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…
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 weather has been warm enough that the daffodils have started to bloom again. As I approach Lizzy’s birthday 13 days from now, I watch the bright yellow trumpets of the daffodils flutter in the breeze and memories, like echoes, begin to dance before me. I can see Lizzy leaning down to smell the odorless…
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…
If you have come here seeking some faint shreds of hope, I will give you what I can: my honesty and my experience. It is true that you will never recover from the loss of your child. It will never get any easier. It will never be fixed or undone or remedied. You can never…