Tag: grief (Page 1 of 2)

Going up Gorham

12 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Rankin

Nature is an expression of intelligence and necessity.
PLATO

Here where mountain marries earth to the sea, I open like a prayer.
The climb begins with a sigh as I scour the trail for the wag of his tail.
Clouds form stepping stones into the horizon, and I wonder how
to find a way to tomorrow. Or if I even want to hear the silence that follows.
The spirit of the dog walks beside me;
his step keeps pace with my grief.

One year since. A cool morning then, just like today. A whisper
of early autumn air being polite, nothing more. One of those days you’re blind
to the darkness that’s coming. Gulls and ravens trade places
in the sky, but I’m resigned to the gray that lives between.
I’m in the kind of place where you can’t get there from here.
The way you sometimes need rain to move air.

A bird out of sight offers up its lone song, but all I can hear
is, Still gone, still gone. Far below, ocean keeps sending itself onto shore,
tending the earth’s wounds with waves. Above, the sun rises
over the trees, turning up the volume of the sky.
As the trail stretches skyward, I’m searching what’s near, seeking
what’s revealed in the rooms of the climb.

Autumn huckleberry bleeds into the surrounding hills,
but I’m tuned to the pitch of the path, the blazing red leaves
saying more than I can bear. My eye catches a common tern
sweeping the sea, and I hand myself from rock to rock,
finding solace in the scratch of shoe against granite. I struggle
to unlace the root-studded trail, only to find myself entwined instead.

On this mountain that hands land to sea, the breeze reminds me
of something worth knowing, and I breathe deep,
lungs grateful for all that salt air can relieve.
Ahead, a stand of scrub pine raises questions I can’t answer.
As views of Sand Beach keep turning my head, I’m wondering
what word the sea might offer for grace.

But further along the trail I spot a cairn
stacked in place by some fellow wanderer
who needed to assure me with something only stones can say:
You will find your way, even as the earth turns below your feet.
The spirit of the dog walks beside me;
his step keeps pace with my grief.

Anne Rankin‘s poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, The Poeming Pigeon, Hole in the Head Review, Passager, Scapegoat Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle (forthcoming), and elsewhere. Her poem “Small Primer on Loneliness” received Honorable Mention at the Belfast Poetry Festival 2021.

Keeping Diana Alive

1 July 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Jennifer Pinto

The plant I carried was so bulky and cumbersome that when I hugged it against my chest and carried it to my car, I could barely see where I was going. I had to peek through the small spaces between glossy, dark green, oval shaped leaves that seemed to emerge directly from the soil. The brown stucco pot was heavy and I struggled not to drop it while slipping and sliding across the icy funeral home parking lot. I was desperate for a reminder of my dad, something that might bring me peace after his sisyphean battle with liver cancer and my increasingly contentious relationship with my step mother.

At my dad’s funeral, this solitary plant was displayed atop a pedestal next to his casket. A peace lily in all her glory, standing sentry. There were also a few flower arrangements, but most people, at the request of my step mother, slipped cash in the donation box next to the entrance to help pay for the funeral costs instead. At the end of the service when everyone was lining up to head over to the cemetery, I snuck back into the funeral home and stole that plant. I knew it was the only possession I would ever have of my dad’s and, in my twisted logic, that plant belonged to him.

Back home, I looked for the perfect spot for the plant. I googled Peace Lilies and found that they adore bright sunlight. In fact the article said, “the more light your plant gets, the happier it will be, the faster it will grow and the more it will bloom.” It was obvious that sunlight was the key to keeping this plant alive. In the years leading up to my dad’s death, between calls with the oncologist and trips to the Cleveland Clinic, I hadn’t felt like enjoying the sun. My blinds remained shut most days. But for the sake of the plant, I let the light in. I placed the pot directly in front of the patio door and named her Diana.

If my dad were a plant he would have been a succulent, the kind you could leave in the corner windowsill for weeks at a time without a thought or a drop of water. He wouldn’t have minded. That’s how he was, easy to please and uncomplicated. Despite being neglected, he would continue to grow, his roots digging deep for water and his stem quietly reaching for the sun. He was kind to a fault and expected as little from others as possible, a people pleaser who stayed out of the limelight. I was the one who insisted that dad get the liver transplant, encouraged him to get radiation and then chemotherapy. I fought with my step mother over hospice placement, stubbornly refusing to give up.

It only took me a few days to realize Diana was dramatic if nothing else. She demanded water by collapsing in on herself. Her broad emerald leaves wilting down and falling over like a diva fake- fainting on a velvet settee. After her thirst had been slaked she popped back up, white spaths held high as if nothing had happened at all. Only to repeat her theatrical performance a few days later. Unlike my dad, she wasn’t afraid to demand what she needed. She wasn’t polite or demure; she had no qualms about turning her leaves brown to show her disapproval.

