• Phone on bed in DC house
    New Perspectives

    Dear Girl on the Phone from UCLA

    I’m so sorry that you had to get me, of all people, when you innocently called to ask for money. I’m so sorry I picked up. I never do. But I saw the 310 area code and I thought it might be an old friend from college and really I just wanted to chat with someone tonight. Someone who once knew me and loved me. Someone from the past who remembered when I was young and fun and had not a care in the world. But it was you. You read from a script and you asked me how I was doing and you told me about all of the…

  • Shawn Brimley with giant pumpkin near Halloween before he got cancer
    Missing Shawn

    Weekend Shawn

    One of Shawn’s favorite things to do was to have dinner on a Sunday night with other families.  He loved the weekends, and he wanted to make them last.  This usually meant we’d find our house full of kids and our fridge full of beer as the weekend rolled to a close on Sunday evenings. When Shawn got sick, we did this a lot less, and once he was in the hospital, we obviously didn’t do it at all.  After he died, I couldn’t even conceive of how I would manage to have friends over or do anything fun again.  One day, about two months after Shawn died, Claire looked…