My personal essay, “Of Sound Mind and Memory: On Wills and Language and Lawyers and Love,” appears in the fall 2021 issue of The Missouri Review. It’s a reflection on my years as an estate planning paralegal at a large Rhode Island law firm, where the people I worked with became family and the legal documents I wrote reawakened my love of language. For now the essay is in the print edition of TMR exclusively, which can be ordered by calling TMR’s offices at 573-882-4474 or contacting its associate managing editor, Dedra Earl, at EarlD@missouri.edu.

If you’re affiliated with an institution that subscribes to Project Muse, you can read the essay there. (If you’re not so affiliated, you can still go to the link and get a sneak peak.)

Here’s a photo from my law firm days of my friend Kate (right), who I write about in the essay, and me. This was taken in our motel room on Cape Cod in the days when we still tanned and I tucked in my shirts, both of which, I understand now, were bad ideas.