Saying Goodbye to My Dying Parents, Part 2, Mom

Dad wasn’t an affectionate man, while I know Mom craved his touch and sweet words. Dad always signed off on phone calls and letters by saying “We love you.” Mom always signed off saying “I love you.” I should have mentioned this in Part 1, Dad’s story: His father was a cruel man not above humiliating his children in front of others. He once ridiculed … Continue reading Saying Goodbye to My Dying Parents, Part 2, Mom

Status: A Wished-For Love

Thank you so much for reading along and supporting my effort. This novel is thirty years in the making and has been a journey of remembrance, blood, sweat, and tears. Most of the characters are based on real people. Tom’s and Sam’s Susanna was my girlfriend when I was stationed in Spain; yes, she died. Aida was a girlfriend in the Philippines. Lek was an acquaintance in … Continue reading Status: A Wished-For Love

Of Love and Fragrance

Your fragrance often wafts into my head guided by the metaphysical pinings of two souls and the bond between spirits not tethered to temporal moorings. Mortal boundaries span six feet of earthly separation but the heavenly plane exists within our senses. Comforting, that thought, and breathing your scent brings thoughts of your heaven wafting through my mind. For heaven is where you took me taking … Continue reading Of Love and Fragrance

Sasi and Tom, A Wished-For Love, Chapter Twenty-One

I’m pretty happy with this chapter 🙂 Ten minute read Tom grinned when Sasi waved and called to him from her balcony. He returned her wave and walked faster. When he looked again she had gone. He pushed through the revolving door and strode through the lobby to the elevator. The clerk called to him but the words didn’t register. The elevator doors opened and … Continue reading Sasi and Tom, A Wished-For Love, Chapter Twenty-One

The Wedding Band

They bury their dead in vaults. Long rows of casket-sized holes stacked six bodies high. Mourners shuffle along behind the men struggling beneath the weight, the dead weight, inside the casket. Mostly, they do. Her casket was featherlight, the body inside so nearly weightless it seemed heartless to call it dead weight. The men carrying her body stood ramrod straight, as men are wont to do … Continue reading The Wedding Band

Re-Blog: Elegy for a Drowned Girl

Exquisitely painful and beautiful. For a moment, echoes over the ocean sound your obituary — these jagged cliffs are your gravestones, and perhaps the algae the rolling waves offer to the shoreline is the water’s apology. For sending your casket deep into the corals. For seasoning the ocean salty with your panic. For surging your lifeless limbs away from […] via Elegy for a Drowned Girl … Continue reading Re-Blog: Elegy for a Drowned Girl

Sam and Susanna & Tom and Aida

Like two red eyes, the imperfections in the ruby blinked in the sunlight. He pressed the jeweled medallion to his chest to keep it from swinging on the necklace. The sun burned his back as he walked along the rock-strewn beach hunched over looking for seashells. The best ones he placed in a red, plastic cup that smelled of San Miguel. “Look, Aida.” he called. … Continue reading Sam and Susanna & Tom and Aida