My poet friend, Mara, lost her husband, Cory, unexpectedly just before Jimmy died in July. She was with Cory when it happened. By October I was ready to drive out to visit her. We picked apples from her orchard and sat on the edge of the woods by a rock cropping, Cory’s favorite spot, and […]
AKA Landing: I found the dentist’s appointment card while rummaging through my pocketbook on October 29th. I was cleaning it out in preparation for my trip to Boston to visit my father in the hospital. The card said my next cleaning would be March 20. Isn’t that my dad’s birthday? The first day of spring? […]
Love makes people ferocious. ~ Michael Mead My family tends to go through dramatic events in pairs. First there was a sister and a brother who were both hit by cars when they were teenagers. Both were pedestrians about the same age and needing to change the life course they were on when it […]
I thought of my brothers, Jim and Dan, a lot during our road trip out west. Every time I saw an unusual cloud formation, I thought of Jim, the amateur weatherman with a flag at the Blue Hill Observatory erected in his honor after his death 4 years ago. Listening to music on the truck […]
It was the 4th anniversary of my brother Danny’s death this past Monday. In honor of it, I’m posting an excerpt from “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book I was compelled to write after losing my brother Jim, and then Dan, a month later. Written in a conversational style, the book is structured by […]
This past Monday was the 4th anniversary of my brother Jimmy’s death. My brother Danny was destined to go a month after Jim. The photo is of my brothers, Bobby and Joey, raising Jim’s tribute flag at the 1st annual James Redman Memorial picnic, held at the Blue Hill Weather Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts, where […]
Walking on Nantasket Beach in my hometown peninsula of Hull, Massachusetts, makes me think of my brother Jim. Jim lived in Hull for most of his childhood and all of his adult life. He was an ardent weather enthusiast and a respected member of the local weather community who frequently took photographs at the beach, […]
I recently posted a photo of my childhood home in Hull, Massachusetts, which was taken by eminent domain and burned to the ground to make way for a town sewage plant. Several people who loved that house as much as I did left comments. I also got this comment from a blogger friend, “I didn’t […]
Death is real. It comes without warning. No one escapes it. Soon my body will be a corpse. ~ Buddhist passage When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died a month apart in 2001, the reality of impermanence hit me hard. I’ve been reading about death and contemplating it ever since. Although I’ve experienced firsthand how […]
