Life Expectancy (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781946970978)

Past-present-future. Beginning-middle-end. Mama-daughter-son. Life goes the way it goes, and usually in unexpected directions. Rian looks far back to her Scandinavian roots to explore what remains, cultural and genetic ties as tethers to something bigger than the literal visceral skewing of life expectancy statistics relative to her own health and her family. Rian's son was born with medical issues, cuing a decade and a half journey of doctors, tests, fights with insurance, surgeries, and scans. When her children were 10 and 12 their father suddenly and inexplicably passed away at age 44. While driving home from the beach after scattering his ashes, and thinking about when they had married on that very beach years before, she absent-mindedly felt the side of her head and noticed a lump that turned out to be a tumor. Past-present-future. Beginning-middle-end. What remains.