Summary:

The story opens with the death of the protagonist’s beloved mother, with whom she lives. Ines, a dictionary researcher, is soon jolted from her grief by the excruciating pain of a “twisted and gangrenous gut” (112). After a hospital stay and emergency surgery, she returns home to recuperate from the physical trauma and revisit her mourning. On the day when she can remove the wound dressings, Ines discovers a surprising change in her body: it seems to be turning to stone. Her incision has become a “raised shape, like a starfish, like the whirling arms of a nebula in the heavens” that gradually spreads to the rest of her body, forming "ruddy veins" across her belly and "greenish-white crystals sprouting in her armpits" (119).

Ines assumes that this process is fatal and that she will "observe [death's] approach in a new fantastic form" (121). Deciding to write a record for those who will find her after her demise, she studies the names and nature of minerals in order to understand and describe her metamorphosis. From her new, mineralizing perspective, she realizes that stones can be dynamic and living as well as fixed and dead; minerals are memorials to the relationships and reciprocities between living creatures and dead ones.

Unable to write the record of her transformation, Ines finds herself passionate to be outdoors. She explores the city, looking for "a place to stand in the weather before she became immobile" (127). In an old graveyard, she meets and gradually forms a bond with Thorsteinn, an old Icelandic stonecutter who may also be mourning the death (apparently of a child). The Ines shares the secret of her metamorphosis with the stonecutter and eventually travels with him to his homeland, a geologically young country, where stones are alive and myths tell of “striding stone women.” Thorsteinn sketches here in this landscape and creates a standing stone image of Ines that reflects his ability to see her as she is and find her beautiful: "Petra faction saw that she existed, in there" (150).

Ines's metamorphosis culminates in her inability to see or speak as a human and her ability to perceive a whole new realm of living creatures, "earth bubbles and earth monsters" (151) and other stone people who are "flinging their great arms wide in invitation" (156). She joins their wild dance.

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An aging plastic surgeon afflicted with diabetes examines his life and is forced to confront death and the failures of his past. Dr. Moses Galen is a 69 year old California physician with a penchant for sex, Jaguars, and boxing but a fear of making commitments and experiencing a slow death. He spends a weekend with his girlfriend Linda, a trauma surgeon in her forties. After they have sex, he experiences chest pain that he mistakenly attributes to heartburn. Dr. Galen had coronary artery bypass surgery only three years ago and figures it should last at least ten.

He wakes up early in the morning to work out on his punching bag. His chest pain returns and is now accompanied by ventricular fibrillation. He realizes he is having a myocardial infarction and will die. Despite the pain and his fear, Dr. Galen continues to throw punches. He only hopes he can remain quiet enough not to awaken Linda. If she realizes what is happening, she might try to save his life.

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Leprosy looms large in this story about transformation and loss set in post World War II Japan. A nineteen-year-old pearl diver notices a numb red spot on her forearm. Later on, another blemish appears on her lower back. These two lesions are manifestations of a mild case of leprosy. Her infection will be arrested by medication and never get any worse. The girl is forcibly transported to the Nagashima Leprosarium, an island where she will spend the rest of her life except for a few brief excursions and one extended "escape" at the age of sixty-four.

Despite the introduction of new and effective drugs--Promin (sulphone) and dapsone--authorities still fear allowing the leprous patients to return to society. Inhabitants of the sanatorium are admonished on arrival that their past is erased. Each individual must begin a new life and select a new name. The protagonist chooses the moniker Miss Fuji. She is a kind and sensitive young woman who eventually functions as a nurse and caregiver for the other patients incarcerated in the sanatorium. As a punishment, Miss Fuji is required to attend abortions and dispose of the dead fetuses.

As the decades pass, conditions on the island improve. The number of residents with leprosy still living there dwindles from about two thousand people to six hundred. Even a bridge connecting Nagashima to the mainland is constructed. It no longer matters. Emotional and psychological barriers remain. When Miss Fuji has an opportunity to create a new life for herself away from the sanatorium, she still returns to the place and the people that have been her home and family for so many years.

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John Ames narrates this story in the form of a lengthy letter to his young son. Ames is a 76-year-old minister suffering from angina pectoris and heart failure. He has spent almost all of his life in Gilead, a small town in Iowa. His first wife died during childbirth along with a baby girl. Ames remarried a younger woman who is now 41. They have a son almost 7 years old.

Because Ames believes his death is close at hand, he pens a missive to the boy. Its purpose is to teach his son about all the important things in life Ames may not be around to share with him. During the course of composing the letter, Ames reflects upon his own existence. He recalls the experiences of his father and grandfather who were also ministers.

Reverend Ames likes to think, read, and pray. Born in 1880, he has lived through three wars, the Great Depression, a pandemic of influenza, and droughts. His hope is that his young son will grow into a brave and useful man.

