As part of our ongoing celebration of the magazine’s fiftieth year in print, this month’s Dog-Eared Page is an essay previously published in The Sun.
— Ed.
I didn’t read “The Love of My Life,” Cheryl Strayed’s essay about grieving her mother’s death, when The Sun first published it in 2002. I was a sophomore in college — about the same age Strayed was when her mother died — and navigating my own tragedy. My dad had gone to rehab for an alcohol addiction and developed such severe withdrawal symptoms that he required life support. At eighteen years old I became his court-appointed medical guardian. While my friends went to parties, I made important medical decisions and visited my dad in his long-term-care facility. Overwhelmed by stress, I repressed my feelings. When I started getting debilitating headaches, I spoke with doctors, but I didn’t know how to seek comfort for my grief.
