grief

Some grief is inert. Some grief is an engine. Sometimes actively participating in grief, I’ve learned, is one small way we can learn to escape its riptide.

The truth is, I have no idea where she is. I don’t even know if my mother is alive. I haven’t spoken to my mother for eight years.

It was the night before my father’s funeral that I finally asked the tarot for help. I was incapable of imagining a future where I delivered his eulogy.

Nothing is ever a mistake.

The original meaning of the LOVE bracelet, for me, was that my love for my son would never go away. It just was in a different form now. The physical was gone. But my bracelet was a reminder that the LOVE is always there. Six years down the road for me, I know there are so many other hard things that come along with losing a child.

It’s said that one of the simplest and saddest stories is Ernest Hemingway’s “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” I thought about those six words as I sorted through my sister’s clothes.