-
From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 2 of 2)
The diary took me a long time to finish, but I read it all in one sitting. When I was done, I realized I had used almost all of the tabs. Each page was full of my notes, with arrows pointing to the margins where I’d written questions or tried to connect her thoughts. I came downstairs to my friends. “How did it go?” Michelle asked. She was on the couch, also writing, and Becky was across the room, fiddling with her camera. They both turned to face me. “It was…” I couldn’t find the right words. They waited for me to finish. “It was a lot.” “I’m sure it…
-
From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 1 of 2)
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face my mom’s diary. What was it going to tell me about who she had been? How might it change the memories I had of her? Was it even right to read someone else’s diary, even if she had left it for us to find? I knew I couldn’t do it at home. For some reason, I wanted to be away both from my kids and from my dad. It wasn’t just about the constant interruptions that happened at home, but rather more that I needed a clear head. Becky and Michelle offered to go away with me for…
-
Thanks on Thanksgiving
I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’ve decided that it’s time to end the blog. Don’t worry – I’m not stopping right now! At this point, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to stop writing this blog. But for the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with whether it makes sense anymore for me to write about widowhood. The early, intense months of widowhood are now in the past for me, and even the big changes that occurred over the past 4 1/2 years – living with my dad, raising kids as a single mom, dating, falling in love, the pandemic, getting married and having Chris…
-
From the Archives: Look Good in the ER
Looking at my sister is like looking in the mirror. The shape of her eyes, drawn down just a bit on the ends, and the curve of her mouth when she smiles are just two of the many physical similarities we share. As a kid, it grated on me that people thought we were twins. “I’m older,” I’d reply, indignantly. But we were always close, joined together by love and also by the difficulties of growing up in a house with a very ill parent. When our mom died, we grieved together even if we didn’t know exactly how to go about it. I’d been away at college for much…
-
From the Archives: A Walk With My Dad
That summer after Shawn died, we all traveled to Texas for our annual family reunion at my aunt Nancy’s house. It was a place my dad loved, even in the sweltering summers, as it had been his home for his entire childhood and young adulthood. It was a place where it was so hot we sometimes tried to fry eggs on the sidewalk, a place where cacti dotted every front yard and the place where he had met and fallen in love with my mom. My parents originally met on a double date, though they weren’t matched with each other that night. They went out a few times after that,…
-
From the Archives: The Mindfulness and Grief Therapy Session
I spent a lot of the first half of 2018 looking for something to ease the strain in my chest, a pain that was obviously due to my mental state and yet also had a physical component. One night, I had my dad listen to my heart with his stethoscope, because it felt so out-of-whack. “You’re okay,” my dad said, though I knew he was only talking about my pulse and not the emotion that had caused me to wake him up so he could reassure me that I wasn’t having a heart attack. If I could have just taken a pill and made the pain dissolve, I would have…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
