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The Whiskey On Her Breath

My mother left our home in an ambulance on a sunny spring morning while my sister, my brother, and I were at school. I was in the fourth grade.

The Right Wind

You’ve heard the old lovers’ cliché: “I don’t know where you end and I begin”? I don’t buy it. When my husband’s life ended — that’s when I didn’t know where mine began.

Room 3206

Mr. K. was forty-two and almost dead, kept alive by machines, tubes, and liquids that would at best give him two or three days more. His wife had brought him to the emergency room, probably because he was confused or vomiting or had chest pain. It soon became clear that he had taken too much Vicodin or heroin or any one of a number of potentially lethal drugs, perhaps by accident, perhaps not.

The Last Time

A double-roof shot, an against medical advice form, a pair of champagne flutes

Sunbeams

After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes: “No hablo inglés.”

Ronnie Shakes

Push Here For Tears

I’m sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching as Helen Mirren, portraying England’s monarch in The Queen, happens upon the stag the royal family has been hunting. The animal’s so magnificent he brings a lump to my throat. Not a shot has been fired, and already I’m a mess, my tear ducts revving up at the mere suggestion this creature might get hurt.