I have so much to say today and so little time. Starting yesterday, I've had over twenty phone calls. The only thing good about that was my daughter had left her phone in her car and somehow my phone made its way into her hand, and she operates quickly, so each time it rang, she …
Tag: grief
Dear Wannabe Facebook Friends:
I apologize for being negligent in responding to all of you. For weeks now, no months, you have urgently showed up in my Friend box asking me to be your Friend. Now, whatever photos you may have seen of me, might make me look like I need Friends, and perhaps that’s why you landed on …
Life at 82: J is for Joy
Here I am with two of my sisters, Rose and Esther, during happier times. They have both passed away. It was Rose, as an experienced widow, who told me when Marv died that I must find joy in my life every day. She said Joy would not come looking for me. I must look for …
Grief at Thirty-six Months: Honey, would you please…
Always busy in the garage, he'd be shocked that I've put furniture together! Come back for just a day? I want to tell you about— The water softener spraying water over the furnace room The beetles eating your rose bushes The pipe that burst; the hole in the bedroom wall The dying evergreens I had …
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P is for Presley, as in Elvis
Last Saturday night, on my twenty-minute drive home from a concert downtown by our South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, my body singing with the sounds of oboe and violin and trumpet, my mind enjoying the quiet of the nearly empty city streets, Elvis, a heart throb from my high school years, soared mournfully into life on …
Grief at Twenty-two Months: Write Along with Me
Time heals all wounds is a cliché that’s been around a long time. And disputed as well. Counselor Worth Kilcrease wrote “time [alone] does not heal all wounds. A more apt saying is ‘It’s what you do with the time that heals’” (Psychology Today, April 24, 2008). Time is an “active, working process, not a …
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Grief at Twenty-one Months: A Fun Memory from a Long Marriage
For the past few weeks, I’ve been sorting, thinning, and throwing away files. Dozens of them. And reminiscing. Yesterday, among my writing files from the early 2000s, I found this dialogue between Marv and me and thought it would be fun to post on a Grief Anniversary. Fun memories from a fifty-five-year marriage go a …
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Grief at Fifteen Months: How Long Has It Been?
I ran into some folks the other day who'd come to pray with Marv two days before his death. I'd not seen them in the interim. "How long has it been?" the man asked. When I said, "Nearly fifteen months," he and his wife shook their heads, as if questioning whether it could be that …
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Write Along with Me 