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New York, New York
“Woah,” Claire said as we came out of the dark tunnel and into the sunshine. “This is New York? It’s AMAZING!” We had arrived at Penn Station for a special birthday trip to the Big Apple. She’d been to New York before, but she didn’t remember it. This trip was going to be different. We were meeting her cousin Ashley (and Ashley’s mom Amy, who flew out from Texas to meet us because they are awesome) and we were going to celebrate Claire’s first decade of life. “It’s so busy!” Claire said, “and all the cabs are yellow. And there’s someone dressed like Wonder Woman over there!” I laughed. Her…
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Happy Now
As I write this blog post, I’m sitting on the deck of an oceanfront house, looking out at the bluest water I’ve ever seen. Next to me is a half-eaten grapefruit and sand covers my feet. My two best friends Kelly and Paige are in the chairs next to me, laughing about something we did last night. I am in paradise. But it’s not paradise because of the incredibly nice real estate or the perfect weather or the great company. It’s my paradise because – for the first time in a month – I’m happy. Yes, I said it: happy. I know, for my family and friends, everyone is thinking:…
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Walk to the End of the Driveway
My dad spent over four decades working as a doctor. Most of those years were spent in my hometown in Oregon. It’s a small town, and so my dad saw all sorts of people in his practice. But the life of an internist is not glamorous, and while my dad had a number of great stories when he was able to save someone’s life, usually his days consisted of seeing people with mundane problems like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Often, he had to talk to his patients about losing weight. “You just need to eat less and exercise more,” my dad would say. “I’m trying,” the patient…
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Freak-Out Letter #6
Just before Shawn and I got married, I almost backed out. I mean, not really. I knew I was going to marry him. But I had just turned 25 and I had a little freak-out that we were getting married too young. I had barely graduated from college and neither of us had jobs. We were moving to a city where we had no friends and I had spent the previous 3 years traveling around the world with little more than what I could fit in a backpack. I can’t remember exactly what brought on the freak-out, but I definitely remember crying to Shawn about how maybe we should postpone…
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It Might Not Happen For Me
I love podcasts. So did Shawn. We used to put them on in the morning to get caught up with the day’s news and we used to listen to really engaging ones in the evening together. One time when he was going through this big health kick, he made me listen to a multi-hour podcast on the dangers of sugar by a martial-arts expert. I rolled my eyes a lot at that one, but we ended up talking about it for days afterwards. For a while after Shawn died, I couldn’t listen to any of our old podcasts. I still liked listening to other people talk, but I switched to…
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Backsliding Into Grief
“Shawn used to order the craziest pizza toppings,” someone said with a smile. “He loved the ‘meat classic’ and anything else that had meat on top of meat,” I said, and everyone laughed. I was smiling remembering his ridiculous pizza orders for our group of friends. And then I was crying. Sobbing, really. “I miss him so much,” I kept saying as I continued to cry for what felt like a really long time. Everyone was comforting. I was beside myself. I don’t know how to fully put this down on paper, but at that moment I felt just as sad as I had in the weeks immediately after Shawn…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
