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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Blackberry Picking, Clearances, Family, Feminism, nikki giovanni, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Poetry, removing training wheels, Rites of passage, Rituals, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Themes of Childhood, Time, Wheels within Wheels
getting a grip on things ~ noli timere
Had someone told me this was going to happen, I wonder what we would have done differently or better or both with our remaining days together. Would an expiration date on our family have changed the way we lived those thirty days? Would we have crammed in the kinds of things typically found on bucket-lists or would we have made…
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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
my ‘slow turning’ ~ winter solstice 2013
It is a magic time, captured before clocks and calendars and compasses measured time and the distance between us, signifying the turn towards a new year. I’m not ready for it. I am not ready for days that stretch out even longer than each of the thirty-six that have passed since the day my husband died. Thirty-six. I cannot bring…
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Aging, Being young, Bridget Jones, Broagh, Castledawson, Diary, Family, FInal wishes, Loss, Love, Marriage, Ordinary Things, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Regrets, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Those Winter Sundays, Writing
the offices of love ~ what did I know?
This winter Sunday, I woke to the high-pitched scrape of steel on steel, my da sharpening my bread knife because “it wouldn’t cut butter.” I stayed in bed, allowing the long metallic strokes on each side of the blade to carry me back to the kitchen of my childhood, my father making sure the knife was sharp enough to carve…
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Birthdays, Castledawson, Dying, Family, Funerals, Loss, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Thanksgiving, Themes of Childhood, Tommy Edwards, W.H. Auden, Wedding Anniversary
not half thankful enough ~ thanksgiving with funeral blues
A friend, one who knows, told me the other day that it will take at least a year before the sharp stone of grief will shift from the very center of my being. She told me not to make any big decisions until I make it through all the “firsts” – the first Thanksgiving without him, Sophie’s first birthday without…
