11 responses

  1. Marcia Bilyk
    January 17, 2023

    As a former hospital chaplain, I’ve visited many patients in various ICU’s. This essay captures the externals of hospitalization, as well as imagined internals, but it strikes me as cold-hearted.

    Reply

    • Laura Julier
      January 18, 2023

      It always fascinates me how readers can enter a piece of prose so differently. What I hear in Patricia’s piece is detail that comes from a place of such deep, deep empathy.

      Reply

  2. Laura
    January 18, 2023

    Not just because I work in a hospital and with hospice patients. Not just because I see it every day, and Patricia’s words illuminate the experience like nothing else I’ve read. Above and beyond all that, this is one of the most beautiful pieces of prose I’ve read in years. As former editor of a journal of creative nonfiction, this is saying a lot. I am in awe of this essay.

    Reply

  3. Jinny Marting
    January 18, 2023

    Poetic. Lyrical. Brilliant!

    Reply

  4. Bonnie Friedman
    January 20, 2023

    I find this essay deeply compassionate and absolutely exquisitely written, carrying me into the feeling-states of the people taken from the ordinary world the rest get to continue to inhabit. I do think perhaps if one has been a hospital chaplain it would read differently but that doesn’t mean the chaplain’s perspective is the only empathetic one.

    Reply

  5. RobinEsson
    January 26, 2023

    Great article, Patricia. The descriptions and imagery in your writing are so vivid and evocative. My question is, what was your inspiration for this piece?

    Reply

  6. suresh gyan vihar university
    February 10, 2023

    Their voices, when they speak and I like this paragraph.

    Reply

  7. Charlotte Whitty
    February 10, 2023

    What a scene. Your narrative is lyrical–beautifully written, full of empathy and compassion. And truth.

    Reply

  8. Jen
    February 27, 2023

    My dad. His stroke. Three weeks we weren’t sure he was coming back or where he was. He was a specialist once. I guess no one really ever escapes. I wish they could. A striking essay for making it all realer than it even was.

    Reply

  9. Max Ethan
    March 4, 2023

    Great article, Patricia. The descriptions and imagery in your writing are so vivid and evocative

    Reply

  10. Lisa Estus
    March 4, 2023

    Exquisitely imagined and felt. This piece allowed me to inhabit an experience I haven’t had and deeply empathize. Thank you for the patient and precisely crafted writing, Patricia Foster.

    Reply

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