Category Archives: Other

On Talking to the Dead

flowers and baseball on a grave marker
 

I talk to dead people. Oh, don’t get worried. It’s not like they talk back. Although, there was that time… What I’m saying is that I have some graves that are my favorite haunts. (And just to be absolutely clear—it’s me that’s doing the haunting.) My grandmother’s for one. But also David’s, because my grandmother is several hours away. David, the firefighter and preacher. As his assigned mentor in the ministry, I spent a lot of hours with him. I also helped with his funeral five years ago after he was thrown from the vehicle … Continue reading On Talking to the Dead

On Keeping a Journal


 

[frame align=”right”][/frame]This morning I sit on my porch and gaze across the bottom lands and pastures of the James River valley. I open up my journal, swipe my fingers across its soft green leather cover, the embossed Celtic design like a brail pattern slides beneath my fingertips. A green satin ribbon curls in the journal’s crease. The pages measure five and a half inches wide from the seam of the spine to the paper’s edge. No more, no less. Lined. For a long time I would not write in journals with lines. Lines forced me … Continue reading On Keeping a Journal