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From the Archives: We Weren’t a Broken Family
On one of our last nights in Europe, back in 2019, Claire snuck into my bed. “I remember when Dad was sick,” she said. She curled her body next to mine, and I ran my fingers through her hair, which was something my mom had always done when we needed comfort. She still had the baby-fine hair of childhood, though her blond strands were long and bleached on the ends from the sun. I played with a tendril as we talked. “You do?” I asked. I honestly didn’t know how much the kids remembered. Tommy knew nothing; that much I’d surmised. Austin was quiet about it all. But Claire had…
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From the Archives: Dating and the Cabal
In the second year of widowhood, I became friends with a group of young widows. We called ourselves “The Glamorous Cabal of Widows” or “The Cabal” for short. Not everyone was dating yet, but when one of us went out on a date, we always texted the group. There was usually someone around to provide support, or in some cases, humor. We compared dating to root canals and war and everything else that we could think of that was bad. Fuck him, was a common reply to a date that went poorly. My other friends who heard about the Cabal only said, “I wouldn’t mess with any of you,” which…
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From the Archives: You Are Making Meaning Already
About a year after Shawn died, I had a short but passionate relationship with a man I’ll call Derek. It ended badly. I didn’t want to admit to most of my friends that the breakup hit me really hard. I told them that I wasn’t sure why I was down, but that I seemed to be experiencing new grief. Really, the original misery over losing Shawn had never gone away. But my relationship with Derek had tamped that grief down, had made it smooth around the edges, encapsulated in a vessel that I could hold and manage. Somehow, our breakup had broken that vessel and the grief spilled out everywhere.…
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From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 2 of 2)
The diary took me a long time to finish, but I read it all in one sitting. When I was done, I realized I had used almost all of the tabs. Each page was full of my notes, with arrows pointing to the margins where I’d written questions or tried to connect her thoughts. I came downstairs to my friends. “How did it go?” Michelle asked. She was on the couch, also writing, and Becky was across the room, fiddling with her camera. They both turned to face me. “It was…” I couldn’t find the right words. They waited for me to finish. “It was a lot.” “I’m sure it…
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From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 1 of 2)
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face my mom’s diary. What was it going to tell me about who she had been? How might it change the memories I had of her? Was it even right to read someone else’s diary, even if she had left it for us to find? I knew I couldn’t do it at home. For some reason, I wanted to be away both from my kids and from my dad. It wasn’t just about the constant interruptions that happened at home, but rather more that I needed a clear head. Becky and Michelle offered to go away with me for…
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From the Archives: It’s Hard for People Who Don’t Know the Whole Story
Fall seemed too quick the year Shawn died, though maybe it was better that way. I didn’t want to spend the whole season reliving his illness. Instead, I spent a lot of time writing in the safety and warmth of my bedroom, though I also found refuge in my kitchen after the kids’ bedtime. I still wasn’t cooking much, but I could brew a cup of tea and eat a bowl of chocolate chips and feel like I was getting some sort of treat. One night, when I was up finishing a blog post about my life just after my mom died, my dad came downstairs. “You writing?” he asked…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
