• Brimley family enjoying a beautiful view together before Shawn Brimley's death
    Things That Suck

    Costco and the Cemetery

    The cemetery where Shawn is buried is wild and beautiful, filled with trees and migrating birds and simple headstones in the ground.  It is a peaceful and truly contemplative place, and though it’s right outside the city, it feels like the countryside.  When I chose the cemetery, I chose it for all of these reasons.  I also chose it because it’s right next to Costco. I know.  But hear me out.  I wanted to go to Shawn’s grave, sit there and think about our life together, grieve for him, remember him…and do it more than once a year.  I wanted to make it part of my regular life, and well,…

  • Tommy whining with Marjorie before he lost his dad Shawn Brimley
    Things That Suck

    Chuck E. Cheese and Jury Duty

    It’s 8:30 am and I’m sitting with 200 of my fellow DC residents, waiting to be called for jury duty. My friends all thought I should defer, that coming to jury duty would be just way too much for me right now. They may have been right. And yet here I am. The room has salmon-colored wallpaper, florescent lighting and screens that are repetitively showing me coverage of the latest mass shooting. Two strangers just got in a screaming fight in the hallway over their seating arrangements, and the Wi-Fi doesn’t work. I’m pretty sure if I told my therapist that I was feeling overwhelmed right now she would say…

  • Brimley family on a birthday wagon ride before becoming a widow
    Holidays

    My 39th Birthday…

    …the first one without Shawn since number 22. I love my birthday. When I got the news that our third child was due on my 35th birthday, I cried.  Not my most mature moment, for sure, but February 25th is my day. Shawn knew this.  And every year he planned for it.  Last year he got a group of friends together and we sang karaoke until the wee hours of the night.  Shawn and I started out with our favorite song – Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”  It was the first song we sang together the night we met, in the late summer of 2001 in Japan.  There are…