by: Trish Cantillon By the fall of 1980, my dad had died of cirrhosis of the liver. In the last year of his life I felt angry, sad and guilty. I did whatever I could to avoid seeing him and barely tolerated him when I did. He was bottoming out in his disease and at only fifteen, I was ill-equipped to manage those complicated feelings. His death brought relief and I was immediately grateful to be out from under the…
by Lauren Jonik “Please carry this in and give it to Nana — carefully,” my mother instructed when handing me the aluminum foil covered cherry pie she had baked. Leaves crackled beneath my feet as I walked up the stone driveway, past my grandfather’s rose bushes now dormant, to the front door of the home he built. The combined scent of turkey, pumpkin pie and coleslaw greeted me as I entered. As a child, the last Thursday in November meant…