I read the news. Part of me was “not surprised”(If you are around long enough you see a lot.) while there was another part of me that just sat there in disbelief. Another person I spent years with, tragically dead. I sent the news on to my siblings. They wrote me back in disbelief. Death at the hands of a family member. It is not the first time in the last few years I have “been here”. I would like to tell you it is a dream. But it is not. Continue reading Anger He Wrote
The other night I had a dream. In the dream I walked into a room where someone had been murdered, killed in cold blood. I was in a large windowed room. Many floors above a city. Hardwood floors, white walls, large windows. No furniture in my view. Empty, except for the blood splattered floor and a long white extension cord.
Who has dreams about murder? I have only had a few in 20 plus years, but when I do I look for the message. I do not get weird about it or suspect someone’s impending death.
I continued to watch the room. I felt that I was to move the cord to another outlet. To set a trap for someone who I thought was going to come in. I unplugged the cord and I moved it across the room. I left that room. Apparently I had some other things to do. Continue reading A Murder…Will We Choose Life?
It was 50 years ago today that I walked out of my third/fourth grade classroom. The buses were lined up at the curb of our small school in Northford Connecticut. As I was walking down the hall I met my teacher Mrs. Clapp in the hallway. Tears were in her eyes. She grabbed my shoulders gently and said “The President has been shot.” It was a long ride home. Not that long later the President of the United States had died in Dallas.
I was 8 years old. I cried for days. I remember sitting in our country home’s kitchen with my mom and dad both crying and I was sobbing. Like most of the nation we watched the black and white TV screen showing everything about this young president, John F. Kennedy. Like so many others we just could not believe it. Because it was a weekend (He was shot on Friday.) there was no other calling. Our small family sat around the TV.
There was no internet (Al Gore was not around yet.) and there were no cell phones. The nation watched on TV’s across the nation or listened to the history being made by AM radio. Hardly a one does not remember that fateful day. Where they were, what they were doing.
I cried as I watched “John boy” salute his father at a mass on Monday. What would I do without my father?
We were a nation in crisis. The blindfolds had been ripped off and the results not pretty. My generation had real enemies we faced and good and bad were easy to discern. We were not inundated daily with horror and desensitized by death, blood and mayhem. Continue reading The Changing Of A Nation
Our babysitter, Mrs. H, was very nearsighted and very slow. She was also very excitable. One day I decided to “kill” my brother. We were supposed to be washing dishes. Larry and I came up with this elaborate plan for his “demise.” We took an old knife and broke off the blade. We taped it to his chest and had him lie in front of the cabinets. I poured watered down ketchup on his chest and on the floor. Then I yelled “Stop that or I will kill you!” Mrs. H. yelled to me to be quiet, but I kept screaming and then Larry did his death scream. At that, Mrs. H came in to the kitchen and saw my brother lying in a “puddle of blood.” Continue reading Mrs. H and The “Murder”
