Why It Matters

Jim was the kind of person who was always dealing with an ailment of some sort. If it wasn’t his knees or his back it was allergies or sinus infections. His gastrointestinal system never gave him a moment’s rest: hiatal hernia, h. pylori, diverticulitis, regular old heartburn. And then there were the injuries–the time he…

I’ve spent five hours writing about the last four years of my father’s life, and not a word of what I’ve written is usable. Some of those paragraphs (all of which are hovering just above this sentence at the moment–never delete before you’re sure, kids) are okay, but most feel stiff, mannered, fussy. There’s an…

  Carl Sandburg was a dirty liar. It’s not fog but rather death that comes on little cat feet. At least for most of us that inevitable end creeps toward us so slowly that we rarely notice, or at least we can choose not to notice. So it was with Bonnie, whose motor functions continued…