Category: Grief
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Southern Cemetery Etiquette
A poignant reflection on memory, change, and cemetery etiquette in a small Southern town in this essay on grief. There’s a certain etiquette in Southern cemeteries. I turn down the long, grassy road just before sunset, when the summer haze has blended lavenders and dusty blues across the sky in the sort of way I’ve…
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The Single Biggest Regret of my Life
See there, I know what you did—you saw me say “the biggest single regret of my life” and you rushed over here to see if I was going to dish about a certain someone. Or, maybe, even about you. I’ve tried to live my life without regrets. I understand that I am a culmination of…
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I’m a Casualty of the War on Christmas (The Yearly Repeat Blog Post)
Someone last week insisted that she was going to wish people a “Merry Christmas” and not a “Happy Holiday” and that she didn’t wish them a happy holiday at all–ONLY a Merry Christmas. Wow, that’s the Christmas spirit? How sad. If you don’t know what to wish people and don’t have the time or inclination…
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Schadenfreude, Full Circle
Long ago and faraway–or at least what seems like long ago and faraway–someone cheated me out of something very precious to me. There were lies told to me and threats made against me. “Let it go,” my friends said. “Be the bigger person,” they advised. “Put it in the past and move on,” they urged.…
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How to Survive the Worst Year of Your Life
“How do I survive the worst year of my life?” a young friend asked, around two months after a bad breakup. She wanted to know because it appeared to her that I’d one day snapped my fingers or taken a magic pill and all my heartaches had disappeared overnight. They didn’t. They haven’t. …
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Blessings that Broke My Heart
I’ve seen enough heartbreak in my life, enough that all dues should be long paid and nothing but joy ahead for the rest of my days. As you might expect, those heartbreaks were usually about the loss of a dream, whether it was the dream of a life with a man, the dream of a…
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Let Pain Be Your Guide: Suicidal Thoughts as the Catalyst for Change
In honor of National Suicide Prevention Day, I’m reposting an article I published on this blog on 23 July 2008. I’ve made no changes to the original article, and rather than posting a new photo of my own with pretty writing on it, I’ve elected to keep the original picture I used 5 years…
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Five Things, Sweetheart, Five Things
It was a difficult night. There was nothing left to say, nothing that I could say. My friend was hurting, and I the Fixer could not fix it. I’ve had enough of people intentionally dying around me this year, and I didn’t want to let another friend lapse into an uneasy silence that would be…
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What Religion Is the Aurora Theater Shooter? And Does It Matter?
I am anxiously watching the news chatter on the“Dark Knight Rises”massacre and the latest breaking news this hour. As empathic as I am, it’s tough to watch or read about, and as happens with all tragedies, they reflect similar previous tragedies and bring long-buried pain to the surface. My first real understanding of what…
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The Surprising Shadow Side of Wonderful Things
The photo on the left was my engagment photo, taken around March 1986. It was the beginning of an era…the one where I began a family of two (my spouse and me), then added two children over the next few years. The photo on the right was taken a few weeks ago, March 2011, as…