Poem-Packrat Bride and Creative Journey

As a poem-packrat bride I vetoed merging newlywed life with writing. Groom Lou encouraged converting poems jotted on bank receipts, envelope flaps, forgotten locations, computer files, journals. He's featured in poems of happiness not grief / 2009 widowhood / abandonment, praise / comforting prayers.

A 2018 surgery recuperation overlapped 2019-20 Covid home isolation. Lou insisted I quit delaying grasp a long-ago publication vision as his life changed radically surviving the Widowmaker heart attack. Our homebound honeymoon is bizarrely prolonged.

Thanks to Master Mechanic/Photographer/Helpmate gem spouse Lou Quondamatteo, Jr; the late Bob Dahl for his wiles to turn paper shards into kintsugi*. To heaven’s dearest rag-stabbers, Aunts Jo VanEck (sympathy pains at my birth) and Theresa VanEck Mak (I her Junior Bride, dubbed 1st kid through 8 miscarriages before 4 children). Both aunts now are tailors to heavenly hosts.

Also to my gone-too-soon Aunt Doris Mak, my 2-year roomie in Chicago home while a Moody Bible Institute student. I weekended at her North Side apartment before she moved to California, scarce years later to eternity. They with so many teachers mentors Jack Ridl—encouraging me to publish kintsugi: Japanese art of Golden Repair, a poem within this book.