Ever since, I wake up this day aware that he is not with us; the holiday focus seems to unsheathe the emotions that much more intensely. That year I toiled up the freeway to the maternal side family get-together on Christmas Day, which we did for the sake of the younger generation, but I will never forget the helpless misery mirrored in faces, nor ( Read more... )

Just a few snips ( Read more... )

Yesterday afternoon my 98-year-old great-aunt stood in the old farmhouse where she'd been a child, her careful feet on the break between the newer part of the house and the old. Gazing down at the scrubbed floorboards covered with a modern rug, she said, "My father lay right there in his casket. I was five years old, and I had no idea what was ( Read more... )

Heirlooms and lost arts.