President Biden Said losing a child Is like tearing A piece out of your soul. I know. I lost a son. And yesterday nineteen Sets of parents In Uvalde, Texas Lost their precious Little boys and girls too. No amount of prayers Will ever take away Their pain. I know. My pain Stays in my heart After twenty-three years. And that we allowed it To happen. That we didn’t restrict An eighteen-year-old From buying An assault weapon, Designed and intended Only to be used In battlefields And not to bloody Schools or grocery stores Or places of worship. We must stop These horrors – The killing of Innocent people Just wanting To live normal lives. We must stop The pain and The pieces of our souls From tearing away. … [Read more...]
Writing life woes
February 1, 2022 By 1 Comment
I feel like I'm not putting in enough writing time these days. I still write my short - ten-minute - poem every morning and a journal entry every night before I go to bed, but I have three started memoirs that I need to work on and finish once and for all. But all is not grim. I still attend my memoir class every week and read a piece there at least twice a month. I also still write in my writing group the first and third Tuesdays of the month. At the start we're given a prompt, write for about forty-five minutes, and then read what we've written in real time to the group. I have that opportunity this afternoon. As always, it's very nerve racking. Here are four recent poems I wrote lately about my current writing life. Why do I keep at it? Why am I so obsessed? I don’t have to write A poem a day I don’t have to write A journal entry every day. But still I sit down here And open my computer, pull Up my ten-minute poem doc And scroll down To the end, Three hundred and Thirty-two … [Read more...]
Finally all settled in
September 3, 2021 By Leave a Comment
A few more poems about how my life is going since I moved. And I'm happy to say the final boxes have been unpacked, the stuff has been all put away, and the last piece of furniture - a chair and ottoman - has been recovered and moved in. Now I have no more excuses for not getting my writing work done. I’ve been stalling Lallygagging over breakfast Reading the next Old New Yorker From my pile, Reading the news, Taking the trash out, Filing away last month’s Journal entries into My secret folder. Finally here I am Writing my daily Ten-minute poem Which stinks, by the way. And is much too short And void of meaning Or details. But still I keep my fingers moving The advice I got early on When I didn’t have An idea in my head To write about. I must be getting religious I bought a kosher Mezuzah scroll To fill the empty Mezuzah We bought in Israel. I never knew it was missing We just put it up in our old house Thinking it was a blessing. So I found the scroll on … [Read more...]
Three more poems
February 4, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Thankfully I can still write my daily short poems. It's a way for me to look inside a bit and record my thoughts and goings on since my husband Bob died. Today would have been his eighty-fourth birthday. I can't even begin to tell you how much a miss celebrating with him as I did for the last fifty-three years. Here are three newish draft poems. My Days Even when I add A chore or two To shake up my day It still ends The same way. Eating dinner in front Of the television As I watch a movie. I watch one each night Some good, some bad But it’s a diversion Which I need more And more of these days. I don’t know how To get out of this rut. And when I study it Real closely, I don’t think I ever will. My husband is gone And the void he left In my life will never Go away. And nowadays I want to yell and scream At him for leaving me. Even though he couldn’t help Getting so sick,. He needed to get well And not leave me this way. My Mercedes Is … [Read more...]
What do I do all day?
January 27, 2021 By Leave a Comment
People keep asking me what I do all day. They want to know how this new widow spends her time and deals with her loss. Well, first of all I hate the “widow” word. Isn’t there something else we could call a woman whose husband has died? Well, I suppose not. Plus, I really have other things to do than worry about a word or two. Like continuing to work on all the financial records and documents my husband left me to sort out. And bear in mind I was never a party to anything financial going on during our fifty-year marriage. He was the math guy. He called me innumerate. Even so, I have changed over all the accounts to my name and closed some I don’t want to deal with. I’ve also cancelled a couple of credit card accounts. Right now though, I’m looking through our home improvement records so when and if it comes time to sell my house, I can have write-offs to offset the thousands in taxes I’ll owe. Also, I still am writing. Since last February I’ve been writing a poem a day - … [Read more...]
It’s hard to live after death
December 12, 2020 By 11 Comments
For the last several months I’ve written a little poem every day. Something that would take no more than ten minutes to compose. I’ve kept that up even through out my husband Bob’s illness and in the days since he died. Writing, as you probably know, keeps me alive. It lets me put my pain on the page. Here are a few of my most recent poems written since Bob died. I don’t know how I am managing To walk, to live in this house To even breathe My husband of over fifty years Died last night. He just stopped breathing And thinking And talking And eating and walking He just stopped all the things That one does to live. He was done with all that He left me alone To find a way to live without him To learn to walk again Without him. And I wonder If I’ll ever be able To do that unless he’s By my side. I decided not To see him dead, Which meant I couldn’t touch him One last time. I had seen him The day before he died During a FaceTime … [Read more...]