Following my dad’s death, I was paralyzed by grief. But as the weeks went by, I found myself distracted by Diana. I watched her carefully, moved her from window to window to get the correct amount of sunlight, stuck my finger deep into her soil to make sure it was moist and wiped the dust off her leaves with a damp cloth. I talked to her and laughed at her melodramatic ways. She may not have brought me peace in the way I had imagined but at least I know what it takes to keep her alive.

Jennifer Pinto writes creative nonfiction. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and a Goldendoodle pup named Josie. She enjoys making pottery, cooking Indian food and drinking coffee at all hours of the day. Her work has been published in Sundog Lit, Halfway Down the Stairs and The Bookends Review.

The Birdhouse

1 June 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Andersen

for the sparrows

In retirement,
my partner built a birdhouse from cedar
to withstand the New England winters.
Twelve inches high,
four by four at the base,
hinged roof for cleaning.
The entrance hole measured 1¼ inches
seven inches above the floor—
no perch for crows or magpies
to devour eggs or hatchlings.

He hung the birdhouse on a giant oak
facing east from prevailing winds
to be bathed in sun on brisk mornings,
shaded in the afternoons.
The wood was left unpainted to blend
into the October landscape.
He had thought of everything
in the way a man researches,
makes detailed lists, follows specifications.

The wait for a pair of sparrows began.

Today I lift the roof
and clean out an abandoned nest
for new mates to move in.
My partner has been dead
more than a year now.
He never saw the first sparrows
or watched their young fly free—
the one thing he didn’t plan for.
The one thing we never saw coming.

I close the top
and search the empty sky.
New sparrows will arrive in due time,
become part of my love story.

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who now has the time to hike in the Connecticut woods with her three dogs, pen and pad in pocket. Publications include Comstock, Awakenings, Evening Street and Gyroscope Reviews, Slab, and Glimpse, among others. She won the 2024 American Writers Review Poetry Contest.

Bookmark

1 June 2024 / Editor

Poetry by John Hoyte

I grabbed it from the bookcase, to read before bed.
The Problem of Pain, a two shillings and sixpence
Fontana paperback, from my college days.
It tackles the question, If there is a loving God,
why does He permit pain?
I chose it to see if C.S. Lewis’s writing
still resonated for me.
A bookmark fell out.
The Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan.
Pain came surging back, engulfing me
in sorrow, though bitterness had gone.

The year my wife died had been a year of devastation.
To get away, Lisa, my daughter, and I flew
to Taiwan on a business trip.
We stayed at The Grand Hotel, and felt like royalty.
External opulence, internal grief.
I look back over thirty years.
My daughter’s daughters are in college
and I have just turned ninety-one.

I went to sleep in gratitude, thinking of my daughter
who has stood by me with love, grace and courage.

John Hoyte is a retired engineer, artist, and explorer.

the Irish goodbye

8 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Brooks

I was distracted,
looking this way and that
enjoying cocktails,
laughter & the company
of a stranger just for a
moment

one moment

I knew you were there,
always, so I took
another sip, laughed another
laugh and turned my back
on you
to dance

just for one moment

you had perfected it
though,
the Irish goodbye
and
I never saw it coming

sometimes, I still think
you will come walking back through the front door
and my heart
beats & a smile turns up

just for a moment

hello —
did you forget your cap?

I say to no one

Christine Brooks holds her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. She has two books of poetry available, The Cigar Box Poems and beyond the paneling. Her next two, inside the pale and the hook-switch goodbye, will be released in 2023.

The Hip

6 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Dawn L. C. Miller

Her ashes came to her grown daughters in a lovely box,
mahogany and rosewood,
accompanied by another box, containing
what had sustained her past the pain,
preserved her from disability,
entitled her to a parking permit.
It was her hip. Titanium and some ceramic.

Clarise and Susanne stared at it gleaming on the red velvet.
“It’s her hip,” murmured Clarise.
“Of course it is,” stated Susanne. “I can see that.”
“What are we supposed to do with it?” continued Clarise.
“Well, we can’t scatter it with her ashes. Someone might find it.”
They stared some more.
Together they debated all evening, agreeing on nothing.

The next morning it gleamed at them from the mantle.
Without looking at it,
in between angry silences,
and tears,
they talked.

The memories of places their mother had never been
floated into the morning light.
The seashore, when she stayed behind to take care of things at home.
The mountains she did not go with them to see:
no need to pay extra fare.
All the beauty and the music of far cities,
too expensive.
“Let’s take her there now!” they both said together.

And the journeys began.
Perched on a gunnel, their mother’s hip resounded with sea sounds.
Lost in the luggage for three days in Kenya,
Mother was found at last by a drug sniffing dog.
She rolled off into the snow at an Austrian ski resort,
but sat gleaming on a chair in the best restaurant in Paris
as her daughters laughed and toasted and remembered.

