A Cancer Poem written by Elizabeth Blue during her treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, 2012 As I pray to the goddesses of white blood cells to increase my cell counts so I won’t get sick. Won’t get a fever and go to the hospital. It becomes more apparent to me than ever: that gentle hand of […]
Read more“Making You a Latte” – Poem by Elizabeth Blue
Making You A Latte – by Elizabeth Blue 6.3.12 5-Close Corral Shift (at Time Market/Cafe in Tucson, AZ) {One of Elizabeth’s last poems, written when she’d finished chemo, was in remission, and was just beginning to tell people that she’d had cancer. She had wanted to get through treatment and live as normal a life […]
Read moreElizabeth’s 24th Birthday
Dear Elizabeth, it’s your 24th birthday, and you’re not here, and you’re very much here. I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to spend the day, but I knew I wanted to do some ritual to honor you, and also something to nurture myself, some way of tending to my body – my “flesh and […]
Read moreBeginning to Leave the Hospital by Elizabeth Blue
(One of Elizabeth’s essays when she was almost done with her first (and we thought only) round of chemo, followed by her musings on titles and structure for the book she planned to write about this experience. God I love her mind and and am so grateful to have these writings…) Beginning to Leave the […]
Read moreKeep Living
A Reason to Keep Living This is a piece Elizabeth Blue wrote, from the period when she was going through chemo for the first time. She was being treated for non-hodgkins lymphoma which was diagnosed 2 months earlier. The doctors had told us she had an 85-90% chance of full recovery at this point. 1.20.12 […]
Read moreHospice – last week of August, 2012
Slipping Closer to the Edge… These writings are from about a month before my daughter Elizabeth Blue died. She was at home and needing 24 hour care, having had a stroke following unsuccessful surgery and chemo to remove the cancer that had spread to her brain. She was in a peaceful state of grace that […]
Read moreMotherhood – by Elizabeth Blue
A short and heart-wrenching piece written by my daughter Elizabeth Blue, while she was in the middle of her first round of chemo treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which ended her life on September 23, 2012. This was written 4 days after her 22nd birthday. Motherhood Monday January 16, 2012 7:57 PM I just burst into tears. I […]
Read moreA Long Journey from the ICU to Hospice – Emails from July, 2012
These entries from my emails and journals from July, 2012, one year ago, tell the story of the hardest period in my daughter’s time of living with cancer. Elizabeth Blue was in the ICU after a recurrence of lymphoma in her brain. Since June 12, 2012, she had had two rounds of chemo which did […]
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Luminous Blue 