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It Can Always Get Worse
Many years ago, when I had just moved to my current neighborhood, I went out to dinner with my new friend Becky, who I met through our kids’ preschool. I didn’t know her that well yet, but I knew she was fun and up for taking 4 kids under 4 out to dinner at our local Mexican restaurant. It was insane. Our 3-year-olds threw chips everywhere and wouldn’t stay in their seats. Her 1-year-old was crying and mine was drinking the salsa like it was water. We had both just worked all day and then were dealing with this. I looked at her, exasperated, and said, “my God, could it…
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Who’s Saving Our Basement?
About a week after Shawn died the washing machine broke and the basement shower drain plugged. I had eight people in the house (me, my kids, my dad, my aunt and my two friends Kelly and Paige) and all of the sudden, nothing worked. A plumber eventually fixed the shower, but the washing machine was dead. Luckily, I figured out that if I just washed everything on “quick wash” I could get the machine to work for about 15 minutes. And so, for the next month, I washed everything on that setting. This wasn’t the only thing that started to atrophy when Shawn died. It seemed like everything did. I…
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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,…
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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…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