Dawn L. C. Miller has been writing poetry since childhood. Her poems have been published in Poetic Hours and Pegasus Review. She enjoys living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with her two cats and orchids.

landscape photography of sunflower field during sunset — Photo by Peter de Vink on Pexels.com

Consider the Dawn

14 November 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jayne Martin

For Ellie

A raspberry wave splashing
Onto a blank canvas of possibility
Sunflowers turn their faces to the east
Eager to sip from the rising sun
Knowing nothing of the indigo of sorrow
That weighs upon my heart
Taken much too soon
Your loss still a fresh wound festering
regret for all I could have done
better
I drown in the silence
Force myself to rise and step into the day
It is a gift, this life
Each moment
As fleeting as the flight of fireflies
I will be like the sunflowers
My face to sun following its journey
across a serene sky
One breath in, one out. Repeat
Trusting in the passage of time to heal
Bowing my face to the west where
The sun drops into tomorrow
As I await
The dawn of another day to come

Jayne Martin is the author of “Tender Cuts,” a collection of microfiction and “The Daddy Chronicles-Memoir of a Fatherless Daughter.” She lives in California, but dreams of living in Paris. Visit her at www.jaynemartin-writer.com, Twitter: @Jayne_Martin, Instagram: jayne.martin.writer, TikTok: jaynemartin05

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Dear Anthony

4 November 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Alison Sanders

A week later he was still numb with shock, and as he stood staring at the kitchen floor Anthony searched for signs of her there – a crumb from a bagel she’d toasted, maybe a strand of long, brown hair. He found nothing, and the fridge hummed loudly, and he wondered how long he could go on in this empty house.

He’d stopped crying. He’d turned off his phone, ignored the knocks at the door. He wasn’t hiding, exactly. He’d simply gone silent – bewildered and hurt, like a child slapped by his mother for the first time.

There was movement outside the kitchen window and Anthony saw it was the mail carrier. The young man wore sunglasses and pleated shorts, and he strolled up to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, inserted a tidy handful of envelopes, then continued on to the next house, eyes on the stack of mail in his arms. A car drove past, and the mailman glanced up, gave a small wave. It all seemed so casual, so efficient. So indifferent. Anthony had to look away, back to the kitchen floor. How dare he, he thought. How dare that man deliver mail like it’s any other day? And how dare the person in that car just drive and wave and live their life? How dare the sun shine, how dare the earth spin.

He realized he hadn’t checked the mail since the accident. This was a Thing Which Must Be Done. There were things like that – tasks which took all of his energy, all of his strength, every ounce of willpower he had, but he knew he had to do them. The hardest was walking out of the hospital and leaving her there, knowing that as soon as he left they’d pull a sheet over her face and roll her to the basement. The thought of her alone in the dark made him howl inside. How could he leave her? But he knew he had no choice. He’d stared at his feet, willing them to move, left – right – left – right, down the hall, through the sliding doors, out into the terrifying cruel sunlight. Then there was getting out of bed a few days later. It took hours to convince himself. Hours of staring at the ceiling and willing himself to move. But he did it, eventually. He got up. He rubbed his face, which felt puffy and soft in his hands, and he drank a glass of water. There were just some things, he knew, which still needed to be done.

He stepped out into the soft evening light. In the mailbox he found a small stack of envelopes. He carried them inside and placed them on the kitchen counter, then took a step back for a moment and watched the small pile. What stirred in him was not just exhaustion from having just completed one Thing Which Must Be Done, but also a growing dread. It was the realization that her name might be on some of that mail, and the fear of what would happen in his heart if he had to see that. He couldn’t do it. He stared at the stack and for a moment all he could hear was his own breath, shallow in his throat.

But the envelope on top was addressed only to him. In slanted block letters. After a pause he eased it open. It was a thick card with a watercolor painting of a tree on the front. Inside were handwritten words, in a shaky scrawl which leaned to the right as if blown by a strong wind: “Dear Anthony, We’re so sorry for your loss. May God wrap His loving arms around you. Love, Bill and Connie Matsumoto.” Matsumoto? For a moment his mind was blank. The old folks in the little grey house down the street? He barely knew them, other than casually waving as he drove to and from work. He tried but couldn’t recall the last time he’d said a word to either of the Matsumotos.

But now he pictured them together, wearing their matching sneakers with Velcro tabs, driving to the store, for him. He imagined them shuffling down the card aisle to the SYMPATHY section, choosing a card, for him. He pictured Connie sitting at her kitchen table, with a ballpoint pen gripped in her tiny hand, writing those words. And he pictured Bill – his bald head like a speckled egg – placing the envelope inside their mailbox, raising their little metal flag. For him.

