Author: imabdullahdera@gmail.com

The fog was so thick that day it felt like a blanket, muting the world around a slow-moving funeral procession. For Police Officer Laura Bennett,

I had already lived a lifetime of love and loss. My two decades with Peter were a masterpiece of ordinary, beautiful life, and his absence

I grew up believing I was a rescued orphan, a story that never quite felt whole. My adoptive mother, Margaret, was a distant, stern figure

Look down at the jeans you’re probably wearing right now. Notice the small metal buttons at the pocket corners? Those are rivets, and they are

The park was my office, and hope was my inventory. At seventy, I was a novice artist with a veteran’s determination, selling my paintings to

Ten years of marriage ended not with a bang, but with the simple, brutal act of my husband denying me his coat. On a frigid

It was supposed to be about a dance, but it became a test of values. When Cassandra, her father’s new wife, presented a $1,000 designer

We often inherit stories from our grandparents, but sometimes we inherit feelings. I found a feeling in a small box at the back of my

The holidays after my wife’s passing were a landscape of quiet sorrow. One cold Thanksgiving morning, I found myself giving my favorite jacket to a

The wilderness does not give up its secrets easily. This was the painful lesson learned from the 2012 disappearance of climbers Garrett and Della Beckwith