• Son of DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley Hale jumps into water at camp
    Parenting

    His Smile

    When we picked Tommy up from of overnight camp this summer, we noticed that his two front teeth had really come in. Just a week and his smile looked different! It looked just like Shawn’s. Claire and Austin once had the same teeth, but braces have straightened them. Shawn never had braces, and I always found his crooked smile endearing, though it was a bit out-of-place in polished Washington, DC. Still, it was a part of what made him who he was. And now Tommy was smiling just like him. We spent the next few weeks in a little cabin on the river, visiting Nana and Pop while we waited…

  • Casket for blog by DC widow writer Marjorie Brimley Hale
    From the Archives

    From the Archives: The Funeral Home

    It was 12 hours after Shawn died. And there were already a half-dozen places I had to visit. The first place I had to go was the worst: the funeral home. I piled in a minivan with my dad and a half-dozen of my friends and they drove me just a few blocks up the street. For years I had gone on runs past this funeral home and never noticed it. It wasn’t small, and it was on the main road. But what use did I have for funeral homes?   The funeral home looked just like I’d expected it to look—heavy drapes, ornate wallpaper, ugly carpet and tacky wall hangings.…

  • DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley Hale marries Chris
    Love and Chris

    First Anniversary (600th blog post)

    When Chris and I first started dating, I emphatically told him that I didn’t want to get married again. At that point, it had been over two years since Shawn died, and over that time, a lot had changed. In early widowhood, I imagined that some day, I’d get remarried. In fact, this lasted for almost the entire first year after Shawn died. At that time, I wanted to get married again for no real other reason than that I wanted someone to save me from the life I was living. Save me from single parenting. Save me from being one of a few solo parents at the elementary school…