He reread the note, and held that card for a long time, staring at the tree on the front. After a while, emboldened maybe, he flipped through the rest of the envelopes. They were all addressed just to him. And so he opened the next, and the one after that, and in between each he paused, and at some point he found his face wet with tears. He stacked the cards neatly on the counter and placed one hand on top, and in that moment he was overwhelmed with such gratitude he could hardly breathe. This world. It could be so cruel, so vicious, so unfair. And then, suddenly, so kind. So beautiful it could break your heart.

Alison Sanders‘ work has been published in Stanford Magazine and is forthcoming in Seaside Gothic. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and is working on her first novel.

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Widowed Memories

17 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Paul Rousseau

I rent a forty-four-year-old brick house. It is a modest single-level structure with a small garage. A young couple purchased the home from an older couple and provided minor updating. I moved in once the renovations were complete.

I have been in the home for four years. I intended to stay one year, two at most. Lassitude and complacency altered my plans; that, and the death of two dogs and the sickness of another, my own health woes, and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months ago an older man named Thomas rang the doorbell and inquired about the previous owners. I informed him the older couple had moved but did not leave a forwarding address. He told me the wife of the older couple had died—he noticed the obituary in the newspaper—and he assumed the husband still lived in the house. He removed his glasses and patted beads of sweat with a bandana.

“Nothing stays the same, does it?” I nodded. “We lose a lot as we get older, don’t we?” I nodded, again.

Then, unexpectedly, he heaved a deep, sobbing breath, and blurted, “I lost my wife a few years ago myself.” I gently touched his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he muttered, “she was filled with cancer. But she gave it a good fight. We were together forty-nine years.”

He pulled a yellowed, dog-eared photograph from his wallet; it was a panorama of them at the Grand Canyon. “She loved the Grand Canyon. I drove two days to the South rim to release her ashes. It’s what she wanted.”

“You’re a good man, Thomas,” I replied. He pivoted toward the living room. “We spent many an evening in that room. Drank beer, played cards, watched Ed Sullivan. Good times, good memories.” He paused and scratched day-old stubble.

“But somehow our families drifted apart. I don’t know, I guess it was because the kids grew up, our jobs wore us down, and we got sick: high blood pressure, diabetes, and emphysema for me, two heart attacks and a mild stroke for him. And as I said, my wife…” He stood silent, as if in pilgrimage, then asked if he could walk through the house one final time. I jiggled my head and motioned for him to follow.

We visited each room. He stroked the walls, turned the doorknobs, flicked the light switches, opened the blinds. Afterward, he wiped his eyes and begged an apology for the intrusion. I told him no need for an apology, I appreciated the company. He took a final glance at the house, bid goodbye, and shuffled to his car. He plopped into the driver’s seat, lowered the passenger window, and shouted,

“Some memories are best forgotten.”

My shoulders slumped; the reminiscing had seemingly kindled the cinders of old grief. I began to walk toward the car to offer comfort when he turned the ignition and disappeared down the road.

That evening, while lying in bed, I thought about the older couple. They had resided in this house for forty years. It was their refuge, a shelter from an often unfriendly world; how difficult it must have been to surrender four decades of security and stability. Yet, they had their memories; abundant memories.

However, as I reflected on Thomas’s heartrending lament, “Some memories are best forgotten,” I was reminded of the book Prince of Thorns, in which the author, Mark Lawrence, writes, “Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.” He seems to imply that all memories are dangerous and painful, an implication that is contrary to my personal experience.

And as a person who has also lost a spouse, I speak with widowed authority in agreeing with Thomas’s assertion that some memories—but not all—are best forgotten, for there are memories that provide us solace, and there are memories that remind us of what was, and what will never be again.

Paul Rousseau (he/his/him) is a semi-retired physician, writer, lover of dogs, and occasional photographer published in sundry literary and medical journals. Co-winner of flash fiction competition, Serious Flash Fiction 2022. Nominated for The Best Small Fictions anthology from Sonder Press, 2020. Twitter: @ScribbledCoffee

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A Victorious Tilting

4 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Whitehill

Laughter involves a “victorious tilting of uncontrol against control.”
Mary Douglas

You were there in my dream
for the first time last night,
its power derived from my laughter
at something so comic
I couldn’t find breath to explain it to you,
though you waited, expectant.
Twice I attempted to speak,
twice grew so tickled all over again
I couldn’t move air to make words.
You stood close, leaning in but bemused
as I tried, and failed, to get through.

What remains of the dream is the bliss
of those spasms of mirth:
how they left me as helpless, in my delight,
as a Laughing Buddha.

What remains with me still
is that visceral tickle
that left me still smiling when I awoke.
As if to pay tribute to laughter itself.

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems.