Topic: Stranded

Author: Chris Dunn

I’ve been to a Michaels store once in my life and it was not by choice. I wandered in hoping to find a phone I could use while trying to recall the procedure for using a pay phone to make a collect call and then wondering who I could even call. Who was around at 3:30 in the afternoon who could come get me? What if no one would or could? What if there was no phone? How far was the walk home? Crap, no one even knows I’m here! I could disappear and no one would ever know what happened to me!

Trace it back, Roger Bacon had a half day, and I was feeling adventurous. I was 17, nearly a Senior in high school. I could handle myself even if I couldn’t drive. I had a few coins to spare in my pocket. Why not make the most of my free time? Also, the bus back to North College Hill wouldn’t be coming until the normal time, so it was either be adventurous or wait 4 hours. Though I’m not typically one to strike out on a new trail, adventure does come before boredom in my personal lexicon. Plus, I’d done this trip once before in the company of my friend Karl. I could handle it on my own. I didn’t think at the time “What’s the worst that could happen?”, but you already know where the story ends up.

It shouldn’t have been a thing. Easy-peasy. Just hop on the bus that rolled from St. Bernard to Clifton, (I forget the number) stop in and buy some comic books (while stealing side-eye glances at the porno mags they kept mostly covered up) and find the 17 bus back home. Use a transfer and it won’t even cost more than the usual ride. It would be fun!

And it was! I got off the bus too early, but the walk down Calhoun was an empowering adventure in and of itself. College kids mixed in equal numbers with guys who got out early or were ditching their day at Withrow High School. The street wasn’t nearly as gentrified back 1985. There’s no way the Fantasy Emporium could afford a space on the strip as it is now, but back then it was a little hole-in-the-wall shop on a seedy side street with the windows covered over with comic posters lest natural light fall on the proprietors. I hope you’re all familiar with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Let me say from experience, Matt Groening knew his stuff. Bearded, pale, misanthropic, and surly suits every comic book guy I’ve even known (except Leo, he didn’t have a beard). I fumbled around back issues of Xmen while trying to decide if I was getting turned on by a butt or a shoulder that was peeking over the brown paper barrier meant to protect me from my own libido. (In the end, does it really matter) Eventually, “You gonna buy something?” (Which is comic book guy for, “Can I help you?”) Served to put me on the road to home.

The 17 boarded right around the corner, and it came every five minutes. I hopped aboard, handed over my transfer, and settled down with an issue of X-men so old they were all wearing matching blue and yellow outfits. The story was a loss for me. I was really only going for the collector value. My mother had told stories about how they had thrown out old issues of Adventure comics and destroyed baseball cards that would be worth thousands in the 80s. She had instilled in me the notion that patience would let time turn junk into treasure. What I spent $6 on then would be worth $100s by the time I was 30. I believed her, but neither of us foresaw the digital age. The comic still sits in a box in my closet failing to appreciate in value, but still shielded by faith in my mother’s warnings from even being discarded.  

When I looked up from my comic, I knew something was wrong. These weren’t the familiar flanking corridors of Hamilton Avenue. It took a minute to place them from memory, but soon it became clear. This was Colerain! I was several blocks west of where I should be and getting further and further from home with each passing minute. Too shy to ask the bus driver what I had done wrong, I wavered in indecision trying not to panic as the miles rolled by. Compton, the last cross street I knew by name, came and went. Thoughts of getting off and walking from there, were beat down by memories of the graveyard on the hill and the seedy aluminum recycling station that I would need to pass. Not to mention the miles of walking all with no sidewalks. But when I saw Northgate Mall, I knew I had no choice. Beyond this point was no man’s land. The bus could drive off a cliff after that for all I knew. The mall was the world’s end, and as the bus pulled away, I tried not to cry while I considered my options.

Standing stunned by the moment and the brightly-lit isles filled with row after row of absolute junk (what is this store?!), I hear a familiar voice call my name. Looking up, I see Jan one of the managers from my work. “What are you doing here?” she asks. Things work out for me like that a lot. The way my mother always put it, “You could fall face first into an outhouse and come out wearing a pearl necklace!” (She said, this. I kid you not.)

