Aftermath: Furniture and Defiance (Grieving Futures)
After Poppa died, there was a week of shock and paperwork and calling distant relatives and then…nothing. It was just me, the pets, the furniture, and memories.
Grieving Futures, Part #9: Furniture and Defiance
As a child, when things went wrong or I felt sad or scared, I would hide under my father's desk. He had a large, executive IBM desk (literally, it was made by or for IBM) from the late 60s that weighed as much as a small car and could easily hide a baby elephant in...
Leftovers of Life
More than 15 years after my father’s death, I have finally discovered the secret to his scrambled eggs. Now, most instructions for flavorful scrambled eggs say to add milk or cream to the eggs. I’ve done that for years, and it does add flavor and a certain “softness”...
Grieving Futures, #8: Pets I Have Known
A glaring hole in this narrative is the story of the family pets. I grew up with dogs in the house all the time, so it was natural for me to have animals around and I missed them when they were not there. I moved out of the dorms in my second year of college but I...
That Sinking Feeling
I went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and was, of course, subjected to a barrage of trailers prior to the showing of the movie. Totally expected. Totally unexpected? Titanic. Apparently, we can now relive the magic as it is being rereleased to movie...
Grieving Futures, Part #7: Waste Disposal
Another aspect I had not planned on, along with losing the house and most everything in it, was that when a person dies, their body does not magically disintegrate a la Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Let this be a lesson to young adults everywhere: do not make important...
Grieving Futures, Part #6: Logistics
It is easy to just do something when a person dies, because there is certainly enough to do. After Mother died I was tied up in financial paperwork from all her medical and credit card bills, eventually helping my father declare bankruptcy in the face of a...
Welcome to the new blog!
If you typed in your usual address for "A Year of Living Dangerously" and ended up here, don't worry. I planned it that way. I've relaunched the blog because I felt that the original direction I was headed was not working for me anymore as a writer. I want to focus on...
Breaking out…but not yet.
I tricked myself, blinded by grief and deep fear of loneliness, into hiding inside my chrysalis. In the end I started eating myself alive, a gross turn on the metaphor but true nonetheless
Last Chances
A recent column by award-winning journalist LZ Granderson at CNN captured my attention, because he personalized what is overwhelming to us…
Sum of grief
I think that a critical aspect of grief that has been lost in modern society is the marker it places on the individual who grieves. Losing someone we love scars us and changes who we are.
Tragedy changes us; Patience tempers us; Fortitude keeps us going.
Lessons in grief, crisis, and recovery from 30 years of life as an adult orphan from a GenX woman who has resentfully struggled every step of the way.
