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Lost

Isabel is ninety-one and stands about four and a half feet tall. She has blue-gray eyes, a gray mustache, and four gray hairs below her lower lip. I often see her wandering the corridors of the dementia unit in the nursing home where I work as a chaplain.

Cristinaland

About ten years ago Cristina was studying to become a dentist when she got flattened by a drunk driver while crossing a busy street in Zacatecas, Mexico. Her head hit the pavement, and she was knocked unconscious. She spent a month in bed with a fractured pelvis and much longer learning to walk again, but eventually she resumed her studies.

Up All Night

Ovid’s Metamorphoses; sixteen yellow, legal-size pages; the Sea of Tranquility

Tell Me Something

Everything of my brother’s fits on a couple of shelves: boxes of records, books, a few photographs. When you’re killed at eighteen, you don’t leave much behind.

Chance Encounters

Thirty-fifth high-school reunion, fly-fishing, the 1960 World Series

Sunbeams

The honeymoon is over when he phones that he’ll be late for supper — and she has already left a note that it’s in the refrigerator.

Bill Lawrence