Tag Archives: Grief

Grief grabbed me again

5 minute read

For the first few months after Sam’s death, I suffered stabbing headaches in and around my eyes. 

“Narrow-angle glaucoma,” the ophthalmologist said. “Yours is the worst I’ve seen.” 

I wondered if the pain was from not crying. I didn’t ask. The question sounded ridiculous in my head: My son, he’s gone, and it hurts when I cry, so I wonder, did this happen, this buildup—of tears?—because I’ve been stopping myself from crying? Suppressing grief, like pruning branches, I’ve learned, only causes it to mushroom.

(an excerpt from Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss: Chapter 8. Grieving)

It’s been over eighteen years since my little boy died. So I wasn’t expecting this.

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Another birthday

2 minute read

Morning. I am here, sitting outside meditating, eyes closed, feeling the sun on my face, rising. Imagining, for a few minutes, that it’s him shining on me, in me. 

It’s your birthday today, sweet son of mine.

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what to do with those sad gone thoughts: write

2 minute read

longing for those who are gone

JANUARY 28, twelve years ago today, was the day Rebecca decided would be her last. And I’m missing her, my longtime and loving friend.

A few years back, I wrote this. This morning, while thinking about what day it is, I read it again, grateful to have written about and to her.

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remembering my dad

3 minute read

(👆In the photo: my father and me heading into my grandmother’s house in Miami, circa 1967.)

in the safe gray zone

He died seventeen years ago today. And, as Forrest Gump said, “That’s all I have to say about that.” 

I don’t feel sad or wistful. I’m like a wheat field, waves of beige sameness. Neutral, undisturbed, bending with the wind.

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without imagination…

3 minute read

a private note

WHENEVER I READ a book, I always find my very own personal takeaway, a sentence or two that stands out to me, seemingly as if the writer meant the message just for me—like a private note. The author may not have even meant for that particular line or two to be one of the story’s takeaways, and therein lies the magic (of words, and reading books).

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grieving is hard work

1 minute read

a grief note

Grieving, like writing, is hard work, done mostly in solitude.

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sidewalks (2) luna moth

2 minute read

pieces of treasure

LAST WEEK’S POST, sidewalks (1), was the first in what I’m hoping will be a series of short posts (if I can stick to my plan). You don’t have to read sidewalks (1), or look for my upcoming sidewalk posts (each Wednesday), but . . . I really hope you do.

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sidewalks (1)

4 minute read

all the sidewalks

The word sidewalk appears thirty times in my book Willower.

The line I love you more than all the sidewalks in the world appears nine times.

The first time I heard this was when Sam, as a toddler, said it to me. It stayed with me. It was a funny thing to hear, an unusual measurement to use—sidewalks? But then, the sidewalk was our world; where we spent most of our time collecting acorns, bugs, sticks, stones . . .

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Joe D.

4 minute read

it was April 30, 2008, the one-year anniversary of his brother’s death

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He’d be 26 today

3 minute read

March 2, 2024. He would be twenty-six today. Or still nine. Or three-hundred and twenty-nine.

Sam and me

What is time anyway?

Einstein said that time is not absolute and in fact depends on the observer.

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