New Post, Old Topic!

Greetings, readers!

Thank you for your patience while I got through my exams. I’m excited to have them behind me and to finally be able to revisit my own work once again.

As I revisit the letters that are the focus of this blog, I am struck by some of the ways my family narrative has shifted over the past year. I began this blog in part to understand my grandmother, whom I never met. This notion implies that she died prematurely. Last year, I shared that the family believed Sylvia died from an infection like strep throat – likely caused by an infection at the dentist – that moved to her heart at a time before antibiotics were available and effective enough to stop it. Infections like this are usually treatable in the United States today. It is now one year ago this week that I had open heart surgery for a congenital condition that we now believe may be the same condition that Sylvia had. After a few years of writing this blog there was suddenly a new way that I am tied to her. But this new link is also what kept me from ever meeting her and what prohibited my father and aunt from knowing her longer.

I want to re-start this blog with a reposting of the entry I wrote just after my surgery. It includes postcards sent from Sylvia in the hospital not long before she passed away: See it here.

Please stay tuned for more regular postings again.