This is a fine example of good narrative. Read Dave Tarrant's story from Sunday's Dallas Morning News: Grief has a way of finding you. Even after 35 years.
Shonda Palmer Hardy was at home in Plano reading a newspaper story about a recovering drug addict who had written a memoir. As a boy, his faith had been shaken after coming upon a family struck by lightning. One of the four killed had been a young boy.
Shonda's stomach tensed. She rushed to a bookstore and found the memoir, Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption, by William Cope Moyers. She turned to the pertinent passage. The place and date jumped out at her: Red River, N.M.; July 1971.
It was as if the bolt of lightning had cut across time and space to strike her life again. Shonda was 9 years old when she saw Quain, her 12-year-old brother, killed during the storm that afternoon.
Afterward, she and her family rarely mentioned the events of that day. But now, at the age of 44, she felt the need to do so.
Leave a comment