My husband Jerry gave me many gifts over the years, not the least of which was his generous capacity to listen with empathy and imagination. We shared a professional life as psychoanalytic psychotherapists. He led our family - Andrew and Janine and me - into outdoor activities and supported our interests and endeavors. In his last year, as a glioblastoma claimed his brain, another gift emerged - an elevated alertness to the physical world:
Your attention shifted to things at hand—fish splashing in Robinson Pond, the delicate threads of a cobweb just off the rail trail, orange salamanders you tenderly lifted to safety on the road’s shoulder. Through the years you set up your telescope on dark nights, but in your last days, unable to carry it outside, you viewed the stars with naked eyes. Sitting side by side on our deck on a sunny afternoon, we watched drifting clouds. As birds swirled upwards, you said, “We have a whole new way of seeing the sky.”
About the Author
My essays have been published in the Berkshire Edge, The New York Times Metropolitan Diary, River Teeth, Still: The Journal, and The Tishman Review. I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I have authored three poetry chapbooks: Dreaming Barranquilla (Troy Book Makers 2009), Tuscaloosa Bypass (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Harmonica (Liquid Light Press 2014). Three poems appear in the anthology, Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands (Shabda Press 2017).
