Review: Excellent short story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 25, 2011
This is a story about grieving based on the author's experience. Mary is the mother of Teresa who is 38, the two are unmarried. Although the two love each other, it is difficult for them to talk. The images in the tale are of deterioration and loss. The lake near her home is receding. Mary's dogs are getting old. She says, "We're all getting old." Her roof is beginning to fall apart and may soon drip rain. Her employer tells her that she needs to retire from her job in two years. Her mother in law is dying of cancer and wants to have a funeral for her son, but Mary refuses, and she dies.Mary's husband Ed has been missing in action for thirty years, and although she thinks she and Teresa are dealing with their loss well, they aren't; it is destroying their lives. Jim, Ed's buddy in Vietnam, calls her every Sunday, bewailing that he had left Ed in the jungle when he might have been alive. Mary and Jim might have married, but he is a homosexual.Then she finds a missing dog that is dead and speaks to the dog's owner. Then, also, Teresa tells her about her Divinity Jar. It is a jar in which she places all the items that she can do nothing about - such as the MIA bracelets she is sent about her dad - and she leaves the items for the divine to take care of. Will she, Teresa, and Jim be able to resolve their loss after 30 years?