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Waiting for Grief

On December 13, 2021

I find myself staring at a bag of dog food.

We buy it in thirty pound sacks, this median-grade kibble, a nutritional blend made especially for senior pups. It’s cheaper to buy on Amazon, and following some unknown interval, the hockey puck wizard device in the kitchen will light up, and I will ask it what’s wrong, and it will reply nothing, nothing serious–just maybe it’s time that you bought another thirty-pound bag of dog food? Shouldn’t we do that?

And more often than not I agree, and soon the gray, boxy van stops in front of the house, and someone schleps a thirty-pound box to our front porch. I break down the boxes and slide them under the Wagoneer to catch little drips of oil.

The most recent bag sits in the basement about two-thirds full. Around the corner, draped across two memory foam dog beds, our oldest pooch, Taylor, quietly naps, her breath slow and measured, the kind that comes with precious, deep sleep. There are pregnant pauses between exhale and inhale.

And We Must Go

By James D. Hogan

On November 21, 2021

In writing

On beginnings and endings, change, and staying un-stuck.

Something there is about the ends of things, the delicate parts where the golden light shines on everything about you before it fades to dusk. Something there is when you know that ahead, just across the horizon, lies the big, the unknown.

For the past nine years, our growing family has made its home in a quiet neighborhood dotted with brick ranches and mature trees. For nine years before that, we lived a few hundred yards away in the next neighborhood over in a cozy split-level on a cul-de-sac.

Kelly is a native of this town, born in the old downtown Davis hospital the college razed a few years ago. She grew up in another brick ranch and tall treed neighborhood not much more than a mile from where our house stands now. She attended school in the same building where she now works, the same place our children learn. Save for the four years she spent away at college, she’s never lived anywhere but within a handful of several square miles in Statesville.

Those college years were formative in many ways.

Calling the Bet

By James D. Hogan

On December 29, 2020

In writing

2020 was the year that kept on giving.

Here’s a funny trend: the last few years have been tough–so tough that as we reach this last week before New Year’s Day, we have habitually wished away the year in hopes the next would be better. 2016 was one such year, as was 2019. Funny, isn’t it? What on earth happened to us in 2019 that convinced us to hurry up with it, to roll along as fast as we could in hopes that 2020 would bring us some kind of respite?

Well, 2020 called our bets and ran the table on us, plowing us over with a merciless pandemic, widespread civil unrest, and an election that annihilated any sense of national unity.

Twelve months ago, for the second time, I patched together a list of resolutions for the year 2020. I pecked out my meager ideas on the old, Olympia typewriter that belonged to my grandfather. Last year (2019), I kept the list on my fridge the entire year and followed up on my efforts.

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