My Take on Holiday Sadness A huge hurt builds inside me. My father died on Christmas Day 1986. It is a familiar, old hurt. This past year freshly layered that hurt with new hurts and loss. All four of my brothers have passed on. One in 1998, another in 2005. Mom died in […]
Closure Is Not Comfort
I recently reached closure in a family matter. A legacy matter. I did not think I would ever achieve any peace when it came to matters of my mother’s stuff, the unfortunate legacy of disquiet that settled, like the heavy dust and grime of neglect over long stretches of time, on the things left unsettled […]
Organizing & Impossible Futures
I have discovered being parentless and a sole surviving sibling is that life seems different when you are the only one who remembers family events and stories. This includes my feelings about “stuff.”
Family Bibles and Sugar Skulls
The harvest in, food is abundant, and there is time to feast and remember. The day for all souls, a day for the living, and a day for the dead.
Meaningful Dates
A Wonderful Today Today marks a huge milestone for my daughter. Today is the first day she is officially working as an audiologist. She received her doctorate in May. Friday was the last day of a year-long externship with a major integrated managed care consortium. I am so proud of her. Not only was it a […]
Iconic M: Mama
Why do most languages have something like a word that sounds like mama that means mother? Etymology, the study of the history of language and words, tells us part of the story, but biology tells us the other part. And we really can figure out why some things come to stand for other things, […]