Marie McGrath Davis
Bio
If I didn't write, I would explode.
Stories (29/0)
You're Grand, Da
Fourteen years ago, the thing I had dreaded most throughout my life finally happened. I lost a parent. To lung cancer that, had medical investigation been conducted thoroughly, would have had a good chance of cure, or at least the prolongation of my father’s life. But, the pain of loss is enough to bear without sorrowfully and angrily indulging in what might have been, ‘if only’. His lung tumor was so large it had severed his recurrent laryngeal nerve, rendering him able to speak in only a forced whisper for the last months of his life. Since there was only me and my parents in our family, the fact that my mother was already in the throes of Alzheimer’s, could not understand my father’s illness and incapacity and spent much of her time berating and humiliating him, made the year that he had left to live even more difficult. We had a tough relationship, my father and I, for reasons that were complex and underscored by our mutual incapacity to show emotion, or talk, to each other. Yet, for all that, I adored him. I always will.
By Marie McGrath Davis3 years ago in Families
Watch Out For Those First Two Years
A lot of people have told me I should write a book about my life. They’ve been saying this since long before I even realized I had the stuff of books happening to me and the literary bent to convey these happenings in somewhat entertaining format. Many have said this to me. Indeed, even I have said this (to myself) far from the madding, somewhat maddening crowd. However, all these people so confident I can write a book, who believe I’m honor-bound and obligated to dedicate myself to its creation and completion, aren’t me.
By Marie McGrath Davis3 years ago in Families
The Perfect Pear Tree
The Perfect Pear Tree “It’s a half parcel of the Goetz farm land, 51 acres,” I heard someone say to my father, outside the car in which my mother and I were sitting. She looked back at me, giving me that look of disgust with which I was so familiar (and feared), this time accompanied by a head shake of annoyance.
By Marie McGrath Davis3 years ago in Fiction
The Tale of Carrowkeel Sorley
The Tale of Carrowkeel Sorley, our Roddy In 1971, when we had three dogs, they weren’t just any three dogs; they were a very particular set of dogs – like Liam Neeson’s skills in “Taken” – with a very particular set of tales, and tails. When we join the first verse of the poem I wrote at the time, Roddy was about 6 months’ old, while James and Snoopy were three-ish.
By Marie McGrath Davis3 years ago in Petlife
REMEMBER
REMEMBER. THOU ART DUST… Emmett was finding that sleep eluded him, and he yearned for it as a salvo, an escape from the putrid stench and the frequent, foul blasts of wind. There were few places to take cover these last few days (or had it been weeks?) as the squalls of fetid dust and debris had swept away most freestanding structures and every vehicle in the parking garage where he’d first taken shelter. For what was beginning to seem an eternity, his only release from the reality of terror and filth that encompassed him was in the hour or two when it seemed the atmosphere paused to regain its ferocity. Then, coiled into himself – ready to spring – he would sometimes manage to drown in a pool of his own exhaustion.
By Marie McGrath Davis3 years ago in Futurism