Dear Little Growing-out-of-the-Rock Tree: Good and Scary, Yesterday and Forever Ago, and the Beautiful Difference

Dearest Readers:  This post was published earlier but MailChimp decided to make some changes and you never received notice of its publication. I’m in business again because of my son, Todd, who is for the time being anyway, my favorite son. Don’t tell the others. If you know Todd and want to see what he…

Happy Birthday Little Sister

Dear Readers, It’s my Little Sister’s 64th birthday. Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile, know I’ll most likely pack a lunch and head to Lake Michigan. There I’ll wander the beach, keeping an eye out for a meaningfully-shaped rock or a piece of beach glass, a reminder the broken can…

Giving Voice to my Grief through Writing

  I dabbled at writing a diary in high school, but that diary disappeared along with the one I started my first  year in college – the one where I carefully noted every interaction with any boy down to the detail of what was said and done so that someday I could return to said…

From Uninvited Guest to Friend

Oh, Hello Grief. Here you are, a little early. Tomorrow would have been my brother’s 56th birthday“ another bittersweet day to celebrate without him. This will be the seventh time since he lost his way in his beloved Montana Mountains and died of hypothermia. I was hoping you wouldn’t show up this year. That’s the…

A Friend, Twelve Years In The Making

It is 12:32am November 8th as I write this. In just 6 1/2 hours it will be twelve years since I heard the words, “He’s gone” after waiting and hoping and praying for 32 hours my brother would be found – missing in the Montana mountains on a hunting trip. (I wrote about it HERE:…

Perfectly Formed

Happy birthday to Brenda Jane. August 28, 1959 — August 28, 1959 ********** August 28th, fifty-seven years ago: I am 11 years old. A baby is coming, but the Doctor has been saying there is probably something wrong with the baby, and if Mother “miscarries” it will be “God’s way of taking care of it.”…

Thanksgiving 2015 – Shout to the Lord!

My husband and I were alone on Thanksgiving. “It’s all good,” I told someone yesterday. “Our children and grandchildren are with their other families. Well, one is still in Ethiopia. We expect to have her here with us soon.” I missed my mom and my dad. They are gone now, as are my siblings, taken…