I sit with people who are dying. I'm one of those unusual types that enjoys being with someone when they're dying because I know I am going to be in the presence of Truth.
I lost a sister to pneumonia, when she was 2 years old. She died at home, not in a hospital, where maybe her life could have been saved.
I was raised an orphan... My mother died when I was 2 years old.
I hate Alzheimer's. It is one of the most awful things because, here is a loved one, this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly, that person is gone. They're gone. They are gone.
It's very hard when I've seen a couple of people very beloved in my life with terrible degenerative diseases.
My parents separated when I was two, and then my father passed away, so I never really knew that side of the family.
My sister was a twin, and the other baby died in childbirth, and I was three at the time, and I always kind of thought it haunted me. It was a weird thing. My dad was an ob-gyn, and so it was confusing that the other baby didn't come home from the hospital.
My dad lost his hearing in the last 18 months of his life, and as a result, I witnessed first-hand the effect that this can have on a family.
I guess the most seminal moment going early way back was my father died when I was 3 years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and my mother went back and got a degree.
Wait for them to die
When you're first pregnant, you don't want to talk about the idea that a miscarriage or premature birth is possible. The difficulties of things like that kind of get swept under the rug, and when they happen to us we are blindsided and think we are the only people going through it.
Cancer does give you a new rejuvenation. I know what it's like to be down. I lost a couple of good friends - Larry Hagman and Nick Ashford - who had the same type of cancer that I did, and that makes you think.
But having gone through two bouts of breast cancer and all the operations and treatments it's fair to say mum's a special human being - especially as she had to deal with the tragedy and heartache that went with Dad's death.
The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.
I was the only child born to Josephine Perry that survived. Mama had six other children before me, and all had passed very quickly and very young, all succumbing to a combination of illness and disease and the lack of strength to fight off both.
I didn't know there was a dying-professor section at the bookstore.
I grew up going to funerals and visiting people in nursing homes. I'm not as afraid of dealing with the dying as maybe some other people may be.
