MADISON — SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital-Madison, in partnership with Home Health United, is hosting a free, community screening of the documentary Being Mortal on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Sr. Mary Jean Ryan Conference Center.
After the screening, audience members can participate in a guided conversation on how to identify and communicate wishes about end-of-life goals and preferences.
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| Morgan Smith |
On a recent trip to Florida, I went kayaking in a nature preserve. I started in the Gulf of Mexico and followed the shoreline into a creek that wove and curved through a forest of banyan trees.
Banyan trees are so mysterious. Their roots rise up out of the ground and intertwine to make the trunk and roots shoot out of the branches and reach toward the ground — actually, I cannot tell exactly where the roots are originating from as they flow together in a beautiful and tangled mess.
As soon as I heard my wife burst out the bathroom door that sunny spring day, I knew she was pregnant. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes but I didn’t need to. Her footsteps told me everything.
My wife didn’t have any particular reason to believe she was pregnant. But after a couple years of praying for a second child, I’d grown accustomed to Laura taking random pregnancy tests — hoping against hope that somehow that second pink line would appear. This time it did.
The days ahead were as joyful as any we’d experienced in our life together. We beamed when friends who knew of our struggle with secondary infertility congratulated us and we devoured all the fetal development materials we could find, eager to mark every last milestone in our baby’s nascent life.
