More jottings from my grief journals this fall. Writing, talking about it feels like rooting around, scratching out a depression in the earth, trying to make a place to fit myself and curl up. * OCTOBER PIECES-PARTS “How are you?” (early October) I went to a large event with a Continue Reading
love
pieces-parts: September
I wrote about living with grief this summer. I’ve been jotting down what I could throughout the fall, too. I haven’t been able to shape it into a whole essay yet — it’s more piecemeal, as the experience of my grief itself has become a little more piecemeal, the dough Continue Reading
to be dissolved
This is from My Antonia, which I just read, wishing the whole time I was reading it to Val. Today marks six months she has been gone, and it still makes no sense to me at all. I miss her fiercely.
an invitation
My dears, listen, this blog has so many days felt like a lifeline. Writing that – “lifeline” – I pictured, in quick proliferation: a towline, like with a mule on the Erie Canal; a muddy tug-of-war rope at some happy family picnic; an IV drip; the belaying line connecting mountaineers; Continue Reading
rosehips
Four months ago today we lost our Val. I miss her all day, every day. The ache winds like a fugue-melody through the background of everything. The days are filled with things that don’t quite become real because I don’t get to show them to her. I wanted to show Continue Reading
time zones
noticing the strange ways of time this summer of grieving folding and expanding I might have seen the Northern Lights, once. I was on a walk late at night by myself in southern Indiana, when I looked up — I was always watching the sky — and saw my bright Continue Reading
how to coil a cord
An old friend called and left me a voicemail the other day. He said he’d been coiling up an extension cord and it called Val to mind, because of course he did it the way Val taught him: the way that lets the cord unwind again later without tangling. Val Continue Reading
beach day
Valerie used to introduce me as “the excellent woman with whom I affiliate.” Our affiliation began with a trip to the beach, fifteen years ago today. It happens that I am going to the coast today, for the first time in a couple years. I might eat some seafood; haul out Continue Reading
if time ran all at once
My friends, it has been almost six weeks. It feels like a handful of days. I have been having a hard time writing, but I wanted just to let you know that the memorial weekend in Eureka was complex and healing, and drenched in the beauty Val so wanted this Continue Reading
order of service
My dears, For those of you who were not able to be there, I wanted to share with you the order of service from Val’s memorial. People came from all over: from Chicago, New York and Argentina; from Alaska and New Mexico, New Hampshire and Indiana; from California, western Montana Continue Reading