Donald Hall

  Just after I turned nine, my great-aunt Jennie died of cancer.   At the funeral, her brother George felt a pain in his back   and four months later we buried him. Put to bed late, after   the funeral reunion with its straight-faced family jokes,   I lay awake, repeating a sentence over and over   in my head: It was as if I read it...

   At college in my junior year, I had a nervous breakdown,   or so I told Dr Coluccio in a long letter   I typed at my desk in Eliot House. Anxious, exhausted,    fretful, I explained that I needed to quit school, certainly    to get away from Harvard. I spoke in desperation: I    couldn’t sleep or study or...

        When we reached the getaway car after the reception, I         found my ushers gathered to decorate the green Oldsmobile         the usual way – with Just Married, pieplates, ribbons, and straw.         I...