The Company of Ghosts

<p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>After a family movie night the author's husband confided that he had been having a mild but persistent ping of abdominal pain. By Monday they learned he had inoperable pancreatic cancer and he had become a full-time patient.</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The Company of Ghosts</em><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> is a lyrical story about memories gathering and reassembling as a family is forced to navigate a sometimes puzzling and cruel healthcare system and is reconfigured by loss. It is also a meditation about how we carry with us our experiences with those who--for better and very much worse--cross our paths in a crisis. Compassionate strangers callous physicians and infuriating bureaucrats. New and lifelong friends. Forebears we have known only through artwork or cryptic asides. Empathic rescue beagles.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>It is also a love letter to a husband and children and friends weaving together the stories we steward about those we never completely lose. A last taste of lemon a fly ball or a penny flattened on railroad tracks can capture decades of friendship and improbable hope and become a portal to our pasts and our children's hoped-for futures.</span></p>