Category Archives: Doris Dembosky

Years after handing her heart to a boy who had died in The Battle of the Somme, Mildred still felt the loss of a life’s companion. Driven by the thought that ‘time and tides wait for no man,’ she wrote … Continue reading →

Brutus stretched his neck turning it first to the right and then the left. Then he rolled his shoulders, and finally he worked his back- stretching his spine disc by disc. He licked his lips, sighed, and closed his eyes. … Continue reading →

Somewhere in India or possibly Botswana a phone was ringing. It took Claire six or seven rings to swim to the surface of her deep sleep and realize that the phone was hers. Reaching out to her bedside table, she … Continue reading →

At 6-foot 2-inches in her stocking feet, Mildred was noticeably tall. In her stacked heel Oxfords, she was taller yet. By the time I met her, Mildred was angular, hard-edged, and in her late 40s. She wasn’t one for friendships, … Continue reading →

Inga’s lips were a thin grim line. Only hair-line wrinkles on her upper lip and deeper crevices at the corners of her mouth indicated where her lips may have been. Inga sat at the kitchen table. She held her fork … Continue reading →

Mary had dressed carefully. No curls, no lipstick, no eye shadow. Her skirt fell below her knees. She remembered not cross her legs. The Mother Superior scanned her application. “I see you were raised Lutheran, and you are a recent … Continue reading →

The grandmother, square and solid as a tank (dressed entirely in black as befitted a Spanish Civil War widow) scrunched up her hooded eyes. The mother, widowed or abandoned (in those days, divorce was not an option), hardened her lips. … Continue reading →