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REVERBERATION
The echo of lovemay have a longer decaythan the moment giving it birth.Ever fainter by desire or spiteit remains limpet-like graspingas if the inexorable fadingcan be stilled by arising memories.Once the bonds are brokenit can remain an artifact, a momentvalued in itself evenwhen the source is no longerpresent or wanted, for itremains woven deeply intothe…
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YOU
This year, just before Thanksgiving we will have been together for a quarter of a century, which sounds more elegant than saying twenty-five years. That will be more than a third of my life, if only barely, but when I stop to think that I have spent almost a third of my life sleeping, the third I have spent…
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SEPARATING
We sometimes speak of continentspulling apart, land bridges severed,the route taken to get here now gone,no going back, no back to go to.The continent of my youth, myyoung adulthood is gone, recededinto the fog of fading memory, and Iam now a prisoner of sorts on thisnew continent of life, moving evermore quickly to an unavoidable…
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SO WE ARE
She says “We’re going to be movingback up north,” and you can seefrom the scowl on his face that thisis not an idea he likes at all, buta battle he knows better than to fight.He has been through so manymedical crises and he shows signsof the toll they have taken on him,but you cannot see…
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ACROSS A BORDER
I can only begin to imagine, vicariously,what it is like to cross the borderinto the land of deafness, hear all you knewfade and garble, need vision to seewhat a speaker is saying, wonder whysongs you thought you knew nowhave lyrics you do not recognize at all.My wife is on this journey and nowhas a cochlear…
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GROUND HOLD
She sits in the middle seat of an oversold DC-9, Carhartt jacket and watch cap pulled tightly over her hair, a blond wisp slipping out the side. She cradles on her lap a tawny brown Stetson with a tooled leather and silver hat band. “It’s never goin’ in an overhead, my fiancee’d go up there…
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ENDING HERE
I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…
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FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
When a marriage comes apartas so many do, it seems,there is always someonewatching from the sidelineswho, while not being asked,offers up an “I knew thiswould happen from the start.”The “I told you so’s” pointingto a moment in the heartof the now doomed marriageare irritating enough, butthe “I knew it’s” are unforgivable.And when it happens so…
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ADVICE COLUMN
As I have aged, I have learnedthat when I need advice and my wifeis not available or chooses not tocomment, I can turn to friendsand relatives who have diedfor their advice is usually quiteon point and needs no interpretation.I have not known them to misleador to suggest what I cannot imaginepossible, for they say and…