Thank you for visiting my fundraising page. I will be swimming across the lake this summer in memory of my dad, who passed away two years ago (almost to the day) of acute leukemia in hospice. I am grateful that hospice helped him transition peacefully, and at home, with me and my mom by his side. Here is a poem I wrote about those final hours and how they forever changed me.

Periodic

His final breaths 
served as a reminder  
that dying had been kept
from me all these years: Yes,
I wept, but more 
because of the ecstatic
unbraiding that accompanied
the irregular pattern
of rapid gasps and 
apnea -- to witness
this interstice as flesh
shut down was sad
but extraordinary, to exist
between halt and
resumption meant
I could never go back to being
the daughter who only hours earlier
had found the vibrant green
underneath the oxidized 
pesto unremarkable.