Topic: Family

Topic: Family

I learned how to be a human being and how I fit in the world from my family. This week I am grappling with how to do life now that the two most influential people in it are gone. When my mom died two years ago somehow it seemed like she was still here in a lot of ways.  But since we buried my dad last week, I have been grappling with the reality that strangers will soon live in my parents’ house. I find myself taking stock of what remains.  I watched both of my parents die too young of cancer. When our family vacation home, our retreat in Tennessee burned down in 2016, the same year we lost mom, the same year dad got diagnosed w metastatic cancer, it felt like the Dunn family was being cast in some sort of Shakespearean tragedy. But much remains. 

What remains is me and my two younger brothers—and all of the family we have acquired over the years-the spouses, the kids, the grandkids, the friends that have become like family, the blood relatives that weren’t part of that family of origin but have become part of the modern day Dunn family.  And overarching all of it are the Dunn family values, the lessons that Chris, Marty, and I learned growing up. These are what I consider to be the top three rules for life as lived out by mom and dad. 

ONE. Follow your bliss.  My dad actually had a faded t-shirt with this saying emblazoned on the front.  My brother Marty told me that when he was a confused young man and he went to dad for advice on what to do with his life, dad gave him a handwritten list with bullet points.  I remember that one of the bullet points Dad shared was, “Say ‘fuck it’ often”, but the one that also stuck out in Marty’s memory, was to “follow your bliss.”  My parents spent their time and energy on pursuits that brought them joy.  Mom poured herself into community theater, bird watching, gourmet cooking, and making handcrafted items to sell in her Etsy shop.  She went to her grandkids soccer games and theatrical and musical performances. Dad taught himself other languages, collected stamps and coins, and met with a group of retired academics that called themselves “The Dead Philosophers” to discuss life and literature.  They traveled together.  They individually loved reading but at any given time they had a book that they were reading “together.”  Dad would read aloud to mom while she cooked dinner, and she would return the favor when he’d drive on one of their adventures.  They took disco lessons.  They hosted an annual Christmas party for over forty years with a guest list of well over a hundred people in its heyday.  Even as I watched them both fade away from their respective cancers and surrender to hospice care, they each pressed on.  The day mom signed up for hospice she made us promise that the cast of the show she had signed up to direct would be properly notified.  Dad was part of one of my brother Chris’s role playing game groups that gamed every Monday night.  When dad could not make the trip down to Chris’s house, they brought the game to him.  They followed their bliss till the very end. 

TWO. I’m okay, you’re okay.  In the late sixties my parents got this self help book called “I’m okay, you’re okay.” I remember them reading it out loud to each other.  I was raised in a fairly permissive and accepting environment.  I don’t remember having a strict curfew.  I was never grounded, mainly because my mom said she didn’t want being at home with your family to be considered a punishment.  A memorable punishment I did have was after a fight with my brother Chris. I had to write an essay about what I loved about him. They were big fans of letting us endure the natural consequences of our actions.  If, for example, I waited till 9pm the night before a poster was due at school, I would have to take my lumps at school.  Dee Dunn was not going to bail me out—that would have been doing me a disservice in her opinion. They treated us like adults.  It wasn’t a true democracy, but I felt free to express my opinion without fear of reprisal at a very young age.  We had regular family meetings, and we followed Robert’s Rules of Order.  We took turns being the chair person or being the taker of the minutes.  Chris and I usually schooled our baby brother Marty before the meeting to make a motion that we go to Frisch’s after the meeting.  When I was teenager I was allowed to say cuss words if the situation warranted and especially if it enhanced a joke or story I was telling.  What was absolutely unacceptable in our house was any form or ridicule or racism or sexism or any “ism”, anything that involved mistreating another human being or showing disrespect-now that could land you in trouble with my parents.  But saying “fuck it” often-that was cool in the Dunn house. 

THREE. Don’t take life too seriously.  An example of the kind of irreverent humor that we embrace in our family came up the week that my dad was dying.  He was non-responsive, had been so for days, but the hospice people encouraged us to talk to him anyway and to play some music that he liked.  We played spiritual hymns like “Be Not Afraid” and “On Eagle’s Wings”.  We played a lot of Mozart and Beethoven, but we also played Dire Straits and the Doobie Brothers.  At one point my brother asked Alexa to play “The Final Coundown” and he didn’t specify which version so she proclaimed, “The Final Countdown by the Duke University marching band from Spotify” We laughed and let it play on, knowing dad would have laughed if he could.  We got slap happy and played “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult and “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones. I told the funeral director about this, fearing he might think it was in poor taste to play those songs for a dying man, but he smiled and said, “This is a pretty remarkable family.”  Now maybe he said that to all the families he worked with, but I like to think he was sincere.  At dad’s memorial the final song played at his visitation before starting the non-traditional service was “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge.  

