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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.…
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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…
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From the Archives: Your Dad Died Last Night
The morning before Shawn died, my dad woke my children and got them ready for school. Claire sat at the kitchen counter and ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast while my dad wiped the kitchen counter. When she had gone to bed, both Shawn and I had still been in the house, and she was confused. My dad told her that we’d spent the night at the hospital. The house was quiet, and Claire didn’t say anything as she ate. She looked up after she finished, and with a furrowed brow asked my father, “Grandpa Tom, is Dad going to die?” He didn’t mince words. “Yes,” he said, “he…
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Let’s Make Light As a Family
The kids cried when we told them we were moving to Colombia. They didn’t want to leave their friends, their rooms, their toys and their extended family. They didn’t know Spanish and they didn’t know the culture of Colombia. They didn’t want to live in an apartment and they didn’t want to eat arepas for the next year. (They now love arepas.) But we had made a decision, and slowly, they all came around to it. We did offer one carrot – we promised them that once we got to Colombia and had been there for a month, we would all take a trip to the beach. A few weeks…
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From the Archives: That’s What We Have Right Now. Hope.
My dad arrived a week before Christmas. Initially, when Shawn was diagnosed, he’d offered to come in January for the duration of the chemotherapy. Shawn and I thought it would take about six months, and my dad could help our family until the worst was over. What we didn’t know was that my dad had different plans. After he saw the scans that were taken a few days before Shawn’s colonoscopy, he knew it was much worse than we realized. I didn’t know till later that he’d sat at his computer in his living room and held a printout of the scan, crying as he looked at it. My dad…
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Parent 2 (Part 2)
In the early days of widowhood, sometimes the smallest things would make me cry. In fact, I have a very vivid memory of sobbing the first time I filled out a form for one of the kids and realized that there was no father to go in the “Parent 2” slot. Obviously, I had to do this a number of times over the next few years, and it did get easier. I started writing “No Parent 2” in the slot, though sometimes I’d get auto-replies that said things like, “Hello Marjorie Brimley and No Parent 2!” I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. That fall after Shawn died, I…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
