Drunk driver claims a victim

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It is snowing and I am late, the traffic on Route 138 backed up for miles. When I arrive at New England Sinai Hospital, Laurie Kelly is gone because the traffic will make her late if she waits for me. She cannot be late. She has driven all the way from Monument Beach to Stoughton with her 6-year-old daughter so that the child can see with her own eyes that her father is still in the same room, in the same hospital bed, where he was yesterday, and the day before yesterday and dozens of days before that.

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It's too late to say thank you

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It's too late to say thank you

ORLANDO, Fla. - We met Tuesday in the hotel lobby on our way to somewhere else. It took a minute for me to match a name with his face because I hadn't seen him in a couple of years and then we were in another city in another hotel lobby. He was smiling, extending his hand, saying his name and when he did, I thought: of course. And it all came back then, the details of our last conversation.

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Memory: Where all is safe

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Memory: Where all is safe

My friend Anne e-mails me an excerpt from "Listening to Your Life," a book of daily meditations by Frederick Buechner. I find it on my computer at 5 a.m.

It is dark. The house is quiet, and I feel a little like the shoemaker in the old children's tale. I tiptoe downstairs to find that someone has been working while I've been sleeping, a pair of shoes on the workbench already made. An idea on the computer, already hatched.

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Turning 85 is a present for all those who love her

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When she was 80, we bought her 80 presents. It took a while to find 80 things that an 80-year-old didn't already have and could eventually use, but we did. We bought shortbread and jelly and notepaper and stamps and dusting powder and assorted teas, and wrapped all the gifts in silver foil and tied them with white bows then placed them in and around a pink hatbox. The presents, by their sheer number, made 80 look inviting. My mother-in-law, surrounded by family and friends, sat in the living room and talked and laughed as she unwrapped each present…

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Bring on the kids next door

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Bring on the kids next door

The sign is on the lawn "sale pending," so it's not a done deal yet. But I am pretending it is. I have my hopes high and my fingers crossed. I am thinking about cookies and cocoa with marshmallow and jars full of penny candy.

The priest who lived next door for 21 years moved last month and the house has been vacant since. It used to be my house before it was his. "Oh, you moved next door," people usually say when they learn this. "You were lucky. It must have been such an easy move."

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Some angels take human form

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Some angels take human form

The poster has been hanging on my office door for nearly two years now. It's an angel poster. I've read it a hundred times. "Angels are the guardians of hope and wonder, the keepers of magic and dreams," it begins. Angels, as in spirits, heavenly visitors who keep you from harm's way; phantoms, shadows, apparitions, guardians from another world. That's what I've always thought…

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Ease up - tourists are people, too

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Ease up - tourists are people, too

It's late July and time, it seems, for tourist-bashing. Last week in this paper, Joe Sciacca got all a-flutter over the Old Town Trolley and Beantown Trolley and the new Duck Tours, which he says are the reason you can't get from point A to point B anywhere in this city. Congestion and gridlock are the fault of trolleys and "lard butts from Nebraska," don't you know?

This week, in Boston's other major daily, columnist Patricia Smith wrote that tourists "clog the Artery, babble over maps in restaurants, snap endless pictures of sunbleached gravestones" (why this would bother anyone puzzles me), and continues on to bemoan their "maddening practice of standing directly in the middle of a downtown sidewalk at 5 p.m., their heads upturned and mouths open, gazing reverently at 'Look, another old building!' while juggling camcorder, bottles of Evian, and several hot squiggling children." Huh?

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The night and the music help David fight his fears

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The night and the music help David fight his fears

Depending on how old you are, you'd call him a nerd, a dweeb, a geek. He's the square peg in a world full of round holes. He doesn't walk so much as stumble. He bumps into things. His dialogue, his everyday hellos and goodbyes, are as clumsy as his gait.

His dark curly hair covers his forehead, making him look, at times, like a standard poodle whose groomer has been on vacation too long. His soulful eyes are obscured by horn-rimmed glasses. He's out of shape, a weeble in a room full of Ken dolls.

