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One Year Later
There was a nurse who sat with me, that I remember. I can’t really recall what she looked like, but I remember what it felt to have her arms wrapped around me as I sat on the floor of the emergency room, unable to stand. “I know what this means,” I kept saying over and over. “My husband has spots on his liver. I know what this means.” She didn’t try and tell me my fears were misplaced. She knew what it meant too. But she sat with me on that disgusting floor. Eventually, she took me somewhere to pull myself together. I called one of my friends. I can’t…
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Guns and Cancer
After Shawn died, my friends Ilan and Phil organized a group to participate in the Colon Cancer Run here in DC. There were hundreds of people who showed up and the event raised thousands of dollars. As I was running with the kids that day, I thought about how supported and loved I felt. When I turned the corner mid-way through the run, I saw the Capitol and snapped this cover photo of our oldest boy – number 5008 – running towards it. I thought about this moment when I first saw news of the shooting last weekend at the Tree of Life Synagogue. Of course, I was horrified. And…
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Not My Domain
Shit just keeps breaking. For real – I cannot keep up with everything that’s broken in my house. The toilet paper dispenser in the downstairs bathroom has been ripped out of the drywall, the handle to the refrigerator is so loose I can barely close it and the back door has a doorknob that routinely falls off. My solution over the past year has been to ignore these problems. To be fair, this was what I did when Shawn was alive. The only difference was that he would actually fix things that were broken. Usually, I didn’t even have to ask. Shawn was handy. I didn’t grow up with a…
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Sorry For Your Loss: A Review
A few weeks ago, a new show debuted on Facebook. I had no idea Facebook made tv shows, but apparently they do. In any case, this new show is called “Sorry For Your Loss” and is about a young widow. It is brilliant. That is not an understatement. I’ve watched the first eight episodes and I am convinced that the writers for this show are all young widows. It’s that spot-on. The show is about a woman, Leigh (played by Elizabeth Olsen), who is probably in her early 30s. As the show begins, the viewer finds out that her husband died three months prior. In the first episode, she sits…
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A Brutal Few Weeks
I’m not sure how to say this any other way, but it’s been a brutal few weeks for me. Of course, healing from tragic loss is not linear. Every therapist loves to tell me that, and I believe it. Some days are terrible, some days are not, and there’s no specific progression. In January, and for about six months afterwards, I felt really sad about my life. I felt like I might never be happy again, because how could I be? But then, I started to see some hope. I had days when I felt good for much of the time, and I began to envision the future. I couldn’t…
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I Might As Well Get Cheaper Tires If My Husband Has to Be Dead
I heard the hissing immediately. What the hell was happening? I hopped out of the car, and looked down. A woman walking her dog stopped. “It’s your tire,” she said. “It’s not good.” She wasn’t kidding. There was a 2-inch slit in my tire and it was completely flat. “Shit, shit, shit!” I said, staring at the tire. Austin’s baseball game was starting in 5 minutes. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to a 2-hour second grade baseball game with a 4-year-old in tow, but at least it gave me time. I walked up to the game. “My tire is flat,” I told the parents who had assembled for the game.…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
