Counterweight: On Veteran’s Day 2020, a reflection about carrying the weight of the past by Michael Lund

A response to Karen Lea Germain’s essay titled “Weight” in the Spring 2020 Intima. I begin with the weight of my parents’ cremains (analogues to those of Germain’s aunt and uncle), physical realities blending with the heaviness of regret. I will end, hopefully, with the lightness of relief (in which the pun of light includes illumination). At the center of my response to her fine essay is the weight of a military veteran’s sorrow.

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