I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes. She hugged me. I liked it.

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At boot camp, the sergeant made a new recruit sweep the sunshine off the sidewalks in front of the mess hall.

It took the recruit all day.

This military joke is subtle but likely quite accurate.

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Late Thursday night,after five hours of struggling to breathethrough the titanic gurgle in your throat—only once squeezing my handto let me know you heard me,

you abruptly grasped more resolutelyas one might clutch an arm while fearfully steppingfrom raft to boat on turbulent seas

You gripped my hand as if I were a fulcrumpivoting you from one place to another

And then you opened your eyes,looked at me, closed your eyes,and died—

“Oh, sweetheart, you died,”I cried,“I can’t believe you died.”

In silence, more profound than the deepest forest,I lay next to youmy fingers gently running throughthe soft silky hair on your bellyuntil your core was as cold as the rest of you.

Excerpted from Beloved by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.

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Find Joy (an excerpt)

Les and I had compiled a quiz of sixty-five questions about our marriage, the years when the kids were home, and old family stories. Riveted, our children wrote fast and furiously, compared notes, and laughed uproariously at every time-worn joke.

The only glitch occurred the second evening. As we were taking pictures in front of the restaurant, Les almost fainted. The boys managed to half drag him across the gaudy flowered carpet to a private dining cove, where I stretched him out on the floor until he had recovered enough to sit up and eat his dinner. He laughed later, “It wasn’t all bad. Our waitress wore a very short skirt.”

Our Big Bash anniversary weekend exceeded all expectations. We put aside what lay behind and refused to ponder what might lie before us.

And we remembered once again that joy and sorrow often occupy the same space.

Excerpted from Abidance: A Memoir of Love and Inevitability by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.

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When I Think

When I think of all the waysI’ve tried to say I love you—When I think of all the thingsyou do that make me love you—

The quiet times when we are closethe long and raucous passionthe way we glance across the roomand always feel compassion

When I think—

The words flow forth and tumble downin cascades from my heartand still do not begin to tellhow we can never part

A love like ours—beyond all wordsbeyond our hugs and kissesbeyond the days we carry tightbeyond the reminisces

A love like ours will always livefrom here to the hereafterand every eon find anewour joy, our tears, our laughter

When I think,,,

Excerpted from Beloved by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.

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You planted piñon treesone spindly maple in too tighta row

Four children, not as tall asyour new trees, watched with me.Little did we know

how soon, how tallthat trees and childrengrow

Sometimeswe weep thatit is so.

Excerpted from Beloved by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.

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You Cannot Break a Poet's Heart

A poet cannot be broken-heartedWhen a dear one dies, she writes a requiemWhen a lover is untrue, she writes a sonnetWhen the world is cruel, she writes satiric verse

A poet can take all the grief from her heart(the pain that can swell and break a heart)and write it in fine black lines on starchy white paper

Oh, no, you cannot break a poet’s heart.

The above poem is one of the first serious poems that 16-year-old Lois wrote many, many years ago.

Excerpted from Beloved by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.

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I don't like being the bad guy. No one likes the bad guy. No one wants to spend any time with the bad guy. People hate me.

But I'm very good at being the bad guy. I'm smart. I'm curious. I'm devious. I love twisting people's view of reality, and you can only do that well as a bad guy, as someone who doesn't give a damn, as someone who has such a skewed vision of reality that we don't have to live by someone else's rules. We make our own.

You know, killing is good. It rids the world of the weak. I hate the weak.

I'm not sadistic. I try to do good clean kills. I try to minimize the mess. I really don't want people to hurt. I'm not into pain. I'm more into relieving suffering. And the weak, they do suffer.

I never run out of victims. At least half the world are victims. Stupid people. People that irritate the hell out of me. And it's the hell they get from me. The sooner, the better. On a good day, I eliminate three to four idiots. On a bad day, it's more like ten.

I don't plan my kills. It's a waste of time. Killers don't need to plan. 90% of major crimes are never solved—not like in the movies, not like on TV. It's really law and disorder.

Sure, I keep my prints out of crime scenes, but a bit of hair here or there isn't going catch me.

Three reasons.

One, no one knows me. I'm a nobody. Nobodies can get away with murder. We're on no one's radar. We don't even create a blip.

Two, I never return to the scene of a crime. Very stupid thing to do.

Three, I kill randomly. Very randomly. I don't have a type. I don't repeat myself. Of course, I don't worry if I do repeat some things, but I leave no pattern.

And, if you need a fourth reason, very simple: I don't really care if anyone knows that I did it. I'm without ego. You want people to know? That gets you caught. I just don't care.

I'm a bad guy. And I don't have a name. I neither like nor abhor killing. It's just what I do.

And I do it well, simply because I do it so quickly. No planning. Just response. At the right time. In the right place. No witnesses. Witnesses die. Always.

If you see me, really see me, you die. Just that simple.

Want to know more?

You stupid idiot. You don't want to know more. You don't want to see me.

No one knows me. No one wants to know me.

Consider Mary.

Mary was just a housewife in the wrong place. Running for her health. Dying because she saw me. Not so good for her health. Mary was #2 today.

#1 was a kid that irritated me. Crying because he was lost in the brush. Stupid kid. But you don't cry with your throat slit. Knives are silent. That's why I like them. And easy to conceal. And cheap. And very generic. Dollar stores have some good ones. I prefer paring knives myself, but I often use butcher knives as well. No pattern. Always something different.

Never stay in the same city for more than three days. Two is better. One is the best.

You can get a lot done in one or two days. Clean the city out a little. Move on.

Small towns are fun, but you can't stay more than a day. You have to be invisible. Small towns have too many eyes. Too many ears. Too many noses. Slip in, slip out. But you can do a day's quota in 30 minutes or less if you know where to go, who to be, what to see, when to leave.

I drive a gray Honda Civic. No one sees those. Always with a state license plate. No stranger. Just invisible.

I need to kill. I'm a bad guy. I love what I do.

I'll be in your city soon.