Lisa Geichman Prosek

I’m living this year in 1965, when we piled into our family sedan–the beige Dodge Coronet–and drove the 100-plus miles from our suburban home just south of Dayton to Portsmouth. Route 73’s hilly, winding path upset my stomach as usual, but I didn’t care. I chomped on the Doublemint gum Mom dispensed and focused on reaching my grandparents’ house at the end of the trip.

When I awoke on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I had no reason to feel anything other than unbridled hopefulness. My family was well, including my two toy poodles and five cats. Our daughter had begun her own life, having moved into a brand new apartment with a friend. Everything in our lives moved ahead, often […]

Perhaps I need to make a public declaration so that I can come fully back into the light of a literary life. Maybe I should finally openly admit that I haven’t written properly in a year. That, after my sister passed away in 2012, my writing died a slow death. Maybe it happened because there […]

I don’t experience the traditional kind of nightmares often, but when I do, they usually feel like whoppers. Someone chases me, or I miss a critical deadline, or I return to a hellish college math course, failing consistently. I wake up drenched in sweat, with my heart pounding. I let out a relieved sigh when […]

Four years ago today I felt my mother’s touch for the last time. I walked into the hospital room where she was undergoing treatment for a ruptured brain aneurysm to see an arc of doctors stationed around the foot of Mom’s bed trying to determine what to do about her inability to breathe. Even with […]

My grandchildren knew me before they even realized it. When I held one-week-old Carter, I spoke to him quietly and caressed his soft little shoulder as it peeked out from the baby blue blanket. This new little boy, aware of almost nothing but his need for creature comforts, got a puzzled look on his face […]

The eulogy I gave for my sister, Beth Geichman Clemmer, on April 15, 2012: If you knew Beth and you’re like me, you think of her as quiet, reserved, maybe even kind of shy. She certainly was never one to want to draw attention to herself. So, it might surprise you to hear that her […]

I’ve been running from it for a long time, but today is the day when it became necessary for me to write my little sister’s obituary. I’ve never written an obit before. What do I say? Do I say that when Beth was a golden-haired little four year old, eight years behind me, she walked […]

Since late October, my family has been increasingly devastated by my sister’s cancer, which has continued to progress despite aggressive treatment. When faced with such life-and-death crises, my first impulse is to shut myself off from the world, and this means that my writing stops. Like a flower that closes when the night’s darkness approaches, […]

By 7 a.m. a year ago today I’d already been to two grocery stores buying the perfect turkey and other Thanksgiving fixings and had the turkey in the oven cooking two days early because I was afraid my little toy poodle, Ebie, would die without having his favorite food one last time. I’ve wanted to […]