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,…
Paranoia is quickly becoming panic as the Coronavirus threat sweeps through the United States. I’m watching it happen with a curious apathy that looks a lot more like exhausted resignation than blind fear. It would be more logical, I suppose, to spend my days and nights in utter terror of losing Cecilia given the fact…
The day before yesterday, Cecilia, my father, and myself spent the day at NIH’s Eye Institute having our worst fears about Cecilia’s lack of vision confirmed. The NIH physician-scientists were very gentle, very kind, and very thorough. After reading through the records from the long string of doctors Cecilia has been to in her very…
It is seared into my memory–that last night at home with Lizzy–that blue and broken morning when we went to the ER, and those terrible, endless days that followed. I can tell you every detail, down to the smell of the hospital, the expressions on the faces of the doctors, the cadence of their voices…
When I walked out of Children’s Hospital the day we turned off Lizzy’s life support machine, I said to my little sister, “I never want to see this place again.” Then Cecilia moved inside of me. I paused, then qualified my statement: “Unless, of course, Cecilia ever needed it.” Two weeks ago, I found myself…
The rain, cold and crawling, drizzles in pit pats against the flagstone. The porch lights shimmer and reflect, casting shadows into the deep recesses of the giant pines. I walk slowly up and down the front path, Cecilia crying fitfully in my arms. Walking outside in the rain is a last resort in an attempt…
Meditation: Jesus arrives in the hearts of believers. This past weekend, I visited the Saint John Paul II Shrine in DC, followed by vigil mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. While Cecilia was asleep in her stroller, I cried my way through most of the exhibit on JPII the Great, a saint…
I do not have a monopoly on grief, nor on pain, nor on suffering. When Lizzy died, I joined the ranks of untold billions of mothers from the origin of the human species who have watched their children die, and watching, wished to die themselves. When I speak of Lizzy’s death as the worst thing…