Jean Raffa and I spent two days brainstorming and writing a workshop proposal. The night after I left Jeanie’s home, I had this dream: I look down into the streambed on my land. My small stream is a
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The flower-decorated cake says Happy 100th Birthday. We hand out forks and napkins. Around fifty elders, over 90% women, murmur at the tables, their eyes filled with chocolate anticipation. Unlike many of us who always run late,
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The phone rang. That made twenty-two calls from my mother-in-law Virginia that afternoon. I knew because my phone counts how many times a particular number dials my house on a given day. My house phone is the only
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“I have Meniere’s Disease,” I told the receptionist when I called Strong Audiology in Rochester, NY a year ago. “I used to be your patient, but recently I’ve seen someone closer to home. I’m a little desperate. I
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“I’m sure it’s cancer,” the oncologist said in an I’m-telling-it-straight voice in 2006. He forced himself to look into Vic’s eyes and then mine. “We don’t know what kind, so we can’t treat you until we figure
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Anthony Damiani soon realized that the students who had gathered around him to learn meditation and philosophy needed psychological understanding. It was the late 1960s. We sat on lumpy cushions on the floor in the American Brahman Bookstore in Ithaca while
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A New Year’s gift of night skies and poems of joy and hope. Photos labeled “at home” were taken on my hill on the east side of Seneca Lake in the New York Finger Lakes. In 1972, my husband
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First the old car had to be replaced, the one Vic and I bought before he got sick. Then the kitchen drain clogged and flooded the floor. Water dripped through the pine boards to the cellar. I called
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Lighting one candle from another – Winter night. ~Yosa Buson When I was a kid, no one helped me face catastrophe or loss. In the 1950s, everyone I knew feared a nuclear attack. Teachers told us to hide under our desks,
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“Vic was a skilled and entertaining teacher,” I say to my dream therapist after watching a video of my deceased husband giving a talk. She smiles her “I see something” smile. “So what are you?” she asks.
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