I was raised by two remarkable people.  The messages they imprinted on us are so ingrained that I take them for granted. I grew up being told that I could do whatever I wanted to do with my life, that I could love whoever I wanted to love, and that I could worship however and wherever I wanted.  I was taught that I had value and that I had something important to say just by virtue of my being human. I never doubted that I was loved, never doubted that I mattered.  And that knowledge is the most important thing that remains.  

Thomas Dunn October 18, 1940-November 30, 2018

Dee Dunn April 11, 1941-February 14, 2016

Topic: Family

Author: Chris Dunn

Family… I almost skipped this one. The demons in my head offered helpful outs like, “You’ve never missed a week…” and “You’re dealing with a lot lately…” But, I made a commitment and if there’s one thing my family taught me, you follow through with your commitments or you suck. But why? Why was it proving so hard for me to come up with a story about my family? I considered going off the board and writing a piece of simple fiction again or talking about The Pit, my chosen extended family, but was I just avoiding the possibility of pain given the recent loss? It took the better part of a day for the answer to finally dawn on me. As any of you who have followed this weekly vigil faithfully already know, nearly all my stories are about my family.

I have no idea what it’s like for those who are estranged from their families, or who live so far away that they only see them on holidays and special occasions. I marvel in wonder when friends talk about hating their parents or bring up the brother they haven’t seen in years. My family has always been close. Even when we were apart, we were a unit. Each of us children went off to school, but then came back home. When the company I was working for moved to Charlottesville, they offered me a position and money for relocation expenses.  “No thanks,” I said. “I’d wither and die in Virginia.” What I meant was, I couldn’t imagine life of any kind so far removed from my family.

Family vacations crowded in the car, our cabin in the woods, drive-in movies, and parties parties parties! Hopefully, you’ve read the stories. Everything we’ve done we’ve done together. Even these sad last few years, as we’ve had to sit by and watch as unseen villains stole all the color and life from the twin pillars of our family structure, we pulled together. It was a family affair: Bridgid handling all the close in work and answering all our medical questions, Marty and I taking turns driving them to countless doctor’s appointments, Tricia spelling us whenever we needed a moment of reprieve, grandchildren doing the heavy work of lifting their faltering spirits. As the end came close for our Dad, the family support staff grew even larger as Sharon and Drew came from distant haunts not to just help his transition, but to aid the living family through the difficult time. None of us could have done it alone, and I’m thankful beyond words for each and every one of you.

This was our saddest story, and part of me wonders how we’re going to keep it all together as the years continue forward. How does this house stand without those two powerful pillars? I wallow in uncertainty, but I know somewhere down deep that there is really no need to worry. What they built, my parents, will stand long after they’ve gone. This family will endure because of the work they did making a welcoming home built on love, honesty, sharing and comfort. If ever any of us needs anything, the others will be there, just as we’ll be there to share in the good times that come for each of us. My stories are their stories, and they live on though me.

Topic: Family

A Traditional Family Christmas

I fondly remember Christmas with the family when I was a kid. It was rich with tradition! All of us kids would gather in the hills of Kentucky for days of merriment and fun.

First of all on Christmas morning, traditionally, Daddy would get up first, way before dawn, and drink a big batch of his special egg nog. Then traditionally he’d come into the bedroom where all us kids was sleeping, banging on the garbage can lid with a hammer, a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ and a-wakin’ everbody up till Momma come in and whopped him upside his head with the skillet. 

Next, after Daddy come to, traditionally we’d gather around the Christmas tree to open presents. Each of us kids’d get a apple and new underwear. We’d all save up for the whole year to chip in and buy Momma a new hairbrush and Daddy a new can of deodorant. 

Then we’d all pile in the truck to go to Uncle Zebedee’s house for lunch, Momma and Daddy up front & all 11 of us kids in the back. It was colder than a bucket of penguin shit! At Uncle Zeb’s house we’d chow down on a big turkey dinner with all the trimmin’s. Then we’d all start drinkin’ until, traditionally, somebody’d call Uncle Zeb “Zebedee Doo-Dah" and a big fight would start. One year he broke my brother Cletuses leg. Cletus was rollin’ around on the ground shoutin’, “I can’t take the pain - knock me out! Knock me out!” So we all started beatin’ him on the head with two-by-fours until he passed out.

