A Tribute and a Train

Words matter

Photo by Katrina Wright on Unsplash

Hi friends, and welcome new subscribers. In early May, I thought I was being smart to schedule my monthly pARTake letters for June and July. Then, it was all I could do to steal away from caring for Larry and managing our trucking agency for a few minutes to write a few words in my memoir in progress, let alone write an essay, take care of myself, Cooper, and our home. With plenty of unpublished work in a file, along with essays I’m moving over from my Medium account, I knew I would be insanely busy with Larry’s declining health from prostate and esophageal cancer, plus chronic heart failure, so scheduling seemed like a good strategy. But in mid-May, once Hospice entered the scene and I had less time to sit at my desk, I started dictating ideas, thoughts, and poems in my phone's Notes app.

When Larry died on the first Sunday of June, I knew that a prescheduled essay about hair was not a good idea after all, especially since the third Sunday of the month fell on Father’s Day, so I rescheduled the hair essay for August. This month, I thought you’d like to know about Larry, who was an amazing father and Papa to his two daughters and family, and, specifically, I thought you’d like to know how I began my writing journey, the backstory, if you will, because it involved Larry Berry.

Happy Father’s Day to you and yours.

One winter evening in 2010, shortly after I quit my job as a seafood sales rep, I was contentedly reading The New York Times on the living room couch. Larry was in his office doing who knows what. It was probably a Monday because we had a very active social calendar in Thornton Park, the historic district in downtown Orlando. Mondays were our chill days. I had ordered only the Sunday edition to arrive at my doorstep every week, and the paper was so thick that I read it all week. Right in the middle of my favorite column, “36 Hours,” Larry pulled the paper from my hands, smiling.

“I have something to show you on my computer.”

“I hope it’s a vacation,” I said and scrambled off the couch like a kid in a candy store.

As it turned out, he’d Googled writing instructors in Orlando. Better than a vacation. There was a healthy list of instructors and resources to choose from, and I contacted a few. The first woman, whose name I don’t remember, asked me to meet her at a community space. I wrote stories from prompts on postcards, her chosen constraint. I paid her by the week, and the arrangement lasted a few weeks. Then I hired a woman who wrote literary fiction and poems, had an MA in English, seemed intuitive, and was willing to work with me, a middle-aged woman without an English degree but with enough ambition to fill a notebook. I had a story idea about a burglar and a burned-out detective based on a real-life burglary situation in the neighborhood where we lived. I also wanted to write a series of seafood cookbooks. Then, my ideas outweighed my writing ability, but she helped me see my strengths and flaws. We met in a Borders bookstore, and after a year of semi-monthly meetings and quarterly payments that weren’t cheap, I ended our working relationship. I needed more structure, a classroom setting, and a community. I thanked her for her help and mentioned that I was enrolling in Gotham Writers' online program to take a food writing course.

I wish I could tell you, dear friends, that she was kind. She wasn’t even gracious. Shockingly, she said, “Well, you’re not a very good writer anyway.”

And I wish I could tell you I replied with a snappy retort, but her words stunned me. I don’t even know what I said. Maybe nothing, which wouldn’t surprise me. That was some zinger. I probably cried when I told Larry, and he would’ve said something like, Well, you’ll show her, won’t you? And she’s mad because you took away some of her income. Whether he said that or not isn’t as important as how she made me feel. I was disappointed that someone who makes a living from words would spew hurtful words to someone she mentored. Of course, very little surprises me anymore. People have been using inappropriate language for as long as we have been able to speak. Myself included.

Over the next few years, I took enough courses at Gotham Writers to earn a certificate in memoir. I wrote poems and essays, published in a few online journals, published essays in Edible Orlando magazine, and then published a cookbook. My writing continues to evolve, and of course, “I showed her.”

Last year, before Larry was diagnosed and before the nightmare we endured for the past seven months, he said three little words: “Write another book.”

I’m on it, Elvis. I’m on it.

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

From my Notes App on my iPhone

June 9, 2026

We live in a train town. Not a passenger train, but a CSX freight train carrying coal. There’s no public schedule, so at any time during the day or night, a train announces itself through the small, rural community in western Kentucky, rumbling and shaking across the tracks, near the sushi bar and the pub bar downtown, near the hospital campus, and across the lush woodland landscape — its lone wail, a warning, signaling its presence and urgency. Even the dull thud of cars coupling is a sound that shakes the earth and, on occasion, pauses conversation for a split second, but most likely not.

“Train,” we’d say as we lay in bed at night, in the second-story loft of an old Victorian in downtown Orlando, where we first lived, when the train rolled through the city, clicking and clacking and wailing, then later in Kentucky, land of his people, home in our hearts.

When Larry was lying in bed, dying, I encouraged him: let go, it’s alright, I love you, God’s waiting, I’m okay, go ahead and step on the train.

Two days ago, he stepped on the train.

My coffee grows cold as the morning light lifts. A train wails in the distance.

I’m not okay after all.

Read Larry’s obituary. He was fun, funny, and he made everyone he met feel special.

Friends, a note on the last line. Today is two weeks after Larry’s death, and I’m on the I’m okay, I’m not okay grief train. I’m learning to sit with vulnerability and fear of the unknown, and that itself is a scary proposition. In times of doubt, we look for answers and ways to cope, and I’m trying to find space to lean in, accept my new reality, learn from it, and hopefully gain an understanding so that one day I can help someone with their struggles. One thing I know to be true is that out of death comes life, and now I will have more time to “Write another book,” thanks to Elvis. He was one of a kind and one of the good ones.

Please let me know you were here. Drop a comment, hit reply in your inbox to keep it private, or share this letter with your friends. If you’d like to know more about the man whom I adored for eighteen years, the man I called Elvis, here is Larry’s obituary.

Friends, your messages mean more than you know. Thanks for being here. I am humbly grateful for all of your support. Thank you.

Maureen xo

Picking up Cooper in Chicago from Wire Fox Terriers Midwest in 2018.

Stay curious. Stay safe. Make an impact.