Months To Years https://monthstoyears.org/ Wed, 02 Oct 2024 21:51:53 +0000 tr hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7 There’s No Place http://monthstoyears.org/theres-no-place/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:31:34 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9872 Mom and Dad’s house, a two-story white farmhouse with a wide front porch, sat on four and a half acres with some trees, a couple barns, and a garage. It was built by my great-great-grandfather, the one whose name is in the front of the box of antique books I just went through. This place […]

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]]> Bath http://monthstoyears.org/bath/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:18:50 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9868          Be careful; wring it tightly in the tub and lather. Face the back, those ribs and spine, like beams that fail to taut a flaccid hide. And hold the hand when senile tears combine with ancient folds I crimped in stormy youth as gurgling creeks impressed upon that veil. But now, I care for you. […]

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]]> Eating Anything You Want Until You’re a Hundred http://monthstoyears.org/eating-anything-you-want-until-youre-a-hundred/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:09:54 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9864 Even though she was in her nineties, I thought my mother should give up eating frozen cream puffs and chocolate éclairs. But she seldom took my advice. At barely ninety-six pounds and with a relatively strong body, she took the advice of a doctor who said at her age she could eat anything she wanted. […]

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]]> The Hand Whisper http://monthstoyears.org/the-hand-whisper/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:54:18 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9860 dawn is worse the years pass one by two on my side I wait for its return a hand whisper as her breath haunts my nape’s chilled hairs my heart remembers that curved arm kiss warming up sleeping skin the way she made air move how it crossed over like a glider finding home I […]

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]]> Alone and Surrounded http://monthstoyears.org/alone-and-surrounded/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:48:05 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9856 The post Alone and Surrounded appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> Breathless http://monthstoyears.org/breathless/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:40:27 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9851 Breathless, Maria calls my name. We’ve known each other for twenty-five years. Even so, her pressured speech is hard for me to follow. When I turn towards her, she slows down. “Doctora, Doctora por favor I need to talk with you now.” All those discussions about the differences between doctors and nurse practitioners, and she […]

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]]> My Last Eclipse http://monthstoyears.org/my-last-eclipse/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:21:49 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9838 It’s probably just the way the trees cast awkward shadows in the strange diminished light, but if we’re talking totality, this was my last eclipse. The short run of this much-hyped celestial show is over, and any repeat or revival is thirty years or so away, but even as the curtain closed and the wild […]

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]]> How Do You Get Through It? http://monthstoyears.org/how-do-you-get-through-it/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:05:48 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9932 “How did you get through it?” I’d ask adoptive parents-to-be. This was a question that I, as a social worker, asked over and over and over again. Whatever or whomever parents do/use/lean on in hard times may be needed again when they had a child placed in their home. I would remind them of the […]

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]]> Looking for Blackberries http://monthstoyears.org/looking-for-blackberries/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 22:55:01 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9929 We ran to the trellises, ready to hand-rake the bushes For our bounty of ripened fruit, a half hour till Closing. So many tart, magenta berries in early July. No breeze. We needed the loamy smell of the farm, To be small as we faced its panoramas, as we Walked into the whir of its […]

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]]> Olympic Champion http://monthstoyears.org/olympic-champion/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 22:30:48 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9920 The tremor starts not as a temblor, Not even as an autumn rustling of leaves. It starts as a butterfly rising, fluttering— As the briefest gesture of wings. So Quickly it vanishes, repeats with longer Visits—these can linger for years— Until the flutter is expelled By the pummel of a one-two punch, Then punch after […]

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]]> Child’s Violin http://monthstoyears.org/childs-violin/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:56:55 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9913 Their names had been excised, plucked away Without sound, then flipped into the fog, Joining that haze of songs she could no longer Retrieve. Yet she rose and applauded the instant She spotted her children and grandchildren At the door, her granddaughter dangling the ebony Case that held her half-size violin. As always, The grandmother […]

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]]> Words My Mother Taught Me http://monthstoyears.org/words-my-mother-taught-me/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:42:02 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9909 Peplum, empire, epaulet, portrait collar. My mother taught me that features of fashion had names. Her wardrobe was carefully curated, and it reflected her contradictions: traditional but also trendy with a certain creativity. My parents shared a modest-sized walk-in closet. My father’s clothing was stored on the same side as his writing hand, on the […]

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]]> An Orange Tree in Marrekech http://monthstoyears.org/an-orange-tree-in-marrekech/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:13:16 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9901 The post An Orange Tree in Marrekech appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> Things of My Mother’s that Disappeared After She Died http://monthstoyears.org/things-of-my-mothers-that-disappeared-after-she-died/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 20:55:28 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9896 Photos from her childhood. I don’t recall ever seeing photos of her as a baby, or as a girl growing up in North Toronto with her mom and two brothers. Did I look like her? Her family had no pictures of her Chinese immigrant father who died when she was a toddler. No one ever […]

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]]> House of Blue http://monthstoyears.org/house-of-blue/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 23:01:43 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9973 The moment I step into the Mauka Chapel of Mililani Memorial Park and Mortuary, the chill of the air bites at the skin on my arms, neck, and face. The amount of electricity needed to produce this icy flow of air that billows down the aisle and into the pews astounds me. Just a year […]

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]]> The Ghosts of Beautiful Selves http://monthstoyears.org/the-ghosts-of-beautiful-selves/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:50:03 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9968 I can no longer picture my mother, last memory of a face erased. I can study her fading photos. I can bring back the timbre of her voice, her common sayings but her expression flickers, quick sequencing too fast to capture. How many years has it been? How many false apparitions? I once heard a […]