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Cortney Davis follows her 30 year career in nursing, from her experience as a student nurse washing a patient's feet, to dealing as a nurse practitioner with life and death issues in an inner city OB/GYN clinic. Her essays present epiphanies where she realizes what is important in a confusing and ambiguous situation, why she writes poetry even though she is exhausted from her daily work in the clinic, why she is a nurse when the job  sometimes seems overpowering and depressing.  The positive connections with patients--through kindness, caring, truth-telling, touch-outweigh the difficulties.  Tedious routines are often transformed by spiritual insights and empathy. And sometimes what seems like a miracle inserts itself in a time of grief. Whether she is talking to a man in a coma or treating a sexually-abused teenager, her focus is on the care of the patient.

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Spoiler alert: for educational purposes, this annotation reveals plot lines and may interfere with some viewers' enjoyment of the film. In the opening scene, Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas), looking ashen, drawn, and nervous, sits in an airport as her much younger and radiant sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) rushes to meet her.  Léa brings an eager, if somewhat forced cheer to their halting conversations during this meeting and in their car ride to the home Léa shares with her husband, their two small adopted Vietnamese daughters, and her mute father-in-law.  From this awkward beginning, the sisters try to cross the chasm of a fifteen-year separation.  The cause and nature of the separation gradually unfold in small, slowly paced scenes of ordinary life at home, at work, in a café, during dinners with friends.  These scenes form the visible surface under which secrets and plangent, unacknowledged emotions lie, sometimes erupting into view, sometimes gently suggested.
    
The cause of the separation is the prison term Juliette has served in England.  We eventually learn that the sentence has to do with the death of her child, with her being a physician, with her child's suffering from cancer, and with the application of her medical knowledge to end his pain.  Following the court sentence, Juliette's parents refuse to acknowledge her, her husband divorces her, her sister buries memories of their childhood and chooses not to give birth, family and friends never visit her in prison.  We also learn that Juliette remained inexplicably silent throughout her trial.  She continues to say very little as she settles in with Lea's family and circle of friends, who are baffled by her sudden appearance in Lea's life.  But as Juliette's participation in her sister's circle increases in fitful starts, she becomes cautiously more communicative and brighter.

During a confrontation with Léa at the end of the film, Juliette reveals that, more than avoiding a shameful appraisal from others, she remains silent because there are no words to express her pain.  Being in prison made literal the isolating psychological state she inhabited.  "The worst prison is the death of one's child," she says.  "You never get out of it."  With these words, the film places the wound and the pain at the core of its main character in the inescapable vulnerability of motherhood.    

    

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Bessie, who has been caring for her invalid aunt and her father who is helpless after suffering a stroke, discovers she has leukemia. While this does not seem like a subject for comedy, this warm-hearted play really has some funny moments. Laughter is good medicine in this caregiving household. Bessie’s sister, Lee, who has been out-of-touch for years, arrives with her two sons in the hopes that one of them might be a bone-marrow match for Bessie. For Lee the idea of devoting her life to caring for helpless aging relatives would be wasting it.

One reason Lee doesn’t want to take over the caregiving for her father is that she has plenty of trouble trying to be a mother to her two sons, particularly Hank who has been committed to a mental hospital because he burned down the family home. She tells the hospital psychiatrist "Hank is something I cannot control, so what is the point of my visiting?" While Bessie will not find a cure for her leukemia, an important start on healing does occur in the play as Bessie helps both Hank and Lee to care for each other.

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This is a collection of stories from Dr. Remen’s own life and from her practice as a pediatrician and psychiatrist. She works with many cancer patients and others who are terminally ill as well as with the chronically ill. Her stories record patients and their families finding what is authentic and meaningful in their lives when they have been forced deeply into their own vulnerability. She also speaks from her lifelong struggle with Crohn’s disease.

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This short documentary film was made by Angelo Volandes while he was a fourth year medical student at Yale, as part of his senior thesis. It describes the life of Ray, a 70 year old dermatology patient who has suffered from neurofibromatosis since he was a teenager. Severely disfigured by this condition, Ray has led a life of social ostracism, loneliness, physical discomfort, and stoic depression.

Angelo introduces the film, frankly describing his own "visceral reaction" when he first encountered Ray in clinic. Ray and his long-time physician, Dr. Braverman, alternately discuss how Ray’s condition has affected every aspect of his life. Although Ray has endured more than 30 operations to remove the tumors that become infected, itch, and plague him, it is social ostracism that has most powerfully altered his life.

The camera follows Ray as he shops in the supermarket while doctor and patient describe what an ordeal this can be. Worse than suffering the stares of fellow shoppers is being treated like a contagious carrier of the plague by the checkout clerk, who refused to handle Ray’s money. Ray tells how incidents like these have landed him in the Emergency Room numerous times, out of sheer emotional upset.

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Endpoint is an extraordinary sequence of seventeen poems John Updike wrote near the end of his life.  Beginning on his birthday in March,  2002, he wrote a poem every birthday for the next 6 years.  Then after his 2008 birthday he wrote several more poems, mostly focusing on his dying from lung cancer.  The last poem, "Fine Point," was dated 12/22/08.  He died in January, 2009.  The poems also include memories of his mother writing and cranking out manuscripts, but never getting published; of childhood friends who became models for characters in his novels; of getting lost in a department store as a three-year-old; of Jack Benny and FDR, Mickey Mouse and Barney Google, as well as five wars. The memories are both personal and international in scope.  His attitude toward them varies from distress to appreciation and gratitude.

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