At your funeral, the pastor — a young man grasping to flesh out the eulogy of an old woman he barely knew — read The Giving Tree. All your children, and their children, took care not to meet one another’s eyes, for fear we would laugh aloud at just how inappropriate the man’s choice [...]
Fifty years ago, you married the only woman you’d ever date. All your life, youth and adulthood alike, you never shrank from physical labour or even took a day off.
Twenty years ago, a particularly vicious cancer left your life, but took forever your ability to work. I always wonder: How do you [...]
What a little creep you were. Your bad luck you decided to pick on me the year I decided to finally fight back. My bad luck you were coward enough to hit someone who was walking away from you with a heay object. Your parents’ insurance company’s good luck you didn’t do enough damage to [...]
Before meeting you, I watched YouTube: you escaped from straitjackets, handcuffs. I wondered later if those skills helped with the corset you wore to play a vampiric narrator. Grateful that I drove four hours to supervise your teenager for a week, you didn’t even bat an eye at the pen marks or potting soil my [...]
My cousin’s younger stepsister, I met you only once, when I was 10. Once was enough for you to develop a lasting disdain for me, after I tried to make you laugh with some random silliness that always left kindergartners thinking I was their friend, but which you, at 7, were too worldly to care [...]
You took four years and a class in every subject before declaring a college major. You were always up for new experiences, and together we explored wooded paths, straying from the paved trails. With you, life could get supremely messy — mud fights, oil paints, peanut butter, rock dust — and that was always okay.
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Did you see me as your buddy’s kid sister, or a fellow aspiring writer? Without fail, you treated me like the latter. Our talks were a lifeline for me, in those friendless days of early high school. I envied the breadth of your ideas, but never begrudged them: they were yours and yours alone.
I [...]
Your once-broken nose left your voice flat, a monotone that bored most students to tears. Me, though: You mean that’s how a Thermos works? You’re pouring iron filings on the overhead projector so we can see the shapes of magnetic? Awesome!
You taught the best science class I ever had.
I am a [...]
My childhood best friend’s grandmother. When we weren’t swimming in your pool, you let us play unsupervised with your stash of Mardi Gras beads. You treated me almost like a grownup, and offered me my first taste of hot tea: Earl Grey. I didn’t like it. (I’ve changed my mind.)
I [...]
“Cute,” you said, carefully enunciating the next word in our first grade spelling test. “Lou has a cute new puppy.” I looked up furtively, sure that your chosen sample sentence was a coincidence: but you caught my eye with a little smile, and I knew you had remembered my excitement over my new [...]