heavy

Clockwatching, Redux

March 24, 2010

Today, Tanner goes to the doctor. This is, in itself, nothing new – Tanner sees a lot of doctors – but today, he’s seeing the doctor so that they can start fumbling toward answers to difficult questions concerning when and how and how long. How long until his food needs to blended? Until he needs [...]

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If Prayers Were Horses, Grievers Would Ride

March 11, 2010

Emilia wants to know what happens when we die. She asks a few times a week, on average, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on whether or not we’ve spoken about my dad or about Tanner or about dinosaurs. Today, she asked because they’d been talking about the Easter story at school. She wanted to know [...]

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Princesses Never Give Up, Until They Totally Do

March 9, 2010

This past weekend was a weekend filled with tremendous, heart-busting joy. It was also one of the most personally disappointing weekends of my entire life. My head is spinning a little from the existential contradiction that this represents. I took the brood to Disney World, and one of the objectives of the trip was, of [...]

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The Music From A Farther Room

March 1, 2010

I don’t quite know what to say about Joannie Rochette. I’ve been stunned by her bravery, humbled by her strength, amazed by her determination in the face such terrible sadness. When my father died, it was days before I could even walk in a straight line, weeks before I could hold myself reliably upright. After [...]

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What To Expect When You’re Not Going To Be Expecting

February 23, 2010

So I wrote this post over at BlogHer. It’s kind of heavy, but also, I think, kind of extraordinary (that is, the subject of the post is extraordinary, not my writing) and I’d love to know what you think. Not least because it comes up in a week during which some people are saying hateful [...]

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I Measure Every Grief I Meet

February 12, 2010

Alexander McQueen died this week. He committed suicide, and he did so, in part, it seems, because of his bereavement over the death of his mother earlier this month. This is going to sound awful, terrible, extreme, insane… but… I think that I know – maybe, a little bit – how he felt.

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About Last Night

February 2, 2010

Jasper goes to playschool a couple of days a week. He loves it – loves it – and he knows exactly what days he’s scheduled to go. He toddles down the stairs on those mornings and heads straight for his coat and boots, which he tries to tug on over his pajamas. SKOO! (School!) he [...]

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What A Girl Wants

January 27, 2010

My husband had a vasectomy last year. There was a lot of discussion around it – another baby would not have been unwelcome, and so I wasn’t eager to close off the possibility – but we both knew that it would be madness for me to risk repeating the more or less pretty awfully terrible [...]

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Ghost Skaters In The Sky

January 13, 2010

I’m trying to figure out how to write my ghost story. It’s my solace, it’s what I cling to, it’s the closest thing that I have to proof – proof! as if there could be such a thing – that the love and the light that was my father did not just snuff out, did [...]

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We, Who Need Such Great Mysteries

January 8, 2010

I think that I’m stuck in the denial stage of grief. It’s not that I deny the fact that my father is dead – his ashes sit in a box on my mantle, surrounded, at the moment, by a few Christmas ornaments and my kids’ picture with Santa and Emilia’s bardo-drawing – it’s that I [...]

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