I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,and night swamped me with its crushing invasion.To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling. But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you. – Pablo Neruda, “Body of a Woman” Above is…
The thing about grief is that you don’t only have to deal with your own grief; you have to deal with everyone else’s grief too. Sometimes this is a gift, when their tears or breakdowns reassure you how much your child was loved and wanted. But sometimes it is a burden, when their grief causes…
In the grief world, there is something called “secondary losses,” which basically refers to the relationships that you used to have that end up disintegrating because of your grief. I have not written for some time because I have been going through a particularly painful secondary loss. I confess I don’t really know what to…
My mind balks anytime anyone uses the word “healing” to describe what I’m doing or need to do or what has to happen from here on out. And I get it, I really do. Tragedy, despair, and misery are fundamentally unsustainable. The average human person cannot maintain a state of any of these things indefinitely….
When sobbing, there is a point that you reach where you stop breathing. Like holding a note while singing, the sob stays frozen in your mouth and heart for an untold period of time while your heart continues to beat and your mouth is open, perhaps emitting a small whining noise, but you have ceased…
I have days where I hide from Lizzy. I hide from her toys, her clothes, her pictures. I hide from my cell phone background that has a picture of us laughing at the lavender farm. I hide from thoughts and memories of her. I hide because I must stop what I am doing and grieve…
A year ago yesterday was my husband’s and my sixth anniversary, making yesterday our seventh if we were not separated. A year ago yesterday, I told him I wanted us to go to the aquarium as a family (him, me, and Lizzy) and then out to dinner afterwards. We did and had a fantastic day….
As the nightmare of Lizzy’s death unfolded before me at Children’s Hospital, it was like I was watching myself from the outside in. And perhaps the most perverse part of it was that after the initial shock and denial, I began to expect the bad news that just kept coming. Every time a new doctor…
I want to go back. Not just to before Lizzy died. To before she was born. I want to do it again, to change the outcome if I can, and if not, to at least make sure that I treasured every single second of her life. To make sure that no time with her was…