When her husband, Ray, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in late 2011, award-winning local author and columnist Amy Hirshberg Lederman says that they decided as a family to live with “no regrets.” It was three years, seven months, and six days later that Ray passed away as a result of his illness in June 2015, but Lederman says that having the “luxury of time to be together” gave the family a chance to “make meaning from a very difficult inevitability.” And though it didn’t necessarily make the grieving process any easier, she believes that the effort they made collectively to “leave fewer things left unsaid” made the grief less complex for herself and her family — a notion she will discuss at a dinner presented by the Tucson Maimonides Society at Hacienda del Sol at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 31.
The event, titled “And in Health: Couples Facing Cancer” after the National Book Award-winner of the same name by Dan Shapiro, also will feature a talk by Shapiro; both Shapiro and his wife are cancer survivors. Shapiro is the keynote speaker for the seventh annual Cindy Wool Memorial Seminar on Humanism in Medicine on March 30.
Tickets to the March 31 dinner are $50, $25 for medical interns and residents, and free to medical students. RSVP by March 22 to Karen Graham at 577-9393, ext. 118 or kgraham@jfsa.org, or register online at jfsa.org.
