run on sentences

The old house where I grew up is abandoned now, weathered, and leaning to one side.  It seems to be held in place by a cable connecting it to the power line on the corner.  For some reason, I think of the 1000 piece puzzle,  hanging in a frame  at the top of the stairs outside the bedrooms.   One piece is missing. It had always been missing, this bright blue odd shaped piece that would fit right in the middle of Lake of the C louds, a lake in  northern Michigan nestled between the Porcupine mountains,  near where I grew up.   Ernie, a man who had lived with my family, had finished that puzzle  a few years before he died. “Did you ever sleep with Ernie?” I asked my mom once when she was in her late 70’s and was willing to talk about anything. “No,”   she answered.  “I married your father for better or for worse”.   There probably was a a fair amount of “worse”.  My dad had had an affair with one of her  friends...

The big shiny black/brown cockroach was in the same place as it was the day before in Olive's basement. I wasn't sure if it was dead, alive, or plastic. I was in her basement in the house where she had lived for almost 60 years with her husband Les. I had been down there many times over the years and never saw cockroaches. I am not a fan of them but I was hoping it was alive. I wanted something to be alive in Olive's soon to be empty house. The auction company was coming soon to get rid of all of house's contents, once Olive and Les' treasured, collected over their 70+ years of marriage. "It’s dead", I thought.    I waited for it to move but it didn’t, not even when I turned the light on.  Wasn’t it supposed to scurry off when a light was turned on?  I couldn’t bring myself to poke it or squish it.  So I let it be.  It wasn’t going to bother anyone.  The house would soon be empty and it would find a new home. If my friend Olive wasn’t already ...

  I could  be angry at my brother  for stuffing his life into tallboy cans of beer and drinking them down, one year after another.   In the year since he died, I  have tried to write about my brother Ray without making him sound like a Saint or like the stereotypical alcoholic.  I wrote his obituary and highlighted all of the best parts of him like one always does in an obituary.    I cannot deny the pain he caused his friends and family because he loved beer more than anything else.  But it would serve no purpose for me to write about that.  My brother above everything else, was a good person. Ray and I  went to church when I visited my little hometown, once or twice a year.  It was the only time he went to church and I always looked forward to that time with him.   During my last visit before he died,  he didn’t  meet me at the usual time.   He wasn’t always reliable but this was the first time he did...