In His Time of Dying

Abstract

This is a personal narrative about the limits of communication in the context of illness and death. When I was twenty years old and a junior in college, my stepfather Jon was diagnosed with distally metastatic lung cancer and died four months later. This is a fragmented account of the emotional work I did and avoided doing during his illness and death, and the consequences of those reactions. In a sense, this is a story about scriptlessness in dealing with terminal illness. My hope is that my experiences, in their inadequacy, will resonate with families facing similar situations.