The winter of 1994 nearly broke us. The crop had failed, my husband Earl was sick, and we were two months behind on everything. I remember praying at the kitchen window, not even sure what I was asking for anymore, just that we not lose the farm that had been in Earl’s family for generations. … Read more
I raised my son David in a little blue house on Sycamore Street. His father and I bought it when David was a baby, and after his father passed, David and I only grew closer. He checked on me constantly. Some might say he hovered, but I never minded. When my sister died two states … Read more
I’m eighty-one and I live alone, and the thing I dread most about winter is the snow. My hip won’t let me shovel anymore, and a plowed-in driveway can leave me stranded for days. So last winter, when I woke to find my drive already cleared, I thought I’d dreamed it. But it happened again … Read more
Gerald and I were married for forty-one years, and for at least thirty of them he wore the same brown wool winter coat. It was shapeless and patched and I teased him about it constantly, but he loved that coat and refused every new one I ever bought him. When he passed last November, that … Read more
At seventy-eight I was doing just fine on my own. I kept a garden, drove myself to church, and made my own decisions, thank you very much. So when my daughter Claire started insisting I move into Rosewood Care Home, I was baffled and, frankly, insulted. ‘I don’t need a home, Claire. I’m not sick,’ … Read more
My Thomas is buried in a quiet corner of Fairhaven Cemetery, under an old oak that drops acorns on his headstone every autumn. For twenty years I have come every Saturday morning with a thermos of coffee and sat with him a while. It is the most peaceful hour of my week. The grave right … Read more
I was married to my first husband, Raymond, for fifty years before cancer took him. The loneliness after was a physical thing, like a coat made of cold that I couldn’t take off. I did not expect to ever feel warm again. Then I met Harold at the senior center, over of all things a … Read more
For as long as I can remember, a small carved wooden box sat on the left corner of my mother’s dresser. It was walnut, dark with age, with a tiny brass clasp that was never once locked. It didn’t need to be. My mother had a better lock than any key: my promise. I was … Read more
Walter and I were married for thirty-nine years, and in all that time there was exactly one thing in our house he kept from me: the bottom right drawer of the old oak desk in his study. It had a small brass lock, the kind you’d find on a child’s diary, and he wore the … Read more
She thinks it was because I wanted my independence back. That’s what I let her believe, because it was easier than the truth. The truth is, I heard her on the phone one night, telling her husband she was ‘tired of managing two households.’ I was sitting right there in the next room, folding towels … Read more