Julianna Paradisi, who blogs at JParadisi RN and elsewhere, works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology. Her art has appeared several times in AJN, and her essay, “The Wisdom of Nursery Rhymes,” was published in the February 2011 issue.

I grew up in a family in which occasional conversations about death occurred at the dinner table. My father openly discussed his own. As a child, this terrified me, but he would say, “It’s a terrible subject, but everyone dies someday.”

by Julianna Paradisi

I don’t remember how old I was when my father made me promise he’d be cremated and his ashes spread over the ocean upon his death. It feels like I always knew, and this knowledge comforted me when, a few years ago, my siblings and I spread his ashes from a boat over the Pacific Ocean where he used to fish.

Paradoxically, in other contexts my father struggled when it came to telling me about death. Starting when I was around three years old, in the springtime, he would sometimes bring home baby birds that fallen from their nests. He kept an old birdcage for this purpose. He let me name the birds, and I called each of them Jimmy. He taught me to mix small pieces of bread with watered-down milk, and then feed it bit by bit into their disproportionately large mouths with an eyedropper.

This ritual usually lasted two days. On the third morning, […]