Member-only story

A Sensible Person’s Nightmare

BethKanell
7 min readMay 26, 2022
Life on a back road, in Glover, Vermont.

I’ve been a widow for a bit more than three years. For me, as for many others I know who nursed someone through a long, difficult illness, sensible sleep patterns were hard to resume afterward. My compassionate doctor labeled this situation “hypervigilance” — I had tried, for so long, to listen for when my dying spouse needed my help, even when at night I tried to catch a bit of rest. My ears and mind couldn’t release the routine right away.

When I first moved into this new little “widow house” of mine, that set of reactions came back into play. Any sound from the refrigerator had me fully awake; the quiet ping of the security camera alerting me to movement outside the house (often a nocturnal animal) could cost me four hours of wakefulness, too.

But when I face the past, I know my night terror began in 1983, when I left R and moved just a mile down the road, to keep our children close to both of us — there would be plenty of time visiting Daddy, since it was so easy to walk them up to the log cabin where he lived.

The Function of a .45 Semi-Automatic Handgun

There are many firearm owners who treasure the skilled pleasures of target competition, and the triathalon may be the ultimate test of being able to still your racing heart, focus, aim, and complete a good shot.

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BethKanell
BethKanell

Written by BethKanell

Braiding loss, joy, love. Award-winning poet & author of YA adventures like This Ardent Flame; The Long Shadow, more. bethkanell.blogspot.com; member NBCC.

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