by Jody | Family, Human Condition
My sister, Buffy, and I have managed to pare down the items left behind by our parents after they left this earth, and any need they may ever have had for the things that still remain. Buffy and I were resolute about donating, passing on, and discarding. But we found...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
My dad never expected to live to be as old as I am now, and I don’t think he was completely prepared for it. When he actually outlived my mother — for whom he had prepared for every possibility when she was “left alone” — he grudgingly...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy
She was everything I wanted to be in 1957 in the second grade. The only girl and the youngest child in a small-town Illinois family, Susie O’Dell had it all. The dresses with the matching stiff slips that kept her in a perpetual ballerina state, the lace-edged...
by Jody | Family, Human Condition
To understand his death, it is helpful to recall his childhood trip to the department store Santa some 80 years before. His mother had taken him, and had been horrified that when Santa leaned down to little Alexander to ask what he wanted for Christmas, my eventual...
by Jody | Family, Human Comedy, Human Condition
We hit the milestone of 32 years of marriage, and wondered how that much time could possibly have gone by. I suppose any couple that has been married more years than they were old when they put on their rings wonders that. Our wedding was a very simple civil ceremony,...
by Jody | Family, Human Condition
Recently my sister, Buffy, sorted through a box of old old pictures and came upon one taken of our aunt, Imy, in about 1924 on the day she graduated from high school. She is dark-haired and serious in the photo, wearing her cap and gown in the same pose that every...
