RAF Chicago Executive Director Joanie Bayhack delivering smiles. (Courtesy of RAF)
Life isn’t so daunting if you break it down into a series of small gestures.
The non-profit Random Act of Flowers recycles flowers from weddings, parties, funerals and grocery stores. Volunteers then deliver floral bouquets to Chicago area hospitals and long term health care facilities.
Knoxville, Tn.-based Random Acts of Flowers (RAF) has only been in the Chicago area for a little more than a year. From January to December of 2015, RAF delivered bouquets to 16,142 people in the Chicago [...]
Something was lost here.
Keep this coupon
Two herons on a pier
Redemption at every sunset
The winter circus comes through town
Keep this coupon
Questions splatter on the windshield
The old mystic answers in her home on Hwy. 1
Wednesday Karaoke at the Caribbean Club
A prune-faced lady leans over to sing “Cabaret”
Songs are tickets to another time, old chum
Keep this coupon
“We had it all, like Bogie & Bacall”—Bertie Higgins
Bare feet dance on blades of [...]
Lock myself out, the first time in 20 years
Am I becoming my parents, losing my memory
Bit by bit like the drip from an unforgettable icicle
Outside of the house I grew up in.
I wait for the locksmith on the back steps.
A cardinal stops on along the driveway
I see my Mom who grew up near St. Louis
Until the man arrives with his box of magical tools
The man says it will not take long and begins to chip away
The [...]
In the early afternoons of late autumn days, the shadow of a fading sun creates a path from the cemetery driveway to the plot where my parents are buried. A little less than six weeks separated the deaths of my parents this spring.
My Dad died first and in the time my Mom had left I would take her to the cemetery.
Every chance she got.
I pushed her wheelchair through tall grass to the gravesite where seeds were waiting to sprout. Mom never got to see the headstone she was so curious about, but she did fire off a zinger to the headstone salesperson as we picked out the marble bookmark.
