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The Ensemble
Over the past month, my family life has been a bit consumed by the elementary school play, James and the Giant Peach. Claire tried out in the late fall and was cast as part of the ensemble. Since then, she’s had frequent practices after school. This has required a lot of coordination. The boys finish school at 3:15 and my dad gets them, but then I need to make sure I wrap up everything at work in order to get Claire whenever her rehearsal finishes. Or – more likely – I ask someone to get her. In the weeks leading to the performance, the play seemed to take over our…
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Valentines Day
Valentine’s day is a stupid, made-up holiday. It is! But I guess so are a lot of quasi-holidays and other silly things we celebrate. I’m pretty sure Facebook made up National Sibling Day but I love posting pictures of my sister on that day. So I was never against Valentine’s Day, exactly. I just didn’t make a big deal out of it. But Shawn knew better. He knew that if he forgot to recognize his love for me on this day, even though I thought the holiday was stupid, it might hurt my feelings. So every year, he made sure to get me something nice. The first year, when we…
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After a Year
I got involved with the Hot Young Widows Club about a month after Shawn died. It is a place where widows of all backgrounds can share their most raw emotions and daily experiences (and contrary to the name, there is no litmus test to get in!) I found it comforting that other people struggled with similar issues that I faced and I often found myself scrolling through its newsfeed at night. But there was one thing that made me nervous about what I read there. Sometimes I would see a comment about how the second year after loss can be more difficult than the first year. Eventually, I discovered this…
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Last Night
I felt the hair on his face brush up against my cheek. He pulled back for a minute and looked at me. I could see the lines around his eyes crinkle up into a slight smile. Then he closed his eyes and kissed me really slowly. His arms, strong and twice as big as my own, were wrapped around me. I was so happy. Blissfully happy, like that kind of happy you feel when a child is born or you have that first kiss with someone you know you’ll be with forever. But after that moment came confusion. Why was I so happy? He looked at me, and then I…
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The Ring
I took it off for the first time as an experiment. Since the day I was married, I wore my wedding ring constantly. I know many people take their rings off every night but that wasn’t me. I knew if I took my ring off, I’d lose it. So no matter where I was – the pool, the gym, the sink, the bed – I kept my wedding ring on. As we gained financial stability, Shawn would ask me if I wanted a “nicer” ring someday. “No!” I always told him, emphatically. I loved that ring. “I don’t want a new ring,” I’d say to him. “This is the ring…
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Thestrals
After years of reading terrible books like Captain Underpants, Austin finally showed interest in starting the Harry Potter series. A few months ago, we began reading the first book, and we’ve progressively moved through the story. It’s a compelling one, with characters and themes that are far beyond those easily understandable by a 7-year-old. One of the magical creatures that appears in the series is a thestral. I had to actually look up the definition of this bat-like, horse-shaped creature online, and once I did I remembered that it was a special kind of supernatural being: the thestral is only visible to people who’ve seen someone die and accepted that…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
