The Nth Degree

Sometimes, enough is enough but it's hard to tell where the line is. And sometimes, there's no two ways about it. What starts with an episode of Story Corps ends with a needle in a biohazardous waste bin. This is Bloodline on The Nth Degree.

With music by Rosalyn Magnatta, from an EP available on her soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/rosalyn-magnatta

From a strip club to a gas station, this episode explores the weird and personal memories that come up in the grieving process. Eventually, grief has a way of fitting itself into a person's life like it was always there. This story, Lessons in Lip Reading, takes a humorous and surprisingly light-hearted look at memories that have come up for me over the years of digesting the loss of my mom.

When my mom died, I somehow had the foresight to export the text messages with her that were on my burner phone. This is the story of how that idea came about, and what happened after I got the 219-page PDF. Written and read by Natalie Patton with music composed for the episode by Phil Giraldi.

There's a curious cactus in a nondescript pot. And then there's the strange ritual of collecting a body. This continues this season of The Nth Degree exploring death and grief and all the confusing details therein.

With words by Natalie Patton and music bed by the band Scale Worms, this story is a meditation on time, memory and loss told across three parts. Here: part 3 of "The Slippery Nature of Time."

The conclusion to this story digs deeper into the pain of loss and the euphoria of life. While the story isn't tied up neatly with a bow, it does come to some kind of more full understanding.

With words by Natalie Patton and music by the band Scale Worms, this story is a meditation on time, memory and loss told across three parts. Here: part 2 of "The Slippery Nature of Time."

In part 2, the time period is leading up to and immediately following the birth of my first child. For most (all?) women, the postpartum period is a particular one. For me, it was accentuated by grief that burst out in ways I wasn't expecting and definitely wasn't prepared for. 

With words by Natalie Patton and music bed by the band Scale Worms, this story is a meditation on time, memory and loss told across three parts. Here: part 1 of "The Slippery Nature of Time."

In this part, I explore my desire to manipulate time as my mom was dying. I tried to slow it down, then speed it up. And in some ways I was successful in doing both of those things, because time is a spectrum of our own mindset.