My husband died yesterday morning on a beautiful Maine day.
Every day he went for a morning dip in the lake and then sat on the deck looking up at the trees. He’d always say, “I can’t believe they let me do this.” Well yesterday, permission was denied.
I went for a run this morning and all I could see was through Steve’s eyes. The sun was shining, thin white clouds skittered across a blue sky. The oaks and the maples were full of green. I thought of him up there somewhere in the breeze, in the trees, in the clean Maine air all around me. A peaceful soul.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is my life. You may be interested.
About Me
- Ellen home and away
- This is what my mother taught me: Be a passionate advocate for your family. Have strong opinions and don't be afraid to express them. Always be open to learning new things.
My Reading List
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
- The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by R.J. Smith
- The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War by Ben Shephard
- When We Were Kennedys by Monica Wood
- The Last Worthless Evening by Andre Dubus
- Miss Fuller by April Bernard
- Smut by Allan Bennett
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradley
- The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde
- At Last by Edward St. Aubyn
- Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
- The Ambassadors by Henry James
- Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope and Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn
- Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Light Years by James Salter
- The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
- Rome: a Cutlural, Visual and Personal History by Robert Hughes
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander
- The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar
- Catherine the Great by Robert Massie
- Swamplandia! by Kerry Russel
- Burning the Days by James Salter
- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer
- An Anatomy of Addiction, Sigmund Freud, William Halstead and the Miracle Drug Cocaine by Howard Markel
- A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley
- How to LIve or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
- Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
- Bullett Park by John Cheever
- To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild
- The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
- Falconer by John Cheever
- Examined Lives by James Miller
- We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
- Collected Stories by Saul Bellow
- A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates
- Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
- The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobsen
- Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
- Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
- Letters of Saul Bellow
- To the End of the Land by David Grossman
- The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
- Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
- Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
- Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carre
- The Death of an Adversary by Hans Keilson
- The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
- Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
- Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- My Father's Tears by John Updike
- Beware of PIty by Stefan Zweig
- Empire of LIberty: A history of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
- Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
- My LIttle Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
- Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
- Continental Drift by Russell Banks
- Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
- The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
- The Amulet by Roberto Bolano
- Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
- The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
- In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
- A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
- Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fullerton
- Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Blooom
- The Vertigo Years:Europe 1900-1914
- Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
- A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit
- Half the Sky:Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl DuWunn
- The Women by T.C.Boyle
- The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997, by Piers Brendon
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- 2666 by Roberto Bolano
- Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
- A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias
- The Dark Side by Jane Mayer
- The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels
- How Fiction Works by James Wood
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson
- A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic LIves of Ellen Terrym Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd
- Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
- Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi
- The White Rock:An Exploration of the Inca Heartland by Hugh Thomson
- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Radical Visions and American Dreams by Richard Pells
- The Day of the Owl, The Wine Dark Sea, To Each His Own, all by Leonardo Sciascia
- Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- Dreams of My Father by PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA!!!
- The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
- Stanley, The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal
- Excellent Cadavers by Alexander Stille
- The House on Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper
- The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
- Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
- Garibaldi by Christopher Hibberd
- The Bin Ladens by Steve Coll
- Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwicke
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
- The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson
- An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson
- Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
- Lush Life by Richard Price
- The Whisperers by Orlando Figes
- All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones
2 comments:
Dearest Ellen,
I still do. Just as you will. We were at one with our loves and ourselves. Life shall always be filtered through that love. We are the rare ones who truly 'had it all'.......that's why it hurts so much. And that's why each moment is precious.
Ellen, I read in the Philadelphia Inquirer about your husband passing away and I wanted to send my sincere condolences for your loss.
If you do not remember me I was a classmate of yours at Evans School and Yeadon High School.
Barry Williams
Post a Comment