just now risen from bed, though it is nearly noon, leaving me with three hours of periodic breathing-checks from her doorway since I got up at half-past eight. Her light is always on when she’s had a bad night, her book open on her chest. Last night Read more >>

(from my paper journal) I am sitting in the patient room with Mom while she receives Gemzar intravenously. She is in a recliner, leaned back on two pillows with a blue blanket draped across her knees, engrossed in a Nora Roberts novel. She is wearing a grey tracksuit and has others at home in a Read more >>

I have been in the States for two weeks now. More distinctly, I have been in Crestline for two weeks, for the first time since I was seventeen. Yesterday, Jenn and I were driving into town and I saw someone on the sidewalk that I vaguely recognized. I don’t know who he was, or if Read more >>

The term is ending in a couple of weeks. There is an exhibition to prepare for, a poetry reading, a couple of concerts. I have been quiet here, because I have had work to put between myself and the days that I try to accurately (and admittedly, artfully) record here for you. I have had Read more >>