-
Shawn’s Birthday, Year 4
I bake at least four loaves of bread every week. I know, it may seem excessive, but I’ve got three kids! Still, that’s not really the reason I bake so much bread. Mostly, I do it because I love it. I haven’t always baked bread like I do now. I learned how to do it in my 20s, but it was a “special event” sort of thing, something I did maybe once or twice a year. I didn’t have any special equipment or techniques (I used Jim Lahey’s no-knead recipe) and mostly, I just bought our bread at the grocery store. Shawn used to love it when I made homemade…
-
International Widows Day
A decade. That’s how long the United Nations has recognized International Widows Day – just ten years. Despite the fact that widows have faced high levels of discrimination, poverty and violence for literally thousands of years, it wasn’t until 2011 that the UN officially had an “International Widows Day.” Listen, I’m really glad that we finally have a day to raise awareness about widows around the world, but….it’s about time! Of course, being a widow in many parts of the world is not just about grief. Unfortunately in many cases, it’s also about the loss of basic stability and human rights. When I start to read about widows across the…
-
What Are You? (Father’s Day, 2021)
Below is a post that was written by my partner, Chris. While I wish he would write more often, he feels that this blog is mine and so he usually wants to stay in the background. But I managed to convince him to write something recently, and it struck me as a perfect great Father’s Day post. It’s about love, loss and what it means to become a father. Those of you who know Marjorie, know that she is nothing if not direct. Never one to shy away from offering her opinion, I’ll often find myself on the receiving end of a talk-shouted “That’s dumb. Don’t do that” from across…
-
To Read on Memorial Day
Every year around this time, there’s a pause to remember those we’ve lost in service to our country. I’m never quite sure what to do about this day, as I feel such a connection to any widow, but I also know that military widows have other layers to their loss that I don’t know. Today’s post are two short articles that have stuck with me. Both pieces are about widows who lost their husbands while they were serving in the US military. Shari Tolbert was a young mother and military spouse whose life was upended when her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Otis Vincent Tolbert was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11.…
-
Mother’s Day, Year 4
When Claire was a few hours old, and we were finally alone, I held her in my arms and lifted her tiny face right next to mine. I whispered all sorts of things to her about how I would always love her and how I was going to do anything to make her life the best one it could be. I also told her that I would not repeat the mistakes of my mother. It was a silly thing to do, since she was an infant who didn’t even know that she had fingers and toes, and thus could not understand the nuances of a mother-daughter relationship. Plus, it wasn’t…
-
Easter Joy
For the past four years, Easter has been an important marker in my life. Maybe it’s because in my faith and in my family, Easter is a time of joy – and joy is something that hasn’t always been so easy to grasp since Shawn died. Even as the trees turned pink with flowers and the purple-red buds of the peonies peeked above the ground, even as there was hope and life everywhere and even as I heard the church sermons that proclaimed joy for this time of year – well, even then, I couldn’t always embrace the idea that joy was all around me. The first Easter I celebrated…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
