Who I am.

I write about the landscape of grief, nature, and the wisdom of fools. The author of four books, my essays, poems, and reviews have been published in over 50 journals, including in the Huffington Post and Colorado Review. I’ve won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award, the Chautauqua and Literal Latte’s essay prizes, and my work has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and named a notable by Best American Essays. My account of hiking in Yosemite to deal with my wife’s death, Mountains of Light, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. http://www.markliebenow.com.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Dying Young




July 15

We think it’s a tragedy when anyone dies before he or she is 80 because that’s what we've been taught by society, and this seems to be the expectation in the developed world where modern medicine has solved a host of problems that would have killed us a century ago.

My wife died suddenly in her 40s from a heart problem we didn’t know about. Her doctors had never cautioned us, and it felt wrong because I seldom heard about people dying that young. 


* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

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