What is the recipe for a happy family? What are the ingredients? Perhaps you pictured faces: a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, grandparents. But loving families have many faces, do they not? Some are bound by blood, some by tradition, others by love and loyalty.
There is a man sitting in a movie theater. He is watching a movie alone, as he has a thousand times before. He does not own a TV, he never has as an adult. It’s just another evening.
The movie ends and he stands to leave. Pain shrieks through his head; weakness envelopes his body. He believes he is dying. “I’ll walk home through the forest,” he decides, “I don’t want to die walking on the street.”
He returns home and sleeps. He awakens refreshed. “Must have been one of those 24-hour bugs,” he thinks.
It wasn’t.
Our phone rang early the morning after Easter. On the caller ID I saw the name Suzanna and my heart sank. My sister would text me on a Monday morning, not call. I knew she had news that I did not want to hear. I steadied my mind, paused to enjoy the last moment of not knowing, and lifted the receiver.
On the other end of the line, her voice, her words, “Dad had a stroke last night.” Continue Reading →
