Lights in Cold Rooms: A Psychologist's Reflections on Family, Aging, Love, and Loss

Preface
Depression & the Stories That Came with It

Patient Clinician

I. The Body, the Culprit
The Worst Day
Looming
Morphing
Twisted, Tilted
Homes
Tall Falls
Greedy
Lazy
Love Affair
Fractured
A Kindness
Fantasy

II. Heart Sick
The Heart Thing
The Falling
Pink Cheeks, Soft Silver Hair

8

On the First Night of Enforced Quarantine
Complicit
Unthinkable
Chained
Peace Be With You
All That Mattered
Regrets
Bereft

III. A House Divided Against Itself
Close Watch
Dark House
Selfish
Siblings
Another Look
Brothers Escape
Resentment Deepens, Guilt Festers
Peace, Finally
Still
No Room at the Inn

IV. Banquets & Cameos
Sustenance
The Crown
Reprieves
Integrity & Love in Abundance
Transfixed
Then the Poems Came

9

Finding Balance
Nesting
When Does the Gratitude Start?
Another Good Mother
Orchids in Tall Vases
It’s Still Not Safe to Return to Brooklyn

V. Keep Them Close
Privileged
Back to Square One
Silence
Another Fissure
X-Rays & Scans, Past & Present
Possessed
Preordained
When the Water Is There
Self-Parenting
A Birthday Picnic
As Long as There’s a Needle Holding On

Coda