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

I don't know why it felt so important to find the exact spot. She isn't there. I recognize this. And yet it didn't seem enough just to ride around and lump her together with DICKSON and HARRISON and WHITTENBERGER and all the other people I never met. I knew Amy - knew her for too short a time, too long ago. But I knew her well. She was my daughter's best friend; because of her, her mother and I became friends…

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A birthday not celebrated

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A birthday not celebrated

Today is her birthday. She would have been 10. At school they would have sung to her. At home there would have been presents and cake and a party. But she died in June so there is no celebration. In the house not far from Wollaston Beach where Leanne lived with her mother and grandparents, though there are photos of her smiling on the walls and shelves, there are few real smiles anymore. Her absence fills the place. There are no feet pounding up the stairs. No books flung on a chair. No "Mama! Nana! I'm home!" Two women who loved and raised a child are empty without her. They try to put into words their loss, their love and their pain. But words can't hold these things and so as they speak, tears fall…

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New Year's quiz sets guests' memories spinning in reverse

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It was a party game, that's all it was. New Year's Eve, 1994. Our hostess passed out sheets of paper with 10 questions on them. She separated husbands and wives and created new pairs. Let's see how much you remember from 1994, she said. Piece of cake, we all thought. We were a group who knew our news. Lawyers, bankers, teachers, librarians, we devoured newspapers. We watched news shows. We subscribed to Newsweek or Time. Hit us with your toughest question, we thought. We were ready…

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

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Hand-in-hand, brothers all

A few days before Christmas I saw them walking along the street near the viaduct. It was sunset. The sky was red. The trees were black. There was no sidewalk and no other pedestrians except these two young boys. They were brothers, you could tell. They had the same straight, sandy hair. They wore the same knit stocking caps and the same loose-fitting jackets, only in different sizes, and they walked in the same loping way. One was about 12 and the other 5…

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Women's history day by day

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Women's history day by day

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed because Christmas is four days away and you've been shopping and wrapping and writing cards forever and you still have more to do - stockings to stuff, cookies to bake, more gifts to buy, plus a dinner to plan and cook - take a break. Head to your nearest bookstore and grab a copy of Lois Edgerly's "Women's Words, Women's Stories." You won't have time to read it until after the holiday, of course, but that's OK. It's meant to be read then…

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Two women, one friendship

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I have come to know Julia slowly, a young woman whose husband died of cystic fibrosis a few months before their son Jeffrey was born. After his death, the priest at our parish spoke of Julia's faith and courage. But she was a stranger then. I had no idea she was my mother-in-law’s next door neighbor. It was after that day in church that my mother-in-law began mentioning Julia, but I didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t realize that the priest’s Julia and my mother-in-law’s Julia were one and the same. Because Julia, then, was just a name…

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Rest in peace? Not any more

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Respect the dead. It's an old-fashioned concept, an anachronism, perhaps, in an age where there is so little respect for the living.

And yet it was once a rule, close to a commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother. And honor the dead, too. All the dead.

It was why when hearses drove past followed by cars with their lights on, you stopped in your tracks and said a prayer no matter that you didn't know who had died. There was somebody in that hearse. That's all that counted. Somebody who had lived on this earth and loved and been loved by some other somebody was gone. So you bowed your head and whispered to God to have mercy on his soul.

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The rarest doctors treat patients, not disease

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What you want when you or someone you love is sick is a caring human being on the other end of a telephone line. You don't want voice-mail. ("Press your party's extension, now.") You don't want to be put on hold. You don't want to be told that the doctor returns all phone calls after 5:00 p.m. and doesn't have an opening until March 13. You want someone to listen to you, to advise you, to treat you as if you matter…

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Caring friends help prevent a free fall

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Caring friends help prevent a free fall

The pain started last December, but he didn't recognize it as pain. He had a funny feeling in his jaw as he danced and he was breathless. So he stopped dancing and muttered to himself that he was 46 and he was getting old.

It happened two months later, again on a dance floor. This time he registered the discomfort, made the association with dancing and modified his behavior. He gave up dancing and the pain went away.

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We are all to blame for death of Samore

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I'm looking for someone to blame. If I can blame someone or something, then I can put the death of 13-year-old Samore Vassel out of my head and get on with the pretense that life is manageable, and we can keep the wolves from our doors.

Samore Vassel lived in Dorchester with his father and younger brother and sister. Last week he was in Brooklyn, visiting his mother, when he was shot and killed. The boy had told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. But he and his buddy went off to meet a couple of girls instead.

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