After writing the final chapter of Julie’s Story, I belatedly realized that I had described the end of Julie’s life as though she and I went through that tragedy alone. This is embarrassingly inaccurate. WhenContinue reading

Writing about Julie’s death is difficult, of course, because focusing on losing her is painful. It is also difficult, however, because her final days contain little drama to exploit, no epiphanies to reveal, and noContinue reading

Introduction This is the last of Julie’s  significant hospitalizations for which I have sufficient contemporaneous email to allow readers to make sense of the events.1 Because Julie handled much of the communications herself via individualContinue reading

Introduction This entry is not in chronological order.  In the original publication of Julie’s Story, this disruption of the time sequence was, in part, an artifact of when I happened to stumble across this setContinue reading

Today’s post is the report on Julie’s health status I originally emailed to friends and family November 21, 1999, less than two weeks before she died. Those who have read the earlier health reports I’veContinue reading

Introduction Except for the time period covered, this post is similar to The Hospital Epistles: May 1998, and I will preface it with the same explanation and apologies: This is a collection of emails IContinue reading

Introduction One predictable result of shifting the format of Julie’s Story from a serialized narrative to sporadically published anecdotes is the loss of chronological order. My recall of events in our lives together, especially afterContinue reading

The title of today’s installment of Julie’s Story comes from Julie’s rueful observation made a couple of weeks after our wedding while she was recovering from her mastectomy at Michael Reese Medical Center.1 After startingContinue reading