On the way home from the hospital we were all laughin’ as hard as we could about how pissed off them doctors was about Cletuses skull fractures. Then, traditionally, we’d stop off at the church to honor the Baby Jesus because after all, he’s the reason for the season!

Now we’re all growed up and have our own families to have Christmas traditions with. But I’ll never forget Christmas in the country.

BTW - my wife was relieved to find out that this is a work of fiction!

Topic: A Team

 Topic -A Team

Dad lived for eight days after the hospice nurse said he had started the process of dying from his end stage prostate cancer.  

On day one, Thanksgiving Day, they directed me to give morphine every four hours.  I used a little syringe and squirted it into the sides of his mouth.  I set an alarm so I wouldn’t miss a dose—getting up at 1 am and 5am was rough but it would just be for a day or two I told myself.

On day two the nurse came out and told him that he was dying.  After she left he told me, “Well, I may be dying, but I’m not gonna die today.”  They directed me to add crushed anti-anxiety medicine to the every four hour regime.  

On day three I was getting weary.  I’ve been a nurse for 27 years, and it was hard for to accept help.  The hospice nurse suggested that maybe we should move dad to the inpatient unit so he could get medicine around the clock. I declined.  My husband, Jan, a physician joined the team, and started giving some of the doses.  We made a makeshift nurses station in the dining room.  We charted every dose in a notepad that became his “chart”.  

On day four even with Jan’s help things got tougher.  They increased his medication to every two hours.  The hospice nurse said that if we didn’t want to send him to the inpatient unit, they could send a nurse out to the house to give his meds, so I could just relax and “be the daughter.”  I declined.  I knew he wouldn’t want that. He couldn’t tell us, but we had talked about all of this months ago. For the past week I remarked multiple times how stubborn my dad was, how he fought death, and now it hits me that I might be just as stubborn as he was.  My cousin and best friend who we affectionately call “Dude” came in from Tennessee to join the team.  She had an active nursing license but wasn’t currently practicing nursing because she was busy raising her kids.  She insisted we go to our house for a few hours for a much-needed break-that we didn’t decline. When we got back to dad’s we had a team meeting and worked out a schedule.  

By day five dad had stopped talking, eating or opening his eyes.  We continued to give medication every two hours.  Each of us “worked” four hours at a time. I did 8pm- 12 am, Jan did 12a-4a, and Dude did 4a-8a.  Then it was me from 8a-12p, Jan from 12p-4p, and Dude from 4p-8p.  

On day six his pain and discomfort increased so the meds increased to every hour round the clock.  There was very little down time on the four hour shift.  Before giving the meds, you had to swab his mouth out and then there was the task of crushing the anti-anxiety pills and dissolving it in the liquid morphine.  By the time you got done with one med pass you had to get ready for the next one. We charted everything.  Dude found a dry erase board and put it on the “nurses desk”. She wrote the time and the name of the “nurse” on duty.  Then I got silly and wrote:  

Director of Nursing-Bridgid Cornell, RN

Medical Director-Jan Cornell, MD

Quality Assurance Nurse Sharon Snider, LPN

We felt bad that we hadn’t included our other family members so we dubbed my sister Tricia, Director of Hospitality.  My brother Marty was the CFO.  My brother Chris was IT/Tech Support.  My sister in law Vicky was the HR Director, and she fielded complaints from the QA Nurse that the DON was sleeping with the Medical Director, and wasn’t that a conflict of interest? Dad lived on a street called Hollywood so we decided we were Hollywood Hospice.  We were tired and slap happy and laughing through our tears.  It was the only way we could keep going.  

On day seven each of us was exhausted in every way that a person can be exhausted-emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  Dude had to get back home to her family soon.   Jan and I had to return to work soon.  So we had an emergency team huddle in ear shot of our patient.  “I know he wants to die at home, but we can’t keep going on this way,” I said.  We agreed as cold as it sounded that if he didn’t pass away by day nine, we would have no choice to move him to the inpatient unit.  The hospice nurses were amazed every day to find that he was still holding on.  Every day they had told us that they thought this was “it”, this would be “the day.”  

He must have heard it.  He must have decided that although he was scared he wasn’t going to that inpatient unit.  After hundreds of doses on day eight, dad finally let go. 

