-
“I’m at Trader Joe’s, What Do You Need?”
In the early days of Shawn’s illness, I was home trying to organize the kids for school the next day. Our families had not yet arrived, and I was trying to figure out how to get Austin to his early Spanish class the next morning. Desperate, I texted our friends Mark and Chris, who live behind us and have a son named Grant who often plays with my kids. “If I’m remembering correctly, Grant has French on Tuesday mornings” I wrote. “If that’s the case, is there any way that Austin can go to school with Grant tomorrow? He has Spanish and I just can’t figure out how to get…
-
Costco and the Cemetery
The cemetery where Shawn is buried is wild and beautiful, filled with trees and migrating birds and simple headstones in the ground. It is a peaceful and truly contemplative place, and though it’s right outside the city, it feels like the countryside. When I chose the cemetery, I chose it for all of these reasons. I also chose it because it’s right next to Costco. I know. But hear me out. I wanted to go to Shawn’s grave, sit there and think about our life together, grieve for him, remember him…and do it more than once a year. I wanted to make it part of my regular life, and well,…
-
Chuck E. Cheese and Jury Duty
It’s 8:30 am and I’m sitting with 200 of my fellow DC residents, waiting to be called for jury duty. My friends all thought I should defer, that coming to jury duty would be just way too much for me right now. They may have been right. And yet here I am. The room has salmon-colored wallpaper, florescent lighting and screens that are repetitively showing me coverage of the latest mass shooting. Two strangers just got in a screaming fight in the hallway over their seating arrangements, and the Wi-Fi doesn’t work. I’m pretty sure if I told my therapist that I was feeling overwhelmed right now she would say…
-
My 39th Birthday…
…the first one without Shawn since number 22. I love my birthday. When I got the news that our third child was due on my 35th birthday, I cried. Not my most mature moment, for sure, but February 25th is my day. Shawn knew this. And every year he planned for it. Last year he got a group of friends together and we sang karaoke until the wee hours of the night. Shawn and I started out with our favorite song – Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” It was the first song we sang together the night we met, in the late summer of 2001 in Japan. There are…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
