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Aging, Arizona, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Death and dying, Diagnosis, Family, Fireworks, Irish culture, Irish mammies, John Hiatt, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Muriel Rukeyser, New Year, Newgrange, No Country for Old Men, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Themes of Childhood, Time
Ready to Turn ~ Winter Solstice 2015
Again, the sun will pause for its moment of solstice before changing direction to move northward. From the Latin, solstitium, the apparent standing still of the sun, the Winter Solstice is a turning point, something I look forward to each year. At Newgrange, a neolithic burial tomb even older than Stonehenge, outside Dublin, Ireland, they hold a lottery to decide who…
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After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Derry, Dispatch from the Diaspora, FInal wishes, Funeral, Grieving, Keeping Going, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Postscript, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
P.S. Seamus Heaney and a Grave Situation
When I returned to Bellaghy this summer, I visited Seamus Heaney's grave again. This time, a simple wooden cross stood in the dirt. This time, I was a widow, changed and contemplative, convinced that cosmic strings keep us connected. This time, I wondered about the spiritual space in which both men might move. Where are they?
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Arizona Humane Society, Chihuahuas, Dog Rescue, Dogs, Door into the Dark, Greyhound, Loss, Love, Mary Oliver, Memoir, Rites of passage, Seamus Heaney, Starting over, The Midnight Anvil
for national dog day – an emotional rescue
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.” ― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs First there was Molly, a retired racer who loved me. We had rescued her in the Christmas of 2008, on the heels of a spectacular crisis in my professional life,…
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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Art, Awesome Women, Death and dying, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Music, Rites of passage, saying goodbye, Scaffolding, Seamus Heaney
scaffolding an imperfect marriage
Laurie Anderson tells this story about the day she married her best friend, Lou Reed: “It was spring in 2008 when I was walking down a road in California feeling sorry for myself and talking on my cell with Lou. “There are so many things I’ve never done that I wanted to do,” I said. “Like what?” “You know, I…
