memory

The Deep Embrace of Rialto, California

I Held My Dying Father in My Arms. Then I Let Myself Fall Into the Arms of My Hometown.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“We don’t have time to talk,” answered the Air Force hospital corpsman as he reached across my father’s chest to take his arm and pull him onto a stretcher on a warm spring night in 1964.

My father was sprawled across the front passenger seat of his car. My mom was in the driver’s seat, and I was in the backseat. We had hurried him from our home in Rialto, a city in Southern California’s Inland Empire 55 miles east of Los Angeles, to the hospital at …

by Ernie Powell |

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My Stages of Grief for Iraq

The Country I Loved Died in 1990. The Rise of the Islamic State Is My Worst Nightmare.

by Saif Al-Azzawi |

When people ask me how I feel about the latest events in Iraq, I tell them I feel sad. All these people—both Americans and Iraqis who have died since 2003—died …

Is Memorial Day About Grief, Glory, or Hot Dogs?

To Understand America’s Most Confusing Holiday, You’ve Got to Ponder Why We Get the Day Off in the First Place

by Gregory Rodriguez |

Memorial Day is one of America’s most confusing holidays. Depending on the celebrant, it can be a day of grief, glory—or backyard barbecues.

It’s not a bad thing to have such …

Dancing My Rootlessness Away

Twirling and Spinning Alongside Octogenarians Made Me Question My Peripatetic Lifestyle. Then I Realized I’ve Created My Own Kind of Permanence.

by Alysha Webb |

Couples whirled across the floor as the band played music reminiscent of the Rat Pack days. The lights were dim, and strings of small white lights stretched like the spokes …

Landmarks Of My Father

The Places That Hold What Our Hearts Can’t

by Madeline McSherry |

I grew up on an unremarkable dead-end street in the Bronx. But its end wasn’t dead to my father and me: It was a place where the world came alive.

A …


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