Just a sad observation that I've come to realize:  some people would walk a thousand miles or spend a thousand hours comforting a stranger, but not a member of their own "family

 I remember the first time I heard it.  I had never heard anything quite like it before, nor since.  It was the winter of 1976-77.  My parents and I had moved into an upstairs apartment.  It always started around midnite, a low menacing growl. Like something wild snarling softly in the bushes. But then the sound would grower louder and more intense, until finally it had grown into the high pitched shrieking of something tormented, demonic even!  I would bury my face into my pillow until the…

 Just that same old prayer, God, that you have heard cross my lips a thousand times--  please, please let her pass gently in her sleep...

 By last Friday, I felt like the grieving was eating my brain. I told my husband that I just couldn't take it anymore. It was either me...or my grief.  I told him I just had to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn't a reminder of everything I am grieving over. If I had my choice of destinations, I would have run away to a deserted beach by an ocean, like the lovely oceans in JO B's photos. But since the ocean nearest my home is about a thousand miles away, I had to chose somewhere else. So I ran…