Death of a Spouse

Picking Up the Pieces after the Death of My Wife

Monday, April 21, 2025

Picking Up the Pieces First comes denial. I tell myself that because Lynn and I got to say all those goodbyes, because she knew how much I loved her, because we had no regrets about our choices, my grief should be shallower or shorter than most. In post after post, I emphasize the positives—as when, just two days after she died, I describe riding around Central Park looking forward to my life ahead. But really, I am in shock, as when your body and mind conspire to shield you from the pain of an accident. For more than six years, […]

Bereavement

She Called Me Sweetie

Monday, November 17, 2014

There wasn’t one definitive phone call that I could point to and say that this was the moment when I knew to I had to go home and visit her. There were a few conversations with various people, my mother, brother, my Uncle Charles* (not by blood, nor was She, just my parents dear friend’s. She, my Aunt, was my mother’s College roommate. They’d been best friends for 53 years. No small feat.) In these phone calls all I heard within me was the faint whisper, echoing from long ago. What I heard was “Go.” It was the same whisper […]

Death of a Child

A Mama Finds Memories in a Duplo Box

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

In my closet sits one duplo box filled with handwritten cards.  The cards were for my little boy Daniel.  The boy is now gone, but the cards written to him still remain. When we moved from the house where Daniel lived, Daniel didn’t get to go with us.  But the yellow duplo box with cards did.  A few of the cards he’d received were after hs first surgery before we knew the lump in his neck was cancer. Most were sent to him during the months he was treated at UNC-Hospitals. The duplo box had been where he’d stored all […]