I selected this story by Louisa Owens as a rerun in 2020. Louisa intelligently and graciously answered my humble questions. But if episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies must be re-aired endlessly until Armeggedon, then perhaps it is just that a small good thing like Short Straw should appear on the site for a third time.
Grief is personal and can never be adequately described. It’s in missing voices; for sale signs in the yards of long occupied homes; the outlasting of old meaningless notes of the hand that had written them. Mostly the little things. I guess there’s some validity in the five stages of grief –Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Anger, acronym “DABDA”–but seeing a quality that is fundamentally poignant and even beautiful reduced to an acronym offends me.
Good old Grandad in this tale has his own take on DABDA. And here, without sentimentality or conforming to the expectations of others, he is far more honest in his sorrow than what you will find in reams of teary-eyed missives dedicated to the subject of loss.
***
literally stories 
Louisa,
This tale cannot appear enough. I hope it attracts several new readers to it.
Leila
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Leila – You have chosen one of my favourites!
Louisa – I cannot express how much I adore this story.
Out of the thousands that I have read, this one has stayed with me.
I have a list of around a dozen or so that have ‘caught’ me and this is one.
And I recon, no matter how many more I read, this will always be there, in my top five!! This is BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugh
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Thank you both so much! It means a lot to see this story running again, and to hear how much you enjoy it!
– Louisa Owen
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Excellent story, dark, strange and intriguing. Glad it was chosen for a second rerun as I missed it the first two times. Good introduction as well. Grief as a for sale sign … a fine observation.
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