Her mother was so precise, so exact in her manners and her words. There were stories, Selma remembered, of Rebecca washing out the family’s meager clothing by the ship’s rail, while her two little daughters sat quietly back against the smokestack. They were some yards away from their mother, who had ordered them not to […]
The first time I held you We were in the hospital room before your mother Came out of recovery. I was ragged From the chaotic night, the fast change Into operating scrubs, the paced urgency Of the nursing staff as they rolled the gurney Through the double doors, two lives Hanging in the balance. You were […]
Father Today you would be ninety-seven if you had lived, and we would all be miserable, you and your children, driving from clinic to clinic, an ancient fearful hypochondriac and his fretful son and daughter, asking directions, trying to read the complicated, fading map of cures. But with your dignity intact you have been gone […]