Journeys of a Wandering Wordsmith
Journey with me on my blog!
Everybody Needs an Uncle Pat
I became an uncle six years ago, and Uncle Pat has always been my template for uncling. Because everyone needs an Uncle Pat. Someone to remember them on their birthdays, buy them Slurpees, ask about their lives, and drive them around on special journeys. If my nieces or future nephews ever have anything positive to say about their Uncle Tom, it will be because Uncle Pat showed me how to uncle well.
'Twas the Night Before Treatment
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I set out on a new quest. A new quest within an already new journey of the last couple months – this unforeseen journey with an autoimmune disease. Tomorrow begins this new quest for healing and recovery. Remission. Or so I hope.
A Time to Refrain from Embracing
Looking down at my precious niece in my arms, I realized it's really something, how we need physical touch to survive. Need to be swaddled. Need to be held. Need to feel the warmth of another human emanating against us, if only to affirm to one another we are not alone in this desert. To embrace for my soul or not to embrace for my body? Life with an autoimmune disease during the pandemic of the century: one calculated risk after another.
My Name on a Stone
I traveled to Pennsylvania for Christmas, my first trip there since Ahh died this summer. My grandfather's gravestone wasn't chiseled until just recently, so this was my first time visiting it. Seeing it. It was the first time I'd ever seen my name on a stone.
This Hurts
Holidays are sneakily hard on me. I have a good family. A great one, even. I am a blessed guy. And yet the holidays attack me from both sides: reminders of a past drifting further away and a future growing more realized.
