Two years ago, Shawn and I threw a party that was particularly crazy. We didn’t really mean for the party to get so wild. We just wanted to have a few friends over to celebrate the year and toast our successes, failures, and ability to have merely survived. As I remember, we were still reeling […]
Family & Friends
Lockdown
For many years, when we did lockdown drills at school, I always texted Shawn to tell him about it. Last week, I sat through my first drill without him.
Field Trips, Open Houses and Other Events I Can’t Attend Anymore
The other day I was sorting through the kids’ paperwork after school and came across a permission slip for a field trip for Claire. I signed it, and then was putting it on my calendar when Claire came over to me. I asked her about what she thought she was going to do on the […]
Talking to My Kids About Death, Again
Many years ago, when Claire was about 5, she was just starting to understand the concept of death. One day at school she learned from a friend that people can die of all sorts of diseases. This peaked her curiosity and she asked me about a dozen questions that night. “But how do people get […]
Nana
One day near the end of the school year, I picked Austin up and he insisted that we call his Nana. “Today at school,” he told me, “we had a cake made out of ice cream for a birthday party. I want to call Nana and see if they have those kind of cakes in Texas!” […]
Run Away
On Monday, I woke with a pit in my stomach. “Six months,” I thought. “Six entire months since Shawn left this world. How could that be?” I didn’t quite know what to do with the anxiety I was feeling, but my cousin Amy offered to take my kids for the morning and I gratefully left […]