July22, 2026

So where have I been ??

Well, I had an accident (actually was playing with my 6 year old grandson) and broke my hip!

(This is why some of my friends say that at my age I should be playing cards or Maj - whaever that is!)

The hip was immediately replaced but I've been - and it's coming onto 6 weeks now - rehabbing and otherwise distracted.

So.......I've been out of action !

I'm back now to a more functional state - yea!

One of the comments I've received about Hand is that it's really not written in standard prose, like one might expect and some wonder why that is. So, with lots of time on my hands (actually too much time), I've been doing some thinking about why I wrote this way.

I believe that the book was written in prose, poetry and rambling musings because the actual process of dealing with grief is never a clean linear one, something I mention that throughout the manuscript, But another way to understand this is to realize that the style of presenntation is in sync with how we in this club process the unthinkable:

Grief requires those of us who have to deal with "the permanent presence of an absence", to spend much of our time living between the lines on our page, even though we exist in the linear present.

So by formatting in the way that it's written, Hand is intended to encourage the reader to read slowly and patiently. There's lots of space on the pages for the reader to add their own impressions. The book is, hopefully, then organized to enhance a type of deeper thought and reflection that comes with processing our anguish and sadness.

In this way, it was my hope that the the book which can be painful to read, becomes more accessible and readable.