Always Talking
When I was small, we lived above my father’s office in Bed-Stuy. My father said he would spot me and my mother out the window and wonder, “What could those two be talking about?” Since I could speak, I talked. And my mother listened. When the hospice nurse said, “It will be soon,” I wasn’t surprised. Earlier that day, my mother told me, “JoAnn, I just can’t listen to you anymore.” She always listened to me. Five years after her passing, I still haven’t found someone who makes me feel fully heard. Maybe Mom set the bar too high. — JoAnn Leah Rock
Even on the Darkest Day
The subject line: “Here Comes the Sun.” The email: “You don’t know me, but your late husband was my fourth-grade teacher. Every winter solstice, he’d bring out his guitar, and the whole school would sing the Beatles song together. He’d remind us that, even on the darkest day, each one after would bring a little more light. I wanted you to know that every year on this date, my friends and I have a group Zoom to sing and remember Mr. Pearl.” I smiled, thinking how, 14 years after his death, Michael’s light still guides us through the darkest days. — Nancy Glazer Pearl
Putting on the Ritz
Paris, December, 1994: Our first trip together. We stand outside the Ritz and ask a passerby to take our photo. “On our 10th anniversary, we will come back and stay here.” 2004: We’ve bought a flat in London. We’re broke. We spend our anniversary in Paris — in a cheap hotel. 2014: We’re excited and ready. We plan Paris and check the website. The Ritz is closed for renovation. For three years. 2024: We arrive at the Ritz. The staff take our photo and put pictures from our other trips in our room. “Happy anniversary,” I say. “We’ve made it.” — Julian Woolford
Three Witnesses
During the short days of December in 1981, my husband and I went out in his old green pickup truck to get a Christmas tree. Newly married, we’d spent every cent we had on an age-battered farmhouse. We couldn’t afford a tree — we needed to find one. And there, miraculously, it was. My husband sawed its trunk and we watched it fall. I think we both felt a flicker of sadness. A lone deer had also witnessed that secret moment, performed in plain sight. To this day I wonder if the deer knew what he saw. — Elizabeth Johnson
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