Searching for a lost list, I unexpectedly landed in a completely different world. I found my writings after Mother died of cancer in 2010. Their raw emotion, untidied by literary rules, transported me to bloody battles with me as the enemy on both sides. Mothers’ Day falls this coming weekend. That journal resurfacing now seems …
Tomorrow Lent begins. Drum roll……………….Will you participate this year? Lent is like Advent. In Advent, we try to wrap our minds around God entering our world as a vulnerable baby. Wow. In Lent, we mull over this God/Man, Jesus, remaining vulnerable to death so we can enter new life. Lent seems to have a pall …
Trees, barren of leaves and color, appear dead in winter. Winter that period of waiting, waiting, waiting, with our feet on the edge of despair, willing for life to return when there’s no sign of it. Does life still run underground, bubbling in secret? Weeds have crept over the garden so slowly that I hadn’t …
The nurse practitioner began pulling away, then rebounded, holding the stethoscope firmly to my chest. “Just a sec, I want to listen a little longer,” she said. “Okay.” I wait, conscious of her concentration, until she steps back to address me. “You know your heart just stopped.” “I’ve suspected that.” She continued, “It happens to my …
I have an uninvited companion. His name is Death. He barged in and dragged off my mother, my father, my in-laws, and pets in short order then came back with his luggage to stay. At first, I fought him like mad by flailing at others. “This feels so WRONG.” I accused God. “Are you really …
Last Man Off is the true tale of a fishing vessel sunk in the Southern Ocean near the Antarctic. Thirty-eight crew members hauled in thousands of lines of dangling tooth fish, while the winter wind built to hurricane force, and the waves towered over the boat. Icy water flooded the deck below the main deck. …