It’s a special treat to post the spoken word of kimberly warner this week. Shortly after she recorded this excerpt, Kimberly made a surprise announcement that her upcoming memoir will be published by Empress Editions (from which this excerpt is taken.)
If you enjoy her words, and you will, take a moment to pre-order her memoir:
unfixed: a memoir of family, mystery, and the currents that carry you home)
🤫 And, pssst: take a sneak peek at the book jacket below ⬇️ with a blurb from Alisa Kennedy Jones.
The Nomination
“She works hard to set the stage and then she quietly slips behind the curtain and takes a seat next to the rest of us. Kimberly also wrote her memoir. Riveting, heart wrenching and warming. She lays bare her soul, raw. For all of us to feel. A true story of cinematic capability. I do not need to spend time searching her memoir for the excerpt I will highlight. Though I read this last year, I will never forget the number 43. Often, we read, or have left a comment for an author’s wonderful writing ; “ I felt like I was there with you”. This excerpt goes well beyond any reasonable depth of that meaning. We, the reader, on our knees, with a hand over our mouth.”
– Lor
an excerpt from “4/3 on Highway 43 @ 5:43”
“There was an anesthesiologist from Appleton Medical Center driving behind dad. He recognized dad’s car and vanity plate. He said moments before the collision, dad reached his hand through the sun roof and waved to the rising sun. Was he waving hello?
Or was he waving goodbye?
Does his spirit exit stubbornly
clinging to ribcage and bone
or was he squeezed out like toothpaste
from a phantom umbilicus?
Maybe some rise easily, like the yeasty force of leavened bread,
warmed to meet a new infinite ceiling.
Maybe others catch on spinning fans and ride out eternity
on a dizzy blade.
Or is it simpler than all of this —
after car crushes
heart ceases,
breath escapes,
we mistake a vacant body and
it’s yawning void
for a soul.
We name it, we animate it, we call for it
but it’s only
so our own void has a place to go.
The strange and complicated relationship mom and dad shared is irreparably broken when he doesn’t return from a hospital staff party. He and his surgical partners had dressed as famous musicians and sang farewell tunes to a retiring nurse. Luis Suarez was Julio Eglesias. Trevor Rattray was Harry Belafonte. Dad, already halfway there with his pony tail dressed up as Willie Nelson. Twelve hours earlier he had bypassed a cheese-encrusted artery and saved a life. Twelve hours later he drove head on into a truck.
He dies on Highway 43, right before the two-lane road splits into four. The insignificant little town of Fredonia cradles his crushed ribs that morning as his spirit unfurls its tireless wings. Or maybe they were tired. I don’t know. Highway 43. At 5:43. On April 3. 4/3. He was also born in 1943. This number will haunt, comfort and deceive me for the rest of my life.”
— Kimberly Warner, 4/3 on Highway 43 @ 5:43
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