The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: Charles Guerra

  • Remembering Chuck

    Has it only been a year? It feels like I’ve been walking barefoot through the broken shards of my grief for decades. Has it been a year already? Weren’t you lying beside me when I went to sleep last night? It still shocks me to awaken alone. Both at once. Always both at once with…

  • On Looking Homeless

    My late boyfriend had brain surgery about 25 years ago. Because of this, a big section of the back of his skull was missing, and his face was lopsided. To mask these things a little bit, he grew his hair long and wore a beard. I thought he was absolutely gorgeous. Certainly the best looking…

  • The Last Known Hurdle

    The other day I went to a Ray LaMontagne concert and I had a wonderful time, but I also shed a few tears. This folk rock musician has a smoky voice that moves me to my very core, but that’s not why I got emotional. This event was a very significant hurdle in my grieving…

  • Sneaky Grief

    I really thought I was doing fine. I had stopped the daily crying thing. I’d go longer and longer periods without thinking about him. I’d even look heavenward and do some joking quips now and then, and smile. The outside observer would assume I was coping well. I was doing all the things I needed…

  • The Dead Letter Office

    How’s this for bureaucracy? Yesterday my late boyfriend received a letter from an agency informing him that his case was closed because he was deceased. I’ll just let you absorb that for a second. When I opened the letter my first thought was, “I wonder if they’re expecting a response.” So what follows is the…

  • Yearnings

    For the past 6 months I’ve had a lobster craving that is practically driving me out of my mind. And the sad part is that I’ll just have to live with that, because mine is not a lobster existence. On my budget, even fake crab is a luxury that I rarely get to indulge. Knowing…

  • Pattern Recognition

    Evolution sometimes has an interesting sense of humor. We have evolved to be good at pattern recognition. It’s important to be able to pick out that tiger lurking in the underbrush or that poisonous snake amongst the leaves. And it’s always a good idea to be able to tell your friends apart from your enemies.…

  • That Thing You Do

    We still talk. All the time. “I love that thing you do.” “What thing?” “You know. The thing. Where you say something funny and I laugh and that makes you laugh, and then you say, ‘Silly girl,’ as if I were the funny one.” “Well, I love that you’re so hard core.” “What does that…

  • The Gorilla Suit

    I know the exact second I fell in love with Chuck. We were sitting on the roof of the house I used to own. (He was a roofer, so I could never have gotten to know him if I had remained on the ground.) We had been talking sporadically all week, but on this day…

  • Crystalized Love

    My late boyfriend believed pretty strongly in the healing power of crystals. He always had crystals around him and he gave them as gifts to the people that he loved. I have several on my windowsill and gaze at them every day. I’ve always admired their beauty, and am fascinated by what the planet can…