Unpacking loss, unpacking Nox

You can’t know grief until you experience grief.  Its pain is ineffable. It socks your body and mind and ruins all sense of reason, meaning. Anything you’ve believed or held true becomes subject to question when someone you care for passes away because something impossibly ridiculous has happened — a living breathing someone gives up … Continue reading

Sparky and his daddy

In 1984, the Detroit Tigers were off to the strongest start in baseball history. On May 16, manager Sparky Anderson appeared on the CBS Morning News with owner Tom Monaghan. It wasn’t their first national interview: ever since Jack Morris no-noed the White Sox in Chicago live on NBC to go 4-0, everyone had wanted … Continue reading

Bless You, Sparky

On a Monday night in third grade in the Catechism classes of St. Rita’s church in Holly, Michigan, Ronnie Haslem — the first boy who’d ever kissed me — opened his chubby fist and I gasped. It was a piece of notebook paper. It was a little damp — Ronnie had ferreted it away in … Continue reading