the phone book

As a rule, New Year resolutions are meant to be broken. But as 2023 comes to an end, the pressure to make a to-do list builds up. A word to the old and wise, don't start the decluttering process by trying to open a new phone book.

I did.

But they began to leap off the well-worn phone book. How do mere lines through phone numbers cancel out those vital laughing boys in blue who lived to fly and loved to party?

and the family we became as wives gamely nursed a drink to keep up with the men. The squadron spirit still soars, a camaraderie unbroken over decades for those of us who are still there.

But I feel the tremor in my hand as I draw that fatal line through the names and numbers of those who have gone before. The pen is a knife now, but it cannot quite cut through the gossamer net of memories, just enough to evoke the pain of loss.

They are not the only ones. The pen must cut through the names of vets who held my hand, and patted my shoulder, as they put my thirteen-year-old dog to sleep. I haven't kept a pet since, so these wonderful people have become redundant. Notwithstanding, the pen lifts the scab over the memory of Sugar sleeping on my lap.

I should have bought a slimmer phone book. Only a handful are left of the large families we were, and none remember me as a child.

The pen is ruthless. It cuts through a dentist with a wide smile and sure hands, an obese lawyer with a brain as big as his build, a painstaking advisor on savings and taxes, and a no-nonsense doctor.

I've had enough. Time for a new resolution, the fat old book stays. The new one finds its home in the trash. No more executions, because all of them still live in me.