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slash tiny desk contest. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Parents want to protect their

children, but how can you possibly protect your adolescent child from a terminal illness and inevitable death?

My guest, Sarah Wildman, realized the inevitability after her older

daughter, Orly, was enrolled in hospice. That was after three years of treatment for a rare form of

liver cancer that had metastasized. Orley was 14 when she died in 2023. She endured several rounds of

chemo, a liver transplant, two brain surgeries,

and a tumor that pinched her spine, leaving her unable to walk. Wildman is a staff writer and

editor for the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote several pieces during

Early's illness and after her death, reflecting on what it was like to be a parent of a child

facing mortality and the differences between how hospitals, hospice, and Judaism deal with illness

and death of a child compared to an adult. She described the expert medical care, Orly received,

and the reluctance of some doctors and nurses to speak

openly and realistically about what Orly was facing. She also wrote about the impact on her younger

daughter, Hannah, who was nine when Orly passed away. Several years before Orley's diagnosis,

Wildman wrote the book Paper Love about her grandfather who fled Austria after the Nazi invasion and his girlfriend, who he left behind. No one in the family knew what happened to her, but the book describes how Wildman spent years tracking down the story. She is no stranger to writing about death and the importance of memory, whether it's the memory of an individual child or genocide.

Let's start with a video that Wildman posted on Instagram when Orley was 12 in 6th grade,

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