My mother has been gone for just over three years now. Her physical departure was a time of both grief and relief, for I had been losing her, bit by bit, over the previous decade. My father’s death in 2005, followed by my youngest brother’s sudden death four years after my dad’s, left my small […]
Giving in to the Ache
by on May 26, 2020 Leave a Comment
It happened while sitting at the kitchen table yesterday morning. A buttery bloom of sunshine spread slowly across my left shoulder and I turned my head toward its warmth. In the middle of the table sat the pink peonies I had cut the day before when, barefoot, I had run out in the wet of […]
Still Walking Those Seven Miles
by on May 13, 2020 Leave a Comment
First came our stay-at-home orders. They went into effect in mid-March, right at the part of Lent when my forty-day practice felt less Draw-closer-to-Jesus and more Oh-no-I-forgot-to-practice-Lent! Our entire state was asked to give up friendships, gatherings, church and school, as well as all markers of normalcy. Lent was put into real-life practice and felt […]
Carrying an Unshared Trauma Together
by on May 1, 2020 Leave a Comment
There is something hauntingly intimate when you hold a secret between two people. Something that only the two of you know. A sacred knowing. What is it called, though, when the same secret is carried by millions? In 2012, I arrived through the gates of O’Hare International Airport. Home. My feet had landed on US […]
In Remembrance
by on April 8, 2020 Leave a Comment
We are cloistered now and I rarely know what day it is. The hours, the minutes, they keep folding over onto themselves. The days are all so quotidian but I’ll be damned if I am any more virtuous. I am woefully inept at navigating a pandemic. I am woefully inept at navigating a pandemic. Click […]
