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“So you keep a secret drawer with a few items of her favorite clothes. And you retreat to press your face into them, searching for the familiar scent of her that has long since faded.” — Suzanne Leitz on the marks left by loss.
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The Death Project
Susan Briscoe’s blog documents her life with advanced terminal cancer, and focuses on her belief that “it’s important to talk about death and dying in this society that tries so hard to avoid it.”
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The Shape of Goodness
Blogger Cate remembers her friend: “Something larger and finer than a single human departs when such a person dies: a grace, a hope, a loveliness. An encouragement in a world that desperately needs encouragement.”
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Writing Through Grief: Five Posts
For many of us, writing is catharsis: a way to process and release difficult emotions. Few things are as emotional as the loss of a friend, family member, personal hero, or pet so it’s no surprise that we read a lot of posts paying tribute to lost loved ones and trying to make sense of […]
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“Stuck in her mouth was a single blade of green grass, her last effort to stave off dehydration, hypothermia, starvation, as if by swallowing that blade she could puke up death itself, like a hairball, and be well again.”
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“Your parents will . . . find a cemetery, one close by, so your Mom can visit you every day; pick out a nice four by eight foot plot, maybe beside a tree, and buy the only piece of real estate you will ever own.”
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One Phone Call Can Change Everything
“A lot can change in the course of one phone call.” At Commode to Joy, Jamie Muscato writes about her father’s death, her strong bond with her brother Troy, and the call that changed everything seven years ago.
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The Uneasy Life of a Middle East Skeleton
“So for those who knew, it must have been very strange that we have dead bones in our closet.” The Caspers are an American expat family in Cairo, Egypt. Jayson Casper tells the story of Max, the skeleton they’ve lived with, and explores a different view of death in Middle East culture.
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cleaning the house, tending the weeds.
On the accretion of stuff: “And so, without siblings in whose faces we might see our pasts, and without children who reflect back to us ourselves and our future, we cling to the representational, the inanimate, the stuff to which we attach memory and meaning.”
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Goodbye Piper
Dementia took the mind of Bruce Jenkins’ mother, but it could not erase their shared love of words. “Take a book, and read to her just as she read to you.”
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A Very Awkward Breakup
“My mind was spinning. Love with a Chance of Drowning was due to publish in three months time but the love itself was drowning.” Torre DeRoche had to promote her memoir at the same time she and her partner had split. At The Fearful Adventurer, she explains what happens.
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On Birds, Bullets, and Being
Kris reflects on women, aging, invisibility, and anger, after her 50-year-old neighbor was killed by police. “Otherwise, feel free to roam about the cabin, but the bar is closed. Put on the hideous red hat, proclaim the end to your sexual being, and commence to overeat. Conversely, you could always get a gun.”
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On Grief, Patton Oswalt’s Engagement, and “the Heart’s Expansion”
In a powerful viral post, Erica Roman — who lost her husband in April 2016 — replies to Patton Oswalt’s online detractors after the comedian (and widower) announced his recent engagement.
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On Gifts
Susan Briscoe on the gift she received the day of her diagnosis: “I have reclaimed that gift of acceptance. Living in a way that is true to me means accepting and fully embracing this experience so that I can do my best to transform it into something positive.”
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“Choose a windy day and stand at any spot out in the country. Then (this part is important) turn your back to the wind. Open the box and toss the ashes into the air. For the first time in my well-planned life, let the wind take me where it may.”
Death Filter
