Barbara's Death - 1976

Memories and Reflections

In the late summer of 1975, Barbara Long highschool teacher, mother of four children, political activist, and the wife of psychologist Lewis Long, showed the first signs of an illness (cancer of the brain) that would lead to her death seven months later in the early spring of 1976. Barbaras Death-1976 is the story of Lewis Longs painful journey through those seven months and the weeks immediately thereafter. The authors descriptions of the events of that journey, and his responses, sometimes irrational, to the many things he faced are etched with a clarity, insight, and awareness born from years of experience as a husband, a father, a teacher, and a psychologist. Clearly Dr. Long was supported greatly by his own convictions and strengths, but he was buttressed even more strongly by the loving support and care he received from relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and members of his church. After the death of Barbara (and after the eerily similar death of his second wife, Alice, also from brain cancer), Dr. Long found himself far more aware of the sufferings of his fellow human beings, and much more willing to respond to and help those in need.