April is National Poetry Month
April 17, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I started reading poetry in grade school although I didn't start writing poems until much later. Once in a while I'd write a poem or two when I was upset emotionally or feeling lonely, but not regularly until after my son's suicide. It was the only way I could deal with my grief. It still is. Reading poetry regularly is a given. During April, National Poetry Month, Knopf sends me a poem a day, and the website Poem-A-Day sends me a poem every day all year round. Sometimes over a dozen poems are in my reading queue. I also write poems regularly - this month especially since I'm participating in a poem a day challenge. Poetry is my favorite writing genre. It's hard to know if my poems live up to Lori Anne Ferrell's criteria as discussed in her LA Times Op Ed piece below, but many have been published, so they must resonate somewhere. A book of poetry that's worth $100,000, and so much more by Lori Anne Ferrell "A few months ago, I was talking to a former student about how … [Read more...]
Happy sixth anniversary
August 14, 2016 By Leave a Comment
Our son and daughter-in-law were married in our garden six years ago today. That is significant not only as a celebration of their love for each other, but that they wanted to get married at the sight where my son's brother, our son Paul, took is life in 1999. For a long time Ben didn't want to be here, but that all changed on his wedding day. The wedding was beautiful and the event was not tarnished by unhappy memories. My memoir Leaving the Hall Light On was published less than a year later. It is, as the subtitle says, A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. Although the story is sad, the memoir is also about survival. That said, I decided to end the book with an Epilogue about the Wedding in the Garden, on a very upbeat note. Here is the poem that ended the Epilogue. I hope you'll read the memoir and entire epilogue as well. And if you have read Leaving the Hall Light On, please leave a review here. Five star reviews help … [Read more...]
A progress report
January 13, 2016 By Leave a Comment
In John Lennon's song, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), he sings: Life is what happens when you're making other plans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_j-tpmdPlI My mother always said something similar: Man plans, and God laughs. Well, life was sure happening to me last week. I worked diligently on my book, as I said I would do in my previous blog post, for the first three days, and I actually made some great progress. Then boom! It all fell apart. My husband, Bob, woke up early last Thursday morning with shortness of breath. I took him to urgent care and he got an EKG. With those results the doctor there said take him to emergency at our local hospital. And we were off and running. Two and a half days later and tests to rule out a heart attack, pneumonia, blood clots in his lungs, and congestive heart failure, he was feeling better. So they sent him home. Less than 24 hours later, he was short of breath again even worse. This time we called his own doctor (who had … [Read more...]
I’m writing poetry this month
April 14, 2015 By 2 Comments
I'm writing poems while a group of beta readers reviews my novel draft. And I'm loving it. Again this April I'm taking the prompts from Robert Lee Brewer's April Poem A Day challenge, though not especially concerned about entering the challenge. I'm a little poetry rusty after spending so much time this past year revising my novel. I'm satisfied just to have a poem prompt to write to every day. I'm in it for the practice. That said, here's a couple that might pass muster (with Brewer's prompts). I'd love your thoughts. 4. Write a departure poem. Many people depart to school and/or work every day, and they depart on a plane, train, or automobilesome even walk or ride a bike. Of course, that's keeping things rather physical; there are also emotional and psychological departures. You may even decide to make a departure from your normal writing style in tone or structure today. The Long Departure On the platform she, in a flowing white dress with gloves, shoes, and hat to … [Read more...]
Meditation practice
August 29, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I'm meditating again with Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. Their latest twenty-one day series started on August 11 and goes to the end of August. As they say: Oprah & Deepak's 21-Day Meditation Experienceâ„¢ makes meditation easy, fun, and inspiring, offering daily guided audio meditations via an online, interactive program. Enjoy easy access to the daily program anytime, anywhere from your mobile phone, tablet or computer. Join our global community on each 21-Day Meditation Experience. Together, we will create lives filled with increased peace, joy, and wellbeing. I usually meditate before going to bed. It relaxes me and better prepares me for sleep. My husband chooses to meditate in the morning right after he wakes up. But when is not the operative word. What's important is making the time to do it. That's what I really like about these Oprah and Deepak 21-day meditation experiences. They get me back into it. Without their prodding, I don't meditate regularly. After … [Read more...]
