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Tommy’s Christmas List
Tommy has the most insane Christmas list this year. He’s been working on it for over a month, and there are dozens of things across the two pages. He can’t spell anything, so he’s constantly asking me to help him spell things like, “Freddy Krueger claws.” That’s just the beginning. Also included are the following: a drone, a virtual reality bodysuit, a Jason mask, treasure, a phone, a motorcycle, a real elf, and $10,000. Austin keeps trying to tell him that he won’t get any of this stuff on his list, but Tommy believes in Santa. And not just any Santa. He believes in the one who does magical things.…
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Excerpt from Marjorie’s Speech, “Remembering Those We Love”
On December 1st, 2017 my husband Shawn was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. He never left the hospital for more than a short stint at home. Less than six weeks later, on January 9th, 2018 he died in my arms. So to say that the holidays are fraught for me….well, that’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. What are you supposed to do when you’re faced with a cancer diagnosis but can see the twinkling Christmas lights from your hospital room? What are you supposed to do when you are watching all the kids walk down the street dressed up for Halloween, and your own child is gone…
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What Brought You to The Hospital Today?
In 1971, when my father was a young medical student, he was working with patients at a county hospital in Houston. One day, a woman came in complaining of swollen feet and my dad was in charge of figuring out what was wrong with her. “So,” my dad began, “what brought you to the hospital today?” The woman looked right at him and said, “the bus.” She was not trying to be a smart-ass. She was merely answering my dad’s question. So he tried again. “Well, why did you come to the hospital?” “My feet are swollen,” she said. “Any other problems?” he asked. “Nope,” she replied. He was a…
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Mysterious
“Wait, let me get this straight,” the man running next to me said with wide-eyes, “you’ve lived in DC for fifteen years and you don’t know anything about our running group and you’ve never heard of Kelly’s Bar or any other bar around here?” I smiled. It was my first time with this new running group, and I wasn’t divulging much about my life, though he was trying to figure me out. “Yes, I guess that’s all true,” I said. “Who are you?” he said, laughing at me a bit, but also genuinely curious. “I’m just a runner,” I said, “though I’ve got a somewhat interesting backstory I’ll tell you…
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I Keep Running
I run almost every day. This is a relatively new thing for me – when Shawn was alive, I did a lot of walking, and I went to the gym a few times a week. But I wasn’t a consistent runner. Shawn was religious about his workouts. He did CrossFit all the time and ran on the days when he wasn’t at the gym. He went through a period of time when we were both in our early 30s when he wasn’t working out at all. But he woke up one morning in his late 30s and told me that he had gained too much weight and he was going…
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Speed Dating
“Are you all planning on wearing your wedding rings?” It was an innocent question coming from a friend of mine, another young widow named Alexi. In a few hours, we were slated to meet up with a few other young widows for a night on the town. We discussed the issue at length, eventually deciding that wearing a ring at a dating event would be pretty weird. Especially because we’d have little time to explain our complicated histories, as we were going speed dating. Yes, speed dating. Believe it or not, it still exists. Invented almost 20 years ago by a rabbi, speed dating is exactly what you think it…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
