What comes next when the ending isn’t happy?
Everything I love about happy endings is represented in the following brief montage of “cheating death” moments from a few of my favorite movies.
It’s about ET, whose heart light went out, but was (immediately) rekindled by the love of the boy…
How a 4th grade science project taught me to write about the moon.
October 1, 2010 | 3:30 pm | Last Quarter Phase
My daughter arrives home from school with a slim notebook covered with photos that represent the night — owls, a gibbous moon cut from white paper, a…
“How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again.”
— Henry Scott Holland
Dear Mom,
The light is different here. If you saw how this place shines, I think you’d stop worrying about me. The light connects the landscape to every part of itself. It moves…
According to the American Cancer Society, about 600 adolescents, aged 15 to 19, die from cancer each year.
In 2017, my daughter, Ana, was one of them.
Ana was sick for four and a half years. During most of that time, even as her cancer progressed, I didn’t think that…
The lies of the unvaccinated are killing people and making a lot more of us sick.
I tested positive for a breakthrough case of Covid last week, two days after my 17-year-old daughter tested positive. It was a rough week for both of us ( more me than her.)
We’re…
The first few days of January were foggy and unseasonably warm. It was the kind of fog that erased entire swaths of the landscape and made it impossible to see around the next bend. …
Why I’m giving myself the permission to nap.
I love taking naps, but I’ve always been ashamed to admit it. Before I struggled daily with grief, I napped only occasionally and mostly on weekends.
In the five years since my daughter died, I’ve taken a nap almost every day. I…
But this holiday was never mine.
I used to fantasize about Christmas the way children dream of unicorns and backyards made entirely from candy.
To a Jewish kid growing up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood, Christmas seemed impossibly magical. …
Two years ago, I’d seriously contemplated quitting Amazon Prime. It was January 2020 and I was decompressing from yet another holiday season delivered, quite literally, by the e-commerce behemoth.
Amazon had filled my stockings, created abundance beneath my tree, and saved my bacon when I couldn’t think of anything to…
Some losses are so monumental they defy any attempt we make to categorize or define them. To write about this kind of loss, for me, is a lifelong process. …
