Posts tagged death of a parent
Love's Pressure Valve

Once again grief knocks down my door, tosses the furniture, grabs my throat, and slams me up against the wall. Grief has no manners. It’s not polite, or thoughtful, or kind. Grief is a punch to the gut and then another. It doesn’t stop when you’ve had enough, when you cry uncle, when you tell it you did your best and to leave you the fuck alone. It’s like birth, noisy and painful and messy, no way out but through.

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Plots

My mother’s family is buried in a little cemetery at the edge of Magnolia, Iowa, population 175. It’s about forty minutes north of Omaha. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it,” my dad used to say. Mom’s parents lay there, encircled by generations of relatives. Most had worked the surrounding land, their farms scattered across the Missouri River Valley.

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