We walk the winter road like Job’s friends, the three of us–Riley, Josh, and me, coming from a distance, the wind whipping at the hem of my black lace dress, the edge of Josh’s dark coat, the smooth ends of Riley’s brassy bob.  Riley’s eye shadow looks, I notice just this moment, like smudges of […]

I gather plates for Adam’s birthday cake; they clink in my hands. He wanted chocolate–the cake (the frosting, the ice cream), and I have already carried it in, along with the knife, long and shiny and sharp. The cake looks imperfect, and therefore perfect for us, shaped like a sweet, dark hill. I placed the […]

Riley can’t respond to me when she’s seizing. She can’t answer my gentle pleas for her to come back, though she tries to turn her head toward me and gets locked there, looking back over her left shoulder, eyes seeing nowhere and then straining beyond even me. I glance at the clock, marking the time, […]

Bad news rings at the wrong time. The sound, that deceptively light chime, actually shatters and splinters without warning, and the only awkward truth it tells is that it doesn’t belong. The sound of that phone, it is the wrong sound. Zoe and Kevin laugh easily in the other room, their voices carrying indistinctly, and […]

In the yard where the chainsaw growls, I can only see blooms, white like lace, gathered and falling everywhere, spilling onto the road. They’re cutting down that tree. I want to stop and gawk, to tilt my head and ask, Why would you?   It’s a beautiful death.  I’m stunned by the yard that looks like a […]

I remember the year that opening gifts made my daughter weep. She stood in front of me, just there, tight blond curls falling haphazardly around her ears, belly pudging out the shirt of her Christmas pajamas, holding a silvery gift.  At 3, she still didn’t understand our expectant faces, or even what made toys fun, […]

Sometimes life strips us clean of words, and we sit together, quiet.  And maybe it’s that way so we’ll stop to listen. We walk through the rain and into the funeral chapel, gathering damp hugs on our way through the door.  We sit first, and then we stand, winding in long lines past photographs and […]

Tuesday, and clouds thickly shroud the sky, as though in acknowledgement of this bitterly-savored day, this day when we hold remembrance on our tongues and feel it in our throats.  It was God’s hatred for death that made it something He conquered, because He couldn’t stand to have us ripped away and apart forever. Indeed, […]

Raindrops meander down the windowpanes this afternoon, blurring my view.  All day I watched those clouds fill, watched them turn their heavy gray, and now the emptying makes thin spaces for light.  From all the sharp cracking, the twisting of tree limbs, the lurking dark, a new sky will come, and soon. New always, always […]

The minute I see the buses, my throat gets thick, before I’ve even spotted my son in the crowds of children clotting the walkways. I’ve come to cheer him on, to acknowledge that he works hard and pushes through.  I want him to see me there waiting, watching.  “Run, Adam.  Run!”  I will shout his […]