I’ve never been a big sports person, never played on a championship team or won a tournament.  This was the most important team I’d ever served on.  We won.  And I couldn’t have done it by myself, not for eight days.  It took a team.  

Topic: A Team

Author: Chris Dunn

I try to choke back the sobs as they come hard and heavy, one on top of the other. This fails to stop them, and simply results and adding that painful choking sound you often hear when kids cry too hard. Jim Wood seizes on the moment, “He’s having a baby! Everybody, get back.” To add to his gest, he leaps down in front of me on the bleachers, hands held out as if ready to receive the delivery. All around me on the members of my team burst out laughing. It stings, even worse because I really thought that Jim was my friend.

My first year playing SAY soccer was a whirlwind of emotions. Excitement, fear, and joy all had their part in my initial experience with this new sport. Things started out great, with the anticipation of a new endeavor joined with the nervousness brought on by new situations, new people. Who would be by coach? What kids from school would be on my team? Would we be any good? Would I? I, like most Americans in 1979, knew nothing of soccer, so I had no answers to any of these questions. Mainly, I was glad to simply be playing a sport where no one was throwing a rock at my head or driving it my way propelled at lethal velocity by an aluminum club. Catch it? Isn’t it enough to just avoid being killed by it?

Terry Cox was to be my first coach. I knew him as one of the life guards from the local pool, so he was already an authority figure I was used to listening to. “Don’t run! Cut the horse play! Sit!” His dread commands and fearful notice meant the cessation of summer fun for up to fifteen minutes at a stretch, but still I liked him. He seemed fair, and I rarely misbehaved. He kept the rough-housers off my back poolside, so I felt I could trust him to guard me against any sport-related peer bullying. Very little had changed. He wore a shirt now, but still punctuated his will with a shrill whistle’s scream. “Move up the field! Don’t bunch up! Shoot!”

I think there were maybe 6 teams in that first league, so I knew everyone on my team. They were mostly kids from school, with even a few I hadn’t seen since kindergarten. Billy, Jim, Ruben, Eddie, there were no real bullies, but with the exception of Daryl Gregory, they were all bigger than me. I was, until puberty, a small child - short in stature and tiny of build – a skinny, little kid far more suited to a library than a field. The only thing I had going for me, was I was low to the ground which gave me a tight turning radius. I lacked the size to box out on defense and the strength to kick very far, so Terry dropped both Daryl and I at center forward, pointed us toward the opposing goal with instructions to simply “go long”.

In retrospect, I don’t think Terry knew the first thing about soccer. He was probably just looking to supplement his non-Summer income and jumped at the opportunity presented by the Cincinnati Recreation Commission. Coach a few times and spend your Saturdays in the sun watching your kids run in circles for an hour… Easy money! I think he read a book on soccer, learned the positions and the basic strategy and set us loose. 

We were not good. We lost nearly every game. I never scored or came close to scoring, but it was fine. We had fun. Every game we gathered at our practice field and piled into Terry’s 70s era muscle car. We’d take a circuitous route to the field, a dozen boys stacked on top of each other and bursting out of the windows. We’d hoot and holler at everyone we’d pass. 

Our greatest game, Terry challenged us that if we won, he’d buy us all cokes at a local church festival happening next to the soccer field. We fought hard, scrapping with everything we had. At one point, Jim – not the goalie that day - swatted a ball out of the goal with his fist. I saw the obvious handball, but the ref didn’t. We managed a 2-2 tie, but Terry still bought us the sodas. 

1 – 12 – 1. Not the best record, but I was excited to come back. 

Next year, our team was largely the same, but the coach was different. This time George Snyder had taken over. His son, Cary, was on the team, and he, like everyone else, was huge. I had yet to hit a growth spurt of any kind, and my quick cuts no longer caught anyone by surprise. I was banished to alternate and spent most of my time riding the bench, which was fine by me. Everyone was so big now, stronger and faster, and so much more serious. One time a ball struck my arm in the penalty box and the resultant penalty shot left us tied. Cary punched me in the offending limb after the match. “Damn it! If it wasn’t for Dunn, we would’ve won!”

Our practices centered around our fitness. Coach would run us. We’d start and end every practice jogging a circle around the four backstops that ringed Becker field. Whoever came in last on the opening jog had to do 4 more rotations and essentially spent the entire practice running. Most times the ignominious honor fell to Billy Gustin. He was a heavyset kid, and while we worked at foot drills, he could typically be seen slow stepping it though his third rotation. “Pick it up, Billy!” 

