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“I Think He’s Dying”
It was New Year’s Day, 2018. I was with a couple of friends and their husbands. Our kids ran all over the house, happy to be with each other. Shawn was at home, finally, but we had decided that he’d spend the afternoon sleeping and I’d take the kids out of the house. It was freezing, and they were stir-crazy. I didn’t want to leave him, but there was still some part of me that thought we had a really long road ahead of us. If that was the case, we needed to make sure to keep the kids’ routine steady, and that meant getting them out of the house…
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….Hello 2019 (Part 2 of 2)
Hello 2019. Hello security – in my finances, in my parenting, in my choices. Hello running fast and slow, up hills and down, with tears and without. Hello writing, this time without striving for so much perfection. Hello nights that end after midnight. Hello banker, financial advisor, lawyer. I can navigate you and your paperwork now, and I’m going to be proud of that. Hello rocking my baby after his bath. Hello daydreams. Hello therapy over wine with girlfriends after school. Hello God. Whoever or whatever or wherever you are. Hello acceptance of other people and their reactions to my loss. Hello eight hours of sleep. Hello empowerment. Let my…
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Good Riddance 2018…. (Part 1 of 2)
Good riddance 2018. Good riddance latex gloves, alcohol swabs, shower chairs, needles. Good riddance nightmares. Good riddance shower floor, where I often sat when I was too exhausted to do anything else but let the water pour down my back. Good riddance probate. Good riddance Zofran, 5FU, morphine and Ativan. Good riddance estate tax return with your stupid requirements to produce a statement of every account we had the day Shawn died. Good riddance exhaustion and subsequent unplanned naps in living room chairs. Good riddance crying in public. Not forever, but just during those times when I’d like to hold it together. Good riddance documents I had to sign saying…
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Home
The pastor was talking about Jesus, and my mind was wandering. Sometimes, in the middle of a service, I find myself immersed in whatever is happening at the front. The music or the sermon or the prayers can whisk me away into a place where I’m totally focused on whatever it is we are doing in that moment. I love those times in church. They feel the most holy to me. But I was in a new church with my extended family over the holidays, and the pastor at the front wasn’t one I knew. He was engaging but I wasn’t fully listening. Still, I liked how he was talking…
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Sweet Potato Fries
The morning of Shawn’s funeral, I went to put on the one black skirt I had, and it literally fell off my body. I hadn’t realized until that point how much weight I had lost over the previous six weeks. My sister helped pin the skirt on me, and told me that really, it didn’t look that bad. “No one will notice,” she said. She was trying to be comforting, but it was probably true. No one was going to care what I was wearing. Including me. I hadn’t been able to eat much at all throughout Shawn’s hospital stay. At times, I was outright banned from eating in his…
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Christmas Eve
A few days ago, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw someone complaining that her child had just radically changed his Christmas list. “He wants a dozen laser tag guns now! And I just finished all of the wrapping!” the person whined. I get it. These small details can be annoying when we have a million things going on. But do you know what it made me realize? At that point, five days before Christmas, I had purchased just one present for each of my children. ONE. Last year it wasn’t like this at all. I planned ahead and bought most of my presents in November, so when Shawn was…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
