I have recently completed a book manuscript, How I Lost My Mother, dealing, in part, with issues of care of my dying mother.  The book will appear in 2021.  For this presentation I propose to use the “Breath: Inspire/Expire” rubric to draw on material in the book and other sources to discuss my mother’s death from lung cancer, and that of my father-in-law from the same cause, and to link these personal experiences a year apart to discuss the politics of disavowal of older people in health care practices, and the politics of care.  I will also consider the trajectory of ideas about the body, breathing and lungs across different times, spaces and contexts.  I will consider the relationship between the intimate, the political and the environmental in thinking about and experiencing how bodies work and do not work.