OncoLink - Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania

During the '90s, I lost a number of family members to cancer, most recently, my mother. I did not know how to mourn these losses that affected a signiFIcant part of my world. I found these pictures began FLowing from me like tears soon after my mother died. I realized this was how I was able to come to terms with what happened, and to cope with a grief I had not experienced before.

In the absence of members of my family due to death or departure, I've been compelled to take on their former roles in I Am My Mother, I Am My Father, I Am My Child. My mother died of cancer; my father departed after her death.

In this closelyknit Family of Angels, the matriarch (my grandmother) died of old age and her three daughters (my mother and two aunts) died of cancer, all within three years of one another.