They’re shooting at our regiment now.” I read the quote above and put down the New York Times, the gallows humor too profound to ignore. The article by Mark Epstein was quoting a friend whose contemporaries were dying. Mine are, too. At an alarming rate. My Christmas card list this year showed a disturbing number
Do the people you love own certain times of your day – stalwart custodians of some magical clock? I never meet a day or a coffee pot without remembering the sound of my father’s voice in the early morning. I see him standing by the coffee pot, his greeting optimistic as dawn, cup in hand [ Read More ]
It occurred to me today, as I found myself standing in the middle of the family plot talking to the people I love who are no longer with me except in spirit and memory, that anyone not Irish might consider it odd to find comfort in a cemetery. Yet, I always do. I’d gone there [ Read More ]
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can decide how you’re going to live now.” —Joan Baez, Folksinger When my daughter died at thirty-five, in the midst of my grief, I had an irrational recurrent guilt that I hadn’t bought her more hot fudge sundaes. She loved them so, [ Read More ]
Losing a child is a special kind of grief, irrevocably out of sync with nature. We’re not supposed to bury our children — the mind and heart rebel and struggle to find a place to contain the unbearable and unthinkable. We give birth to infinite love when we give birth to our children. Joy, hope, [ Read More ]
When my daughter died, I couldn’t find the strength to say the words aloud. Passed away, I could manage, as if she still hovered somewhere just outside my reach. Died was final and irrevocable and I simply could not say the word. The first few weeks after her death were a haze of grief. A [ Read More ]