The story goes that my dad was taking me to school in 1978, the day after Nancy Kassebaum was elected to the United States Senate. There were two women who had just served out their late husbands’ unexpired terms, which brought the number of recent female senators to three. The commentator on the news was […]

jjm, 5-14-1947 - 1/28/2003
Relics: A Diary
January 28
As the phone call ended downstairs
I folded down a corner of the Secret Garden,
perched it atop a stack of books, way too optimistic
for the fortieth week, and turned
toward the door to my husband’s
ashen face—
I turned toward the door, the door,
the door beyond which
there be dragons, as the mapmakers used […]

it was also a wednesday
when the last remnant of him in the whole world arrived.
the rest has ground into gulf-coast clay,
sparkled the surface of a lapping pond,
lilted above a pigtailed girl high on the swings.
i am flesh of his flesh;
to my flesh he returned
wedged on a truck
between parcels of Extreme Elmo
and jolly plump citrus.
like the […]

It’s nasty and cold outside, and I was about as low-energy in worship as one
can get while still retaining a pulse. Blah! Yuck! Ptui!
This anniversary of dad’s death has been harder than some of the others. Partly because I know that my dad’s ashes are being scattered today (assuming the weather has cooperated) and partly […]

[another “stafford poem.” See here for explanation]
for dad
on january 28, 2003,
i folded down a corner of the secret garden
and placed it atop a stack of books, way too optimistically tall
for the fortieth week,
and i turned toward the door to my husband’s ashen face—
i turned toward the door, the door, the door beyond which
there be dragons, […]

Bees make me extremely jumpy, whether they are the bumble or the spelling variety. (I’m neutral about quilting bees.)
I was an avid spelling bee competitor in elementary school. I was good at them, but I didn’t enjoy them. They stressed me out. Why didn’t I throw them on purpose? I could have done that, spelled […]

It hasn’t been edited, it really doesn’t have much of a beginning or an end really, and I’m not sure what the point is, or even if there needs to be one.
—–
This morning C was showing us some hand signs. “This means stop, this means go, this means dude.” I didn’t even know she knew […]

night
awake from a dream,
I squint at three dispassionate numbers,
stare them down like it’s high noon
(but it’s 3:45).
then I sigh and flutter closed,
sink down, burrow deep,
but it’s too late:
behind my eyes
the dream is a poem now, scarcely even born,
yet she wants me to
come get up,
come play,
come feed me
now!
she’s yanked the covers back,
knotted them at my knees
so […]

In 12 hours C and I are boarding a plane for Dallas, where we will spend the weekend saying goodbye to Favorite Aunt, Mamala’s sister, who has battled valiantly against the devil that is ovarian cancer. Her kidneys are failing and we are told it will be days. (R will come on Saturday–tomorrow he is […]

Dad died on a Tuesday night during the January term of my last year in seminary. Two weeks before his death, the search committee from Suburban Presbyterian Church piled into a fifteen-passenger van to make the 1200-mile roundtrip to interview me and hear me preach, since I was great with child and unable to travel. […]

The last time I was pregnant, somebody died. I’m not kidding. My pregnancy had, like, casualties.
“Oh, that’s a horrible, vulgar thing to say.”
Yes, it is.
But it’s true.
And it was horrible. And vulgar.
Before seminary I volunteered as a grief support group facilitator for teenagers who had lost a parent. Half of the kids in the group […]

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was one of the best gifts Dad ever gave me.
It was a pocketknife—just two simple blades that folded into a plain brown handle that said “Old Timer.” In fact, here is the exact one I had. The Girl Scouts taught me most of my knife safety, […]

Closer to Home
This is a lovely place that is hard to leave
And there’s a loneliness we will always grieve.
So you give what you can, only take what you need,
And hope your heart will know what your eyes can’t see.
When I was a child, I thought like a child,
And I still feel like a child sometimes.
And […]

mourning snowfall
will it be every year
around This Time
that the grief floats down,
soft and insistent,
gripping every waiting surface
with unseen crystalline claws,
accumulating in fresh heaps
for all the world to see?
i fall down into its stinging embrace,
flail about,
and look for the imprint of an angel
to guide me onward.
for dad, 5/14/47 - 1/28/03