Why 37 days?

In October of 2003, my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later.

During that 37 days, I helped my mother care for him at home, since he wanted to die there. Never having been around someone dying before, I didn’t know what to do. When my father died, I was just 19 and sitting in the intensive care waiting room. No one asked if I wanted to be with him; they just asked if I wanted to see him dead after it was all over. It was the beginning of a long realization of how intensively we avoid death, at least in this culture.