{"id":19206,"date":"2013-12-03T23:41:32","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T23:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-the-things-youll-miss-my-mom\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T20:12:48","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T03:12:48","slug":"theatlantic-the-things-youll-miss-my-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-the-things-youll-miss-my-mom\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-19206 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-the-things-youll-miss-my-mom\/attachment\/19207\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mx8w17YjE71qcokc4o1_640-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/theatlantic.tumblr.com\/post\/68909086743\/the-things-youll-miss-my-mom-died-on-july-18\">theatlantic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2013\/12\/the-things-you-ll-miss\/281992\/\"><strong>The Things You\u2019ll Miss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>My mom died on July 18, 2013, of pancreatic cancer, a subtle blade that slips into the host so imperceptibly that by the time a presence is felt, it is almost always too late. Living about 16 months after her diagnosis, she was \u201clucky,\u201d at least by the new standards of the parallel universe of cancer world. We were all lucky and unlucky in this way. Having time to watch a loved one die\u00a0is a gift that takes more than it gives.<\/p>\n<p>Psychologists call this drawn out period \u201canticipatory grief.\u201d\u00a0Anticipating a loved one\u2019s death is considered normal and healthy, but realistically, the only way to prepare for a death is to imagine it. I could not stop imagining it. I spent a year and a half writing my mother a goodbye letter in my head, where, in the private theater of my thoughts, she died a hundred times. In buses and movie theaters, on Connecticut Avenue and 5th Avenue, on crosswalks and sidewalks, on the DC metro and New York subway, I lost her, again and again. To suffer a loved one\u2019s long death is not\u00a0to experience a single traumatic blow, but to suffer a thousand little deaths, tiny pinpricks, each a shot of grief you hope will inoculate\u00a0against the real thing.<\/p>\n<p>A boundless black terror is how I imagined life without my mom.\u00a0The history of grief, or what we know of it, is written by its greatest sufferers and ransacked with horror stories, lugubrious poetry, and downward-spiraling memoirs\u00a0plunged in sadness. For some people, the death of a loved one is truly life-stopping, and I worried it would stop mine.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2013\/12\/the-things-you-ll-miss\/281992\/\"><strong>Read more.<\/strong><\/a><em> [Image: Arkadiusz Benedykt\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/benedykt\/2438557012\/sizes\/o\/\">flickr<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>theatlantic: The Things You\u2019ll Miss My mom died on July 18, 2013, of pancreatic cancer, a subtle blade that slips into the host so imperceptibly that by the time a presence is felt, it is almost always too late. Living about 16 months after her diagnosis, she was \u201clucky,\u201d at least by the new standards [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4ZM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19208,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19206\/revisions\/19208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}