In one of her books, Madeline L’Engle recounted a story she had heard: “Someone tells me of a story of a bishop who lost his wife and child in a tragic accident.  And he said to his people, ‘I have been all the way to the bottom.  And it is solid.'” I too have found that to be true—for the most part. Like Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”

 

Word keeper, mother, observer, sacred eavesdropper, close-reader, wounded healer, beauty-finder, skeptic, and trying to put all that into words. Lover of libraries, crepuscular rays, murmurations, etymology, flowers and dachshunds in sweaters; the scents of lavender, coffee, and books. An anglophile whose favorite writing accoutrements are a cup of PG Tips and digestives with dark chocolate.

Published Works

DEAR AUDREY 

After my 33-year-old husband, a well-known rock cellist, drowned in Lake Geneva, Switzerland while touring with singer Regina Spektor, I found myself searching for meaning in the intersection of fresh widowhood and young motherhood. I documented both at Dear Audrey.

Seventeen

You were born on the seventeenth of December.We married on the seventeenth of July.Our daughter conceived on a seventeen.Today you have been dead for seventeen months.  Inconceivable to me.This morning on our little wooden block perpetual calendar in the kitchen,...

Two Years Old

Dear Dan,I want to tell you a few of the cute things your daughter has been doing the way I would've at night when you came home from work or a gig or even if I just spoke to you on the telephone while you were away. You last saw her at 20 months.  She is now two...

Goodbye

How strange to fall in love with someone, get married, live together, have a child together, and speak to each other every day for eleven years- and not get to say goodbye.  Not even see you later...it was great having you in my life.  Nothing.

This Day Last Year

This is one of those days that feels so close to last year on the same holiday.  Like time is not a line but a spiral and so this day and this day last year are right next to each other- but on a different plane- so out of reach.Last year on the Saturday before...

Inhibitory Control

Living in grief, if it is anything, is sheer exhaustion. It is doing something- living- that every cell in your body screams against.  Not because you are suicidal, but just because you do not feel alive.   It is something you must convince yourself to do on...

Mother’s Day 2012

My fourth Mother's Day- second without you.   On the Widowed Parent group on Facebook, someone writes, "Teeny children don't have money.  And so dads have a great deal to do with Mother's day going off without a hitch."  True.  Three year olds...

Ms. Havisham

Was cleaning up a little bit more today.  Finally, couldn't stand the thick dust in my bedroom anymore.  I was starting to feel like Ms. Havisham from Great Expectations sealed up in her decaying house after being jilted by her lover- all of the clocks...

Wedding Video

This morning I watched my wedding video.  Somehow it must have come up with Audrey, and I, yes I, suggested watching it if she'd like.  So, after breakfast, at the kitchen table, on my laptop- we watched me getting out of a white limo, smiling...we watched...

2011 On To Something

So we're home now.  As I suspected, it was startling at first.  We got back around 8 pm last night, New Years Eve.  I turned on the heat, watered the Christmas tree.  I smelled your shirt that hangs over your chair.   I tried to ease the...

Grief You’re Like a Roach

Grief you're like a roach.  Like the giant water bugs we used to have in our first Brooklyn apartment.  So grotesque and shockingly large, and yet so elusive, able to run quicker than we could catch you and melt your body to slip through the smallest crack...

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

Frederick Buechner

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