No thanks to me and the dozen or so changes I made the last five months, my very patient headstone maker will finally set my late husband’s headstone this morning. Made of Jasper quartzite, which is native to the area of Minnesota where we used to live, I love the sharp edges and the uneven … Continue reading Etched in Stone
Having spent the better part of two years writing a memoir about how I learned (and am still learning) to live with grief, I can say for certain that grief isn’t exclusively linked to death.
"It’s safer to be a grackle, yes, but if I truly want to live in the fullness of all that life throws at me, I know I need to be a cardinal."
“Maybe surrounding yourself with grief, sadness, and bittersweet memories all day every day is taking a toll?”
I read the letters, but not the ramblings because, you know, I'd have plenty of time before our next Zoom call to do that. Then he up and died, just like that, on Monday night.
When I was nineteen and he was twenty four and we had a several-thousand-dollar hospital bill to pay because we’d just had a baby, he died. After paying thousands of dollars for an expensive casket because my mother-in-law didn’t want her son’s body eaten by bugs, ever (perfectly preserved forever, which isn’t how nature works), … Continue reading Headstone(d) (and looking for advice)
I’m writing this on February 28, 2021, and I hear a train a mile away as the crow flies. When the wind blows a certain way, its whistle is as loud as if that train was passing through the valley that is my backyard. On February 28, 1983, two weeks before my due date, the … Continue reading The Feeling that Will Never Have an Explanation
I can melt a bowl of ice cream with all the tears I cry when I rewatch This Is Us. Sad tears, happy tears, a-thousand-other-emotions tears. This Is Us opens cages I locked years ago; cages I didn’t think had keys anymore. Didn’t I move on from ______? Apparently not. Part of why I get … Continue reading How “This is Us” got motherhood and grief right
I had another Bruce dream on Wednesday night. Number one hundred ninety or so, I think? (Let’s see…thirty eight years times five or six a year…) It wasn’t unexpected, given all the Bruce-centered writing I’ve done the last six months as I slowly write a memoir. But like most of the other Bruce dreams, this … Continue reading You Can Never Unknow Someone
It’s been thirteen days since Dad fell, eleven since an ambulance took him to a hospital, six since he was released to a nursing facility and one since someone at the facility tested positive for covid. Dad a few weeks ago. When covid killed Dad’s cousin in April, I wondered how long before it affected … Continue reading Obligation
Lynn Haraldson, Author and Writing Mentor 