This is the second plague of my lifetime. My first doctor died of AIDS when I was two. My mom retells the story of what he said right after I was born. My doctor sat with my mom, checking in, describing me with pleasure. He said, “Your baby is healthy and lovely. And what stunning eyebrows! Maybe it’s Maybelline! Maybe she’s born with it! Zoe is a perfect beauty. You did so well, Adrianne! And she helped. That’s why this birth was so fast—Zoe was ready and she worked with us.” My mom was in a shared hospital room in the maternity ward at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. There was another woman recovering from labor on the other side of a privacy curtain and a few beats after my doctor left the room, the voice of that woman floated out to my mom. “Who WAS that??” She asked. And my mom said, “My doctor. He’s wonderful.” “That was your doctor?!” Incredulous. “I wish my doctor spoke to me like that!” My mom softly weeps. Now. Thirty-eight years later. For our doctor and his perfect beauty. The gravity of each loss is too much— too heavy to hold—my dears—so we sway, so we buckle, so we lean on one another and stumble. And, if we’re lucky, get back up for more.