Just Like That

Just Like That

Big Sid must be dead now. I was a teenager when we first met and he seemed old. My parent’s age anyway. Like forties? He was big. I see him flopped into and filling an even bigger chair, his sleeves rolled up above his thick meaty hands. A white collared shirt...
Forgetting Death

Forgetting Death

Aunt Lila was dying. She knew this, but often forgot. No one knew when it all began, the cancer that likely sprouted as first a small seed within a dormant ovary, a sleeping grain of terror. Then it grew, and grew, indiscreetly dropping more seeds into the dark womb...
The Messenger

The Messenger

How frail is humanity!     How short is life, how full of trouble!  We blossom like a flower and then wither.     Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear. Job 14:1-3 Somewhere after Abraham but before Moses, there lived a very good man named Job. Full of wealth...
The Call of the Cross

The Call of the Cross

In the cross, in the cross Be my glory ever, Till my ransomed soul shall find Rest beyond the river.   – Fanny Crosby 1869 Hard-boiled eggs.Jelly beans.Easter Lilies.Yuk. Add to that being stuffed into an ill-fitting Easter dress that my mother made, with a death...
The Boy From Somewhere Better

The Boy From Somewhere Better

First I remember the wind. Of course, it was my first winter in Wellfleet, huddled near the tip of the Cape on a narrow sandbar inhabited by poets and pirates. If you believe in ghosts and madmen, you would find them there, but only in the winter and the wind. I...