Memorializing Paul’s Tree
November 27, 2013 By 4 Comments
I spent some time today taking photos of the tree we've had in our front yard for the last thirteen plus years. We have come to call it Paul's tree because we had it planted on the first year anniversary of Paul's death. I've mentioned it here in the past after a particularly bad trimming job (see December 5, 2010, June 30, 2012, and July 22, 2012). Unfortunately, I won't have to complain about that anymore. Next week our gardeners are going to remove it completely, and we'll replace it with a much smaller and less invasive substitute. I'm also memorialized it in a poem just published in True Words from Real Women: An Anthology of Life Writing by the Women of the Story Circle Network (November 2013). Paul's Tree It has to be a climbing tree, I say to replace the one he used to climb as a boy, to remind me of him sitting in the wide Vee of the upper branches smiling and proud of his climbing success. I settle on a small … [Read more...]
A new published poem plus
March 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment
I'm pleased that the Story Circle Journal has published my new poem, Writing My Truths in response to their submission topic Silence. I certainly recommend my women writer friends to look into joining the Story Circle Network: for women with stories to tell. This group has been very supportive of my work. Here's a little description from its website: The Story Circle Network is an international not-for-profit membership organization made up of women who want to document their lives and explore their personal stories through journaling, memoir, autobiography, personal essays, poetry, drama, and mixed-media. Writing My Truths I have a new room. I write in there alone. I sit at my draftsman table, looking out the bay window to the garden. I see the trunks of the three palm trees, the small cement pond, and the ferns swinging their leaves behind it. Sometimes a bird comes by for a drink, surfing along the top of the pool. Yet, I don't open the window to … [Read more...]
Jane Shore’s poem about a tree
July 17, 2012 By 2 Comments
This is definitely another opinion about how to care and feed and trim a tree. I love this poem. Wish I had written it. Counter-point to my tree-trimming rant. Willow by Jane Shore It didn't weep the way a willow should. Planted all alone in the middle of the field by the bachelor who sold our house to us, shoulder height when our daughter was born, it grew eight feet a year until it blocked the view through the first-, then the second- story windows, its straggly canopy obstructing our sunrise and moonrise over Max Gray Road. I gave it the evil eye, hoping lightning would strike it, the way a bolt had split the butternut by the barn. And if leaf blight or crown gall or cankers didn't kill it, then I'd gladly pay someone to chop it down. My daughter said no, she loved that tree, and my husband agreed. One wet Sunday husband napping, daughter at a matinee in town a wind shear barreled up the hill so loud I glanced up from my mystery the moment the … [Read more...]
A spring poem
July 12, 2012 By 1 Comment
I love Robert Lee Brewer's poetry prompts. He gives one out once a week except during poem a day challenges in April and November. I don't always do them on time or in order, but I eventually get through them. I guess he prompted us to write a spring poem at first bud. I'm a little late, but here it is. I lay on the Pilates reformer and push on the foot bar, in and out, in and out. My feet, first in the second position at the corners of the footbar then in first position at the center with my heels locked tightly together, I keep pushing and pulling. Two red and one green springs determine the weight for these exercises. And as my legs move back and forth the springs squeak, they yearn to stop, they want to do no more work. But I keep going. I don't listen to their moans never giving those springs a rest. … [Read more...]
Tree trimming rant – a new poem
June 30, 2012 By 6 Comments
Butcher The tree trimming was yesterday. And with his long-handled ax he hacked the trees stripping off leaves and giant birds of paradise until only bare branches and trunks were left. His onslaught hit the ground leaving broken and bent petals, the red succulents flattened and spent. Of course it got its intended result Light pouring through. I can't wait for the shade to come back. Coral Tree Before Coral Tree Today (2 weeks after the hack job) Poor Eucalyptus and Palms … [Read more...]
Paul and his brother, Ben
December 26, 2011 By 1 Comment
Although our boys were very different from one another Paul was a brainy musician and computer nerd and Ben is a brainy athlete and actor they always loved each other very much. They respected each other's differences and talents. I've gathered some photos of them together. How could I not celebrate the brothers during this month of celebrating Paul's life? A Poem That Wants To Be for Ben* They are always about Paul, my dead son the one who died of his own free will so many years ago. My hordes of poems go on like a mantra: his mania, depression, his delusions, escapades, his suicide. They never fail to mention his piercing blue eyes, the little half smile that never showed his teeth, the smoky smell and the way he slumped over the piano like the thinker as he played. Paul and his death have been my muse. Ben's living eyes brim over with love as he looks down and … [Read more...]
