Month: April 2016

Do You Want Her Dressed?

Or rather: “What would you like your mother to wear?” It doesn’t matter if we’re “just gonna burn her up.” She needs to wear something. She can wear a sheet, she can wear a hospital gown, but she cannot wear nothing. My purpose isn’t necessarily to see that all my cases are fully dressed; it’s…


About Alcohol

I had my first drink when I was twenty-eight years old, despite becoming an IV drug user at age 17. It was simple. During a year when heroin was killing one person a week where I lived, the deaths all had one thing in common: alcohol. My addict logic told me that if I just didn’t…


The Day the Sheep Died

As a child I felt fortunate to grow up in the kind of neighborhood I did. We lived in a major city, but in a large valley where properties were commonly one acre or more. We had a huge house with a half-acre, fruit and cedar trees, and a bridged creek running through the front…