Currently Browsing: Grief

This Time of Year

This Time of Year
This time of year I miss her even more than usual—my mom.     It was this month in 2009 that I took leave to be with her. It was this week in 2009 that we shared our last Thanksgiving holiday, the one when she requested we sing the Doxology before eating our dinner. It was this weekend that I took my last day trip with her and my dad together, a venture to Brooklyn, NY.   We ate dinner in a restaurant that floated beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. We stood on a pier and watched the sun sinking toward the waters of the East River, the Statue of Liberty raising her torch in the distance....
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Marking Four Years

Marking Four Years
On a cold Sunday two weeks ago, my sisters and I stood under an overcast sky near our mother’s grave, each with a different bouquet of flowers to lay beside it. We were there to mark the day when, four years ago, she slept her last sleep and awoke in heaven.   Earlier that morning, when the sun was still shining and melting sparkling rivulets into the streets, I had the unexpected privilege of attending my childhood church with my mother’s parents. Filled with old family memories, I sat on the wooden pew next to my grandmother. The tone of her silvery voice singing Holy, holy, holy floated...
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What Happened Three Years Ago

What Happened Three Years Ago
It is blue-sky cold, sun-soaked clouds cold, on again, off again snow flurries cold. It is a beautiful day.       And it is windy.   The blue and white balloons in my hand whip forward, eager for flight. Eager to be carried away toward the blue and white horizon.   It is the third anniversary of my mother’s death, another day forever cold in my memory. But it occurs to me, as I stand on a high ledge overlooking my town, that my mom’s spirit flew forward eagerly toward a horizon I couldn’t see, the moment her breath left her body.   I let go of the strings.   The...
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On the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Death

On the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Death
Today, the sun came out, after a stint of gray weather. It brightened the office later morning. This afternoon it sparkled on the little pond outside my window. It took its time settling into twilight, stretching a pink, then salmon, then deep magenta band over the horizon.     Today, I remembered the long, dark night my mother lay dying in her room and that awful, final exhale just before sunrise two years ago.   Yet, I could feel the wonder of tonight’s lovely sunset, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do again.   And today I felt joy. Something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be...
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Tomorrow: Two Years

Two years.   Two years since I’ve seen her face, heard her voice. Since she sighed the long sigh of death and took up life in a place invisible to those of us on the other side.     How deeply I miss her, my mother. How often I long to pick up the phone and talk to her. After two years, I’m still not able to calculate the magnitude of losing that close relationship with her.   Today, I traveled to the destination of the last trip she took: CEF headquarters in Warrenton, MO. She arrived here just a couple of weeks after hearing that the cancer had spread to her lungs, just a few...
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