Episode II:
After Mom died, the only person who seemed to know anything about her–her health and the likely causes of her death–was a man whom she had never met. He was the State Medical Examiner. How could someone who had never laid eyes on my Mom, who had never spoken with her, know more about her health than the doctors with whom she visited regularly? You’d think the State Medical Examiner would be some distant bureaucrat. Turned out to be just the opposite. He returned my phone call with the hour. He was kind and understanding. He spoke with me patiently and answered all of my questions. Later, I thought of more questions, and days later, still more. He rigorously returned my calls and never showed the slightest bit of boredom with my queries. He said that Mom was a ticking time bomb, just the sort of person who could fall over dead at any moment. And that’s exactly what happened. She fell like a tree. He carefully explained why.
Episode I:
My mom is dead. I still don’t know who killed her. There are various hypotheses. Did my mom kill herself? Did I kill her? Was she killed by her primary care physician, her cardiologist, her orthopedic surgeon? Other docs she saw? Was mom killed by her friends? My brother? Was it any one of the myriad pills organized neatly in their containers on a tray she kept on her kitchen table (that tray now sits in my linen closet: a sentinel, a reminder, a tale waiting to be told), or maybe the interaction among them?

My mom is dead. I have passed through the many stages of grief, charted and uncharted, and now I am looking for answers. Why? Knowing who killed my mom won’t bring her back. But whoever killed my mom may also be lying in wait, ready to kill yours. I don’t want your mom to die the way mine did–an unnecessary death. I am a scholar. Such are my skills. I intend to use them to try and prevent your mom’s death. Or your father’s. Or yours. Or that of any of your beloved ones. There is no real fix for health care in this country, or any other, that does not address the agents of my mom’s death.

In the coming days and weeks and months, I’ll be exploring these hypotheses and more in this space.