-
From the Archives: Maybe She Will Be the One to Save Me
One Saturday night in the late fall of 2019 as I was putting my kids to bed, I got a text from my friend Christine. Are you awake? I just picked up someone for you. I showed him your picture! I was laying down in Tommy’s bed, aimlessly scrolling through news stories and social media posts, but I sat up. Did Christine really just write that she had hit on someone for me? What? Are you out? I texted back. We are at a bar. Want his number? Should I give him yours? she asked. Then she sent a string of ideas about how I should start texting him, but…
-
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…
-
Hypochondriac
When I was a kid and somewhat sick from a cold or other bug, my dad would take a look at me and if I wasn’t actively throwing up or profusely sweating, he’d send me to school. I always hated it – why didn’t I get to stay home like every other kid? “You’ll live,” he often said when I whined about something that wasn’t life-threatening. That’s the thing about growing up with a parent who is a medical professional – you cannot be wimpy about illness. They’ve seen worse. I’m not sure I was a less-whiny kid about my minor illnesses, but as I grew up, I knew that…
-
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…
-
Moments of Pause
Over the past few months, it’s really felt like things are getting easier here in Colombia. Sure, nothing is really the same as it is back home. It takes me three times longer to go through the grocery store and I still get lost in my own neighborhood and when someone in my apartment talks to me in Spanish, I only get about 50% of it, even now. But the kids have settled into school and they have sports events and they even get invited to birthday parties and so, in some ways, it all feels similar to my old life too. That’s been a nice feeling. I have a…
-
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.…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
