Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “something that opens.”
Something that opens is my first chapbook, Hearts. In a shameless exercise in self-promotion, I’m using this post to draw attention to a post that I just finished about the second anniversary of Hearts.
Check it out!
Photo Credit: Ellen Morris Prewitt
On December 7, 2024, I shared Ellen Morris Prewitt’s essay about the 150th anniversary of the Vicksburg Massacres.
Ellen is the granddaughter of the main instigator of the Massacres and has been sharing her experiences as she has researched her family’s involvement and grappled with the continuing legacy of racism.
Now, Ellen has a powerful essay entitled “Granddaughter of The Instigator” in the Juneteenth special edition of Salvation South, which delves further into her witness to the legacy of the Vicksburg Massacres on a community and personal level. This essay is an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress, Loving My Hateful Ancestors. You can read a post about the publication of the essay in Ellen’s Very Southern Voice blog and, while you’re there, subscribe to her newsletter and/or follow her blog.
I just realized that I keep referring to Ellen Morris Prewitt by her first name, as though we were acquainted in real life, but we only met each other through blogging. Her writing is so vivid and heartfelt, though, that I feel as if we know each other through our posts and our comments on each other’s blogs with a side of occasional personal emails.
I’m a fan of Ellen’s and invite you to join me!
After sharing that we have a new Kousa dogwood in our yard last Wednesday, I though I’d share a picture from this week with it flowering alongside the peonies.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/06/11/one-liner-wednesday-better/
Our landscapers just brought us a new Kousa dogwood for our front yard to replace one that was dying.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/06/04/one-liner-wednesday-what-day-was-it-yesterday-anyway-edition/
Today is the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death. I know many people who, even decades later, tell me they think of their deceased mother every day. I confess that I can’t make that claim. While I spoke to my mother nearly every day of my life, this became increasingly difficult in the last months of her life as her heart failure robbed her brain of oxygen. After her death, I had many months of flashbacks to those last difficult years, while also dealing with my father’s grief. He used to talk to and about my mother often, but, over time, his own heart failure erased the memory of her death. Toward the end, he would ask when she was coming to visit him in the skilled nursing unit and all I could say is that he would see her soon.
The photo above is of the memorials we placed at the memorial park where their cremains are inurned. I wrote this post explaining their significance when we placed them in 2022.
On Mother’s Day, I went to visit their resting place and was shocked to find that our memorials had been removed. I contacted the office, hoping that they had been placed in storage but they were just gone.
Alone in the room near my parents’ grave, I cried and told them I was sorry that these special memorials had been lost.
I think that is the only time that I have spoken aloud to my parents there.
My family has been supportive of me as I’ve dealt with the loss of these special and meaningful memorials to my parents. I’ve decided to print a photo of them and put it in a plastic frame to place on the table near their grave. That way, if it disappears, I would be able to replace it easily.
In the post linked above, I wrote about feeling more at peace when we placed the memorial. I think I had come to a place in living with loss where I could set aside the trauma of my parents’ final years and deaths and have better memories surface. I’m not sure if that is the point where I stopped thinking about my parents every day or not.
What I do know every day is that my parents gifted me not only with life but also with the foundation of who I am.
Their legacy is always with me, whether or not I bring it to consciousness.
The yet-to-be-revealed dessert choice that B made for Mother’s Day was carrot cake with cream cheese icing.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/05/14/one-liner-wednesday-one-of-two/
This photo from almost eight years ago is three generations of mothers in my family, Nana and me with daughter E holding baby ABC, my first grandchild and Nana’s first great-gandchild.
This Mother’s Day is without Nana, who passed away in May 2019, and with E and ABC living in London, where Mother’s Day was celebrated a couple of months ago.
Here, B baked squash maple muffins for breakfast and is planning a special dinner, chicken and artichokes over artichoke ravioli with a yet-to-be-revealed-to me dessert. Daughter T is here with us, which is a blessing.
Still, if feels strange to not be with any of the other mothers in my family, except in spirit.
I am wearing a shirt that was my mother’s, a gift from our friend Angie, who passed away twenty years ago.
Mother’s Day began as a call for peace. (That post contains Julia Ward Howe’s original proclamation, still well worth reading in our current war-torn world.) Today, I wish peace to all, especially to all who have mothered others, whether still living or deceased.
Love and compassion bring peace.
A gazebo/bandstand in a park in my town.
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/01/14/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-14th-2025/
Growing up in rural New England, white Christmases were a given, but now, with climate change, they are a special treat here in the Northeast. Wherever you are and whatever holidays you celebrate at this time of year, I wish you peace, love, joy, and safety.
This greeting is brought to you as part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/12/25/one-liner-wednesday-happy-holidays/
We are finally able to go back to feeding the birds in our backyard, although putting out just seed and not suet in hopes of not attracting bears. (Photo is from a few years ago.)
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/11/13/one-liner-wednesday-motherhood/
Joanne Corey 