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]]> Secondary Color http://monthstoyears.org/secondary-color/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:40:16 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9964 Purple was the color my dad was wearing when he died. A purple polyester polo shirt. What he called a Banlon, from some 1950s clothing brand none of us kids knew of. It was my mom’s favorite color and her favorite shirt of his. She laid it out for him to wear at least once […]

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]]> My Brother-in-Law Called http://monthstoyears.org/my-brother-in-law-called/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:21:31 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9959 to ask if I want tomato plants he has extra his wife is dying she wants to spend her last days at home they just returned from the hospital again a hospice nurse with her now she refuses a hospital bed in the living room he asks how many do you want I want to […]

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]]> Fear of Fame http://monthstoyears.org/fear-of-fame/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:10:51 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9952 The post Fear of Fame appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> The Nursing Home  http://monthstoyears.org/the-nursing-home/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:02:56 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9947 A strange noise, a sort of rattling, came from the room at the end of the corridor. It was almost time  for afternoon break. I dumped the Hoover and box of cleaning materials in a large cupboard, before walking across the yard to the cleaners’ room. The regulars were already sitting round with soggy digestive […]

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]]> Live and Love http://monthstoyears.org/live-and-love/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 21:51:04 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9940 The post Live and Love appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> In the ICU http://monthstoyears.org/in-the-icu/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 21:38:56 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9936 I woke in the dark. The sheets were rough and smelled of Clorox. White curtains around my bed, ghosts with thin hearts. The woman next to me had a rasping cough. I was seventeen. Seventy-five pounds. My best. I had overheard the doctor tell my father I might die. Heart muscle damaged. Heart barely beating. […]

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]]> Kindness http://monthstoyears.org/kindness/ Mon, 27 May 2024 20:00:07 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9685 With a sheaf of prescriptions fanned out in my hand and circles as dark as plums beneath my eyes, I waited in line at our neighborhood pharmacy. That morning, I brought my husband home from the hospital after surgery to remove a metastatic brain tumor that—seemingly out of the blue—caused him to collapse at work […]

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]]> Steven A. White: 1955-2024 http://monthstoyears.org/steven-a-white-1955-2024/ Mon, 27 May 2024 19:20:51 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9667 The post Steven A. White: 1955-2024 appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> Ladder http://monthstoyears.org/ladder/ Mon, 27 May 2024 19:47:43 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9681 Your mother died on her knees while scrubbing another woman’s floor— the pail of dirty water a kind of Irish headstone. The “L” it made with her body stood for labor and for loss. Memory itself is perpendicular, always righting what is wrong— or attempting to. We live and die in different planes… How many […]

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]]> Alone Together, In Sickness and In Health http://monthstoyears.org/alone-together-in-sickness-and-in-health/ Mon, 27 May 2024 19:38:32 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9677 “Call this number to schedule the oxygen delivery,” the case manager instructed me, “and I’ve already arranged for a wheelchair.” She handed me a printout, several pages long, of discharge instructions. And the hospital pharmacy delivered two shopping bags of medication to take home. My husband was coming home, shaky after weeks of antibiotics, blood […]

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]]> Helium Year: on the Death of an Adult Son http://monthstoyears.org/helium-year-on-the-death-of-an-adult-son/ Mon, 27 May 2024 19:28:44 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9672 I don’t want to lose this year. I don’t want to keep it either. I want it to float above me follow me, shine on me, stay tethered to me and the cosmos by space age filaments, suspended. It’s not that I fear the gravity of it, there is love in the heft. Not a […]

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]]> After You Were Gone  http://monthstoyears.org/after-you-were-gone/ Mon, 27 May 2024 19:09:31 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9663 The beech trees in the garden laid down their branches as your name cut the air.

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]]> Grief Violation http://monthstoyears.org/grief-violation/ Tue, 04 Jun 2024 23:09:32 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9724 Police Report Case number: 002957                                                                       Today’s Date: 11/12/2023 Reporting Officer: Officer Roger Smith                               Date of Original Incident: 3/18/2019 Statute: In America, there is a socially appropriate timeline and specific rules for mourning. For the death of a spouse, parent, or child, these being sanctioned grief circumstances, you get one month to mourn at most. One […]

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]]> Lonesome Desk (Pioneertown) http://monthstoyears.org/lonesome-desk-pioneertown/ Tue, 04 Jun 2024 22:52:39 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9719 The post Lonesome Desk (Pioneertown) appeared first on Months To Years.

]]> We Were Lovers. Then Casual Correspondents. What Are We When You Are Dying? http://monthstoyears.org/we-were-lovers-then-casual-correspondents-what-are-we-when-you-are-dying/ Tue, 04 Jun 2024 22:42:31 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9715 My daughter died twelve years ago. She was around for just seventeen days, not really long enough to give me many memories. Yet every day, I remember her, and then I remember that she is not the last person to die. People keep dying, all the time. It’s what we do. And you don’t become […]

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]]> Sea Glass http://monthstoyears.org/sea-glass/ Tue, 04 Jun 2024 22:29:47 +0000 https://monthstoyears.org/?p=9711 The day my mother dies she shovels sand into a beach pail to take home. At the time, I don’t understand. We have come to this shoreline for eons, and we will return. But in the evening she leaves me in her sleep, and I dream I am buried in sand. Only then do I […]

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