I’ll be honest, I snickered at Billy’s fate more than once, all while trying to find a way to enjoy this new take on a pastime I had used to enjoy. Until the day Billy decided, he’d had enough and stopped showing. As the opening run began, and I lingered toward the rear with Darryl and no one else, it slowly dawned on me that I could very well be the one shuffling along the periphery for over an hour, my lungs burning and my legs aching. No fun, just work… All for a game, I no longer enjoyed. It kindled my competitive spirit, and I fought hard to shoulder Daryl aside, more than willing to have my friend endure torture in my stead. But try as I might, I was weak. I was small. In the last 20 yards, Daryl pulled away. As we crossed the line, I burst into tears. Coach Snyder couldn’t understand what I was crying about, and neither could my teammates. They stood around and joked at my misery while Coach Snyder just tried to get me to breathe normally.

In the end, I didn’t have to run the laps, and to their credit, no one on my team ever mentioned my breakdown again, but still it was clear, sports were not for me. I finished out the year, but I never went back.

Topic: A Scar

 A Scar

I have this shiny white scar on my left kneecap.  I got it over 30 years ago and it’s still there so I think they will bury me with it.  How I got that scar is not the story I want to tell today.  But I do want to talk about how the skin has kind of a rubbery feel to it and how if I were to sustain an injury again to my left knee in the same spot the flesh might not break open quite as easily as it did in 1988.  You see when your flesh scars the thick fibrous connective tissue makes your skin thicker, tougher. 

This morning I sustained a blow to the same spot where I had been struck only 2 years ago.  I found myself in my parents’ living room waiting for the hospice nurse to come out and confirm what I already knew, that my father had died.  It wasn’t the exact same hospital bed parked in front of the upright piano in the living room but it might as well have been.  It wasn’t my 74 year old mom’s lifeless body this time.  That time my father had sat on the opposite side of the bed from me as I told my mom it was okay for her to go, that she had done a good job, that she deserved to rest from her labors.  She had not fought death like he would.  As I told her to go dad had exclaimed, “No, no, don’t go.”  But she left quickly and the loss left me scarred.  

When my dad was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in 2016 I thought it would progress quickly like mom’s cancer had done.  She had lived only 5 months post diagnosis.  Dad had held on for over 2 years.  She signed up for hospice care and died 2 days later.  

Dad fought death with a ferocity I have never witnessed in my 27 years as a nurse.  Thanksgiving morning it took two of us to help him walk the five or so steps from his bed to his lift chair.  But he ate a cheese danish from the North College Hill bakery and the first words out of his mouth when I woke him up were, “Sometimes life is so beautiful.”  

But while the turkey was still roasting his marked decline came on-he could no longer walk and I feed him his turkey and dressing.  When the hospice nurse told him he had started the dying process he refused to believe it, and asked if there wasn’t some physical therapy they could offer.  He couldn’t understand why he was so weak, why his legs had stopped working for him.  He stopped eating or drinking.  And then he stopped speaking or looking at us.  Dad clung to life with ragged breaths and long periods of no breaths at all.  We had at least half a dozen false alarms in his final week in which we gathered around the hospital bed in his living room and held his hand and said our goodbyes.  But in the end he waited until we had all gone to sleep to leave us.  He didn’t want to go.  

My voice broke a little when I called hospice to tell them he was gone.  Saying it out loud meant it was really happening again.  I had made sure the hospice nurse had brought me a syringe so I could remove his catheter.  I know they could have done that, but I wanted and needed something to do while we waited for the funeral home to come and take him.  

And now struggle with how I live without him.  I went to the grocery store yesterday night and cried in the bread aisle because I saw the loaves of Pepperidge Farm Hearty White, his favorite brand that I’d been bringing to his house once a week for the past two years since my mom died.  I tried to play Words with Friends and got weepy because he was at one time my best opponent in the game.  We usually had at least 25 games going at a time between us.  I’m not sure when I will be able to safely wear eye makeup again.  It took weeks after my mom died.  I never knew when some subtle thing would set me off and tears would flow washing all my makeup down my cheeks.  But I know life will go on.  I will go on.  I’ll wear mascara again.  I’ll shop for bread.  And I will kick ass in Words with Friends.  How do I know that I will heal?   Because I have the scars to prove it is possible.