Tag: Mourning

  • Short Non-Fiction Review: “They Only Come Out at Night” by Kara Melissa

    (The short non-fiction piece “They Only Come Out at Night” by Kara Melissa was presented by Rejection Letters on September 10th, 2025.)

    Image by Janvi Bhardwaj

    I had the hardest time coming up with a solid opening paragraph for this review of Kara Melissa’s non-fiction piece “They Only Come Out at Night.” I like to think that I’m good at introductions, but not this time. The issue I am having is how I can’t wrap my arms around this essay to find one single starting point to explain how this honest, interwoven, melancholic story affected me.

    From the first paragraph, Melissa pulled me in with an intense honesty; confidant in its story telling. Not for shock value, nor did this feel like oversharing, or a performative confession. This was a clear declaration of deep emotions, fully self-aware that maybe some people wouldn’t understand this situation, but it was true.

    What follows are three tangents, platted together with connecting themes of MRI’s, hospitals, logic, brain function, and most importantly love; the compassion, empathy and longings which form in situations Melissa finds herself in. Through all of it, I felt this wrap of a happy melancholy resignation to it all. I wish I could explain that better, but it’s what I feel someone who has loved deeply, and lost greatly would feel towards the world.

    I relished how the essay is presented straight forward and logical – The descriptions of medical treatments, aliments, and the causes. The setting is during the Covid lockdowns, and with the clinical narrative, Melissa creates a feeling of isolation and detachment. This makes her desire for connection, understanding, and compassion all the more pertinent.

    I don’t want to belabor this review, as I am purposefully not going into all the details of the essay, because you should go read it. But I will say that the last section left me with a wonderful feeling of hopefulness. That even in the darkness, when we feel lost, that the love we have for each other can carry us through. With everything going on, I needed to be reminded of that fact.

  • Prose Poetry Review: “Plum Mother” by Michael Nickels-Wisdom

    (The prose poetry piece “Plum Mother” by Michael Nickels-Wisdom was published August 27th, 2025 on Lost Balloon.)

    I don’t know if there is officially a genre of poetry that is about pets, but there should be. Most of these pieces are melancholic in nature and conclude with the pet passing on. What these pieces remind me of is Poe’s “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he states that, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” I would argue, and I am not making a joke here, that you could substitute one’s “pet” and come to the same conclusion.

    Please, let me explain…

    I was struck by this thought of while reading Michael Nickels-Wisdom’s “Plumb Mother.” This is a short prose poetry piece and it would be easy, and unwise, to simply see this as an anecdote of the speaker’s quirky but loved dog. From the beginning, the dog is delivered from above, down to the speaker, and by the second line it is established that the dog is well taken care of and has lived a long life of 17 years with the speaker and their family. In the dog’s middle age, she is given a plum which she treats as a child; acting as if it were nursing and defending the plum when it is “threatened.” Unfortunately, the plum withers, leaving the dog to set it down and mourn its passing.

    Poetry can exist and function in a timeless state, but in this piece we clearly have a past and a present. This dog now exists in the past, as we are told that in the second line, which hits on the “most poetical topic in the world,” while also establishing a melancholy feel for the rest of the poem. Though the story of the dog’s actions with the plum are humorous, it is in the last line where it is understood that there are two sets of mourning occurring here; the dog and the speaker. Yes, this is a piece about a funny incident with a dog, but it is a testament to the affection the speaker has for their pet, and to the joy and affirmation that a pet can bring to one’s life.

    It is tragic when a loved pet passes on from our families. They do give so much to enrich our lives. Reading “Plum Mother” reminded me of the tragic truth of having a pet, as we will out live them, but loving an animal as a family member is always a gift.

  • The Ebbs and Flow of Christmas Time (Unedited)

    Christmas time is here again, just in case you didn’t know.

     

    The year has flown by. The tree is up, and we are getting ready to start doing all of the Holiday stuff. You know, shopping, wrapping gift, baking cookies, seeing friends. The usual. And I do enjoy celebrating Christmas in New York City. For all the things this City is famous for, it really is a Holiday Town.

