Tag: grief

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

a mailbox on a wall — Photo by Mike Tyurin on Pexels.com

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.

old photos in the wooden box — Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

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

blue green and red abstract illustration — Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

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.

Who Knew

23 June 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Barry H. Gordon

Someone wrote tenderly,
knowingly,
of the death of a classmate,
as we casually prepared
for the reunion
of the living
next summer.

Who knew, Durbin,
that your oddness,
your awkward efforts
to connect,
were linked to years,
fourteen we are told,
in a foster home.
And who knew
of the heartache
you carried at graduation
because your father
hadn’t survived to see you
walk across the stage
of life.

And who knew
really much of anything
about the true you,
or the true me
for that matter.
We just walked across
that stage
and most of us
kept on walking.

Still, I am jolted
to hear
you have dropped out of line
and I have missed
my chance to know you.

Barry H. Gordon is a retired psychologist and a published author of Your Father, Your Self and two co-authored books. He is an emerging poet who has been writing poetry throughout his career.

atmosphere branch cold dark — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

But It Deepens

28 March 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Jeff Burt

Snowflakes swirled under two streetlights at the park like shooting stars against the night sky. A young woman lay prone on the cement walk. I first thought she was making angels in the snow, but with more inspection seemed more on the path to becoming an angel. She did not move. The bellows of her chest had stopped.

I felt for a pulse on her iridescent wrist, flesh a translucent paper exposing thin, visible veins from arms gone gaunt. I touched her berry-colored lips to close them, the unlit indigo of her iris like an old bruise, a plum after the sun has caressed and not yet ripened, of a lily when the color vanishes and the petals fall, the pale purple of candles of the church lit for repentance, the amethyst of meditation, the lilacs pressed in books to mark a place of interest lost in the shuffle of reading, dried lavender, as if Death had kissed her but was interrupted before all color had been taken.

Her rayon dress ran through my fingers, like mercury freed from containment and spilling on the pavement unable to be contained by the merest boundary, without bond, lake water slipping through my hands no matter how hard I tightened my fists, and I remembered my mother’s hands covered in cornstarch when I was a child, her laughter at watching the water beads form in her hands as she tried to wash them, the starch remaining in the crevices of her palms like snowflakes she said, that do not melt in the darkness underneath trees.

I called for help. Snow fell and kept on falling. I wanted the snow to fall like rain, anonymous, consistent, but each time I looked out saw chaos, swirls without pattern, each flake individually propelled. I covered the woman with my jacket.

She survived.

That night my father called. Cancer had taken my mother.

Though I am separated by years from that night, I still see the silhouettes brought by that snowfall, the variations of brilliant white, dirty white, and gray, and the stunning blackness of the park’s backdrop. I still see every variation of flake falling under the lamps, the wide, the slim, the lace-like, the cotton-like, the confetti, the crystal, the furred, the angular, and the oblique.

The snowflakes perpetuate like a background that never gets refreshed, snowflakes not feathery like eiderdown which sways back and forth like a pendulum lowering itself to earth, but drifting, white blossoms floating on the dark swells of quiet waterways, white funeral mums among black cloth, white petals of roses against the dress of dark evening, white hair of my mother with cancer drained of pigment, white doilies she treasured as gifts, the white of waves high capped and falling, white of waterfalls in spring, eidolons of snowflakes lingering in memory, eidolons that haunt me.

All images now resolve into one collage and crowd my consciousness. They become a single form flying at me on a conveyor of wind until I cannot perceive, not blinded, but that visible shape has been coalesced into a picture book fanned repeatedly with frames I cannot distinguish, surviving, dying, all one.

People tell me this will pass. But it deepens.

The mind filters and selects things we do not wish to come forward, and most often, the years have eroded memories, and they no longer hold us. Snow melts.

For me, it has never stopped snowing.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He has worked in electronics, healthcare, and mental health. He has contributed to Gold Man Review, Per Contra, and Consequence Magazine.