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What If?
I teach the only International Relations class at my school, so I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months listening to the news. I am a particular fan of podcasts, because I can also cook or clean or do other tasks while I listen. And right now, all I’m listening to is one news analysis after another, particularly around the war in Ukraine. Did Putin miscalculate? What do we know about Zelensky? How are refugees faring? I like listening to podcasts, because I like knowing about the world and because – like many people – I find it hard to look away from what’s happening in Ukraine.…
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The Disorder of Prolonged Grief – Does It Make Sense?
For those of you who are grieving, I’m sure you’ve heard about the newest update from the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It’s news that maybe made you feel relieved…or maybe made you furious. Grief, it seems, is now a disorder. Okay, fine, it’s not always identified as a disorder. But last week, as the New York Times reported, the APA added “prolonged grief” to its diagnostic manual. I decided to take a look at what this meant, so I went to the APA directly. Prolonged grief, as they define it, happens when a person experiences “intense longings for the deceased or preoccupation with thoughts of the deceased” a year after…
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Three Kids, Two Dads
These days, everyone in our community is used to hearing Claire, Austin and Tommy call Chris, “Dad.” But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, for the first year he was in their lives, they called him “Chris.” He didn’t ever ask them to call him anything else, and they didn’t think to do it. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 when Claire first decided to call Chris, “Dad.” I wrote about it in the blog post, Ask a Widow: How Do Your Kids Think About Their (Dead) Dad When They Have a (New, Alive) Dad?: Over the past few months, Claire went from calling Chris by his name…
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Things to do on a Deathiversary
I never quite know what to do to celebrate a deathiversary. Yes, I get that “celebrate” might not be the best word here, especially when we’re talking about the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Wouldn’t “mourn” be a better word? Or maybe just “mark”? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve certainly mourned Shawn on his deathiversary each year, which is January 9th. But as time passes, I want to celebrate him, even though the date itself is always going to be sad for me. Still, it’s a date when I remember him, which means that I don’t want to just let it pass me by. I want to mark it.…
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When I was a child, the best day every year was my birthday. No matter how my mom was feeling, she made my birthday magical: big parties and special treats and lots of dancing to the Beatles “Birthday” song when we got home from school. It was a day when I always felt celebrated and special and adored. And so, I loved my birthday – at least, until my mom died. I was 19 at the time, and once the shock wore off, one of my first thoughts was about my birthday. Who was going to celebrate it with me? How would it possibly be special without her in it?…
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What If He Dies? (Part 2)
Well. There’s nothing like writing a post about my fear of Chris’s death to cause a lot of mail to arrive in my inbox. Some of these messages were public. But a lot of them were private, as sometimes happens with really intense posts I write. “I feel that way too,” said one reader after another. “I worry about my new partner dying.” “I know,” I’d write back. “It’s just something widows feel, I think. We know death is real. And even though we’ve faced it, it still scares us.” A few days after I wrote the post, I was talking to Chris in the kitchen after dinner. We picked…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