     

    It’s taken awhile for Christmas to start feeling fun again for me after the passing of my Ma. The absence of a parent during this time of year seems to hammer home the void that has been left. I think I have been doing a good job with trying to keep Christmas fun for the kid, and I do worry that my sorrow and mourning might affect her enjoyment of the Season. I think I have succeeded in this effort.

     

    I can also admit that slowly, year by year, the joy of Christmas has started to slowly return to me. It’s still not the same, and certain things, traditions, still don’t ring true as they used to. But now, I feel the kid’s excitement of this time of year, and that is a replenishing feeling that helps alleviate the experience of loss.

     

    And that is where I am now. I miss my mother, and I know that my Christmas will never feel the way they did when she was around, and that’s okay. My Christmas now is about my family, and making the kid have memories, and building something new on top of the love that was shared with me.

  • Distracted and Memories

    Sometimes I get ahead on my blog writing, and can put a couple of posts “in the can” and schedule them to go up on my site later in the week. Most of the time, I write a blog post on the fly. An idea will come into my head in the morning, and when I get a minute later in the day, I hammer it out and put it up. This might be obvious to most of you due to the amount of type-o’s and awful uses of grammar.

    Today, I lacked an idea in the morning, and went through the normal routine of trying to come up with something. I read the news, checked out social media, and talked to the wife, but nothing was sticking. My last-ditch effort was to go on Wikipedia and see if something was there.

    Did you know that on this day, the US Department of Justice acquired the military prison on Alcatraz Island, which would become Alcatraz Prison? Then I started reading about the failed escape attempt from Alcatraz. You know, the one Escape from Alcatraz was based off of.

    And it all reminded me of taking the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco, which runs by Angel Island, Alcatraz and Treasure Island. I mean, the ferry doesn’t get that close to Alcatraz, but close enough to know what it is, and see the prison buildings.

    It was a great ferry trip on the water, and I made the trip four times, once at night, which was pretty amazing; The lights of San Francisco, and the whole Bay area; The stars, and the sound of the waves. I will probably never ride the Larkspur ferry again, though it is there in my memory as one of the happier moments in my life, while also being one of the worst years of my life.

    It had only been six months since my mother’s passing, and I was in the Bay area trying to live my life, even though there was this huge hole in my soul that just left me feeling sad all the time. But I kept trying to push forward, to keep living and experiencing life. And I knew while it was happening, being on that ferry and watching/feeling the fog begin to roll in, that this was something unique; a moment worth experiencing; Seeing and doing something new. And it was special. But tinged with the melancholy of knowing that I was doing it all alone.

  • Edgy

    I guess it was this weekend, that I started to notice that I was getting edgy. The wife refers to it as “being feisty” because I find reasons to argue over little things. It’s not like they are real arguments, more like just contradictory comments – never ending comments. Either way, it gets on people’s nerves.

    And it first, I don’t know why everything is rubbing me the wrong way. I have a twitch in my eye and jaw, FYI. Then I look at the calendar and see that on Saturday it’s been five years since my mom’s passing.

    Now it makes sense.

    After my mom passed, I remember reading an essay about how the author was dealing with their grief, and how the week of their parent’s passing, they would find themselves angry, and lashing out. They knew why they were doing it, and even though they tried to stop it, they couldn’t.

    I feel like that. I feel I should know better, and not do it, but also, doing it feels correct.

    What I was surprised by was forgetting, or a better phrase to use would be, not remembering that my mom’s passing was coming. A little of it was avoiding the anniversary. Another bit was that I actually forgot. I went into October thinking about Fall, leaves, gourds, apple picking, and Halloween. Like you should. This was the first year where October didn’t mean “mom’s death.”

    But sub-consciously, I did know. Maybe it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, but it was rattling around back there. It was always be there, and that’s okay.