Pain

My wife was leafing through the June 2023 issue of The Sun when she said, “You have a piece in here” [Readers Write on “Pain”]. I looked at her in bewilderment. Sometimes I come across something on the Internet that I wrote many years ago and have no memory of. But in this case I did remember writing the piece, in 1978. The Sun was just starting its Readers Write section (originally called Us) and needed copy to get it started. I was already writing a monthly book review for the magazine, but I put together a contribution for the new feature.

It’s funny to read my twenty-nine-year-old self saying he had written about all the painful incidents in his life. I’m still writing forty-five years later, and there has been plenty more pain to go around.

I also remember the other piece you reprinted, by a woman so overcome with grief and shame that she ate her own feces. And I remember thinking, back in 1978, that it was the best piece of the section. At the time I was working on being honest in my own writing, and I saw her words as an example of true, painful honesty. That phrase, “painful honesty,” is how I would describe the best writing in The Sun.

I learned something from reading and writing for The Sun that I don’t think I could have learned anywhere else. The author of that Name Withheld piece taught it to me.

David Guy Asheville, North Carolina

The Readers Write on “Pain” by Micael Speirs [June 2023] — describing how she felt after terminating a pregnancy because of a nonsurvivable fetal condition — resonated with me. I found her statement “I failed as a mother because I killed my baby” especially impactful. I recently experienced a similar situation: My wife of many years was dying of metastatic cancer. She accepted death and chose medical aid in dying so she could pass peacefully at home. I honored her decision and supported her as she ingested a lethal dose of medication, but I was unprepared for the guilt I experienced. As I watched her life slip away, I felt like I had killed my wife, even though I knew it was the cancer’s fault.

It has been more than a year, and through therapy I have gotten better, but the memories still trouble me. Medical aid in dying is legal in eleven jurisdictions (ten states and Washington, D.C.), and it helps many terminally ill people choose how, when, and where they will die. It is also an evolving medical service, and it could be more compassionate for surviving family members. More information and counseling are needed for loved ones, to provide support before and immediately after the procedure and during the many months of grieving that follow.

I admire Speirs’s courage for sharing her experience and signing her name. I haven’t the courage yet to sign mine.

Name Withheld

When I read the Readers Write reprint by a woman who bathed in and ate her own excrement, my first reaction was revulsion and anger toward The Sun’s editors for sinking to shock tactics [Name Withheld, June 2023, first printed in January 1978]. Then I remembered that the topic of the section was “Pain,” and I reread the submission. With tears running down my cheeks, my disgust melted and I was filled with empathy for a woman who bravely showed true pain. I’ll never forget this story.

C.B. Manhattan, Kansas

I was saddened to read about how guilty M.H. of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, feels for passing on a genetic disease to her children [Readers Write on “Pain,” June 2023]. It was not her fault. I hope that she can let go of the unnecessary guilt that plagues her and probably her children, too. We’ve all done things we regret, but punishing ourselves for situations outside of our control will only create more pain. I wish her and her family peace and relief.

Beeara Edmonds Corvallis, Oregon