May is almost here and the days are passing too quickly. There is too much to do, to learn and to accomplish, for both Lizzy and Cecilia. I will never know enough to be the kind of mother they deserve. And I will never know enough to protect Cecilia from death. Every day that passes…
Happy Easter, everyone. Exactly a year ago today was Lizzy’s funeral. This is also my 100th post, and I have decided to finally make this blog public in the hopes that it can help someone else who is either grieving a child or even just asking the hard questions in the midst of this Coronavirus…
Holy Saturday has traditionally been a very quiet day for me. Quiet, contemplative, and waiting. This morning, I woke up thinking about Our Lady cleaning the wounds of Christ and preparing his body for burial, and I wondered if this act helped her to cope with the reality of his death. I then thought about…
Today is Good Friday, the day on which we remember the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of this word “passion” to describe the suffering that Christ endured. It seems so archaic, given our colloquial use of the word “passion” as something about which we feel…
It is hard for me to admit that I don’t know where to draw the line between grief over losing Lizzy and grief over losing the life I thought I was going to have. It seems beyond contemptible to be thinking about yourself, your feelings and expectations, your understanding of who you are and who…
Mightier than Este is Nienna, sister of the Feanturi; she dwells alone. She is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. So great was her sorrow, as the Music unfolded, that her song turned to lamentation long before its end, and the sound of mourning…
In September of 2018, Lizzy and I traveled to Florida to visit my grandparents for a week. My grandmother took us to the aquarium, where Lizzy pressed eager palms against the endless tanks of native fish, the dim blue light reflecting on her wide, gap-toothed smile. We reached into a shallow, circular tank to pet…
I think it’s fair to say that I have had very limited experience with the nature of evil, and I’d like to keep it that way. I have never consciously allowed myself to delve too deeply into the study of evil (despite its insinuating fascination) because my limited experience has been so disruptive and cancerous…
Two years ago, I nursed a one-year old Lizzy to sleep on the couch next to me while my then-husband and I watched a new sci-fi movie called Arrival. The movie flips conventional alien films on their head by portraying that aliens arrive peacefully in order to give a tool–not a weapon–to humanity because, in…
My picture of what I want to be and what I think I can be has never matched up in my head. Like blind seer, I grasp clumsily at the fractured memories of what has been in order to justify my prophecies on what will be. There is no harmony and little reason in this,…