In Short – Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
The Heart Fills In
By Blair Glaser
The neurologists gathered around my father’s hospital bed, crowding him with questions. “Do you know what year it is? What day it is? Where are we?” My mother, sister and I held our breath. Three days after his stroke and resulting brain surgery, my 83-year-old Dad struggled to find words. The day before he’d answered correctly, but today he shook his bandaged head. My mother had had enough of watching him flounder. “Gene,” she said to him, “How many years have we been married?” “57” he said, without a beat. Sometimes when the brain fails, the heart fills in.
Blair Glaser (she/her) is a leadership consultant and writer whose essays have appeared in Longreads, Shondaland, Oldster, Quartz, HuffPost, Inside Higher Ed, and others, as well as in literary magazines such as Brevity, Scoop, Rain Taxi, and The Mantlepiece. She’s read stories live at events such as Writers Read, Generation Women, and The Woodstock Bookfest. She's completed a memoir about living in an ashram in her 20s, and lives with her husband and dog-ter, Vanna White, in Venice Beach, CA. More can be found at www.blairglaser.com.