The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise

by Colleen Oakley

“Why is it called a grandfather clock and not a grandmother clock?” her eldest granddaughter, Poppy, asked once. “Because only a man would find the need to announce it every time he performed his job as required,” Louise replied.

Aside from cancer, it had been Louise’s biggest fear when it came to the inevitability of aging. “I don’t care what happens to my body, as long as my mind doesn’t go,” she said often to Ken, the kids, anyone who would listen. “If my mind goes, just take me out back like Old Yeller.”

In life, there were two kinds of friends: friends who would wish you well on your journey to battle, and friends who would jump in the trenches with you.