grief
November 10, 2009
- I had grown accustomed to the scene. Mealtime. Wheel chairs in place. Vacant stares. I dreaded going but couldn’t stand the thought of Mother eating all her meals there on her own. Barely. Eating I mean. Getting the fork to her mouth had become a great struggle. And forget the soup. It utterly baffled me why the dietician did not provide finger food instead of relying on utensils that had long ...
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November 4, 2009
- I suppose upon your birthday it's fairly common to reflect upon your life...however when the past year's events included such hellish experiences...it's not entirely pleasant to do so... So here I am, it's my birthday in three hours time and all I want is for it to just go the heck away. Not sure why it's bothering me so much to begin with... considering that at this point in my life, birthdays ...
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October 30, 2009
- October 30 LEAVES IN A PILE As a great pile of dry leaves, lay the problem. Running through it to show my disrespect accomplishes nothing but to scatter my dilemma and widen the area of distress. Covering and composting only allows the burden to indwell, leaching into that which feeds my soul. Burning puts it in the air I breathe. There is no galaxy far off enough to keep its ...
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October 28, 2009
- I don’t see death every day, but I hear it.From where I sit, in my home office overlooking a little Bosphorus bay, the day is punctuated by recess at a large school below. Sometimes through the din I think I hear a high-pitched pain cry echoing in the valley. An intermittent wail. Out on the balcony I listen, some primitive hackle raised. Rarely can I locate its exact source but it comes from ...
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October 27, 2009
- Patrick Swayze is dead and I am crying. I don't have time to cry now. I have to get to work, read papers, go to a curriculum meeting. But I am instead in my office at home destroying the makeup I just put on. I was nineteen when Dirty Dancing came out in August, 1987. My father and I went to see it in late August, just a few weeks before he died. As far as I know, it was the last movie he saw ...
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October 27, 2009
- Our house had not caught fire as I’d feared as a girl after watching the Walton’s house burn on TV, and then watching my father place his lit cigarette on the edge of the windowsill so he could kiss me good night. The house had not fallen to disrepair, as others on the street had, like the burnt yellow split level where my best friend had lived, or the one across the street, still the same ...
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October 12, 2009
- Farewell The welcome sun had just set when I lit small white candles floating in a crystal bowl alongside delicate pink camellias. The candle glow cast warm shadows on a table in my glass-roofed solarium, where I could gaze up at the stars. Covered by a white linen cloth once belonging to my grandmother, and set with heirloom silver engraved with birds and a plate inscribed, “You are ...
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October 5, 2009
- Yesterday I was looking over some quotes in my TellTale Souls material for an upcoming workshop when I came across a quote from Joyce Carol Oates from her novel, Missing Mom, which I find apropos to encouraging folks to write mother memoir."last timeLast time you see someone and you don't know it will be the last time. And all that you know now, if only you'd known then. But you didn't ...
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October 2, 2009
- I am about to confess one of my deepest regrets in life: I did not attend my Grandma Moor’s funeral. The most natural question is: “why not?” The answer is very simple: it was easier not to go.It was easier on me. Yes, I lived ten hours away in Iowa. I was teaching and taking summer classes. I would’ve had to miss several classes to make the drive, or else chug plenty of black coffee and ...
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September 25, 2009
- Some goodbyes are poignant. Some are with relief. Some can be with a hearty “good riddance” or “don’t let the door hit you on the way out”. Some are reluctant, others welcomed, yet others engender a curious combination of emotions that can hit you like a pineapple anchovy pizza. The goodbyes I think about the most are the ones never said; the times when circumstance or ...
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