Category: but all this is grief

  • changed rhythm

    Fourteen months later, I still feel the absence of my person in real time. When the kids wake up ahead of schedule and my daughter is asking me to hold her, but I have to get my other son ready for his school day. When my baby asks to ‘Ea, ea?” pointing toward the kitchen,…

  • just enough time

    This picture came up in Google Photos a few days back. “8 years ago today,” the caption read. I remember the moment we took this photo—I was cranky over touring a city that promised a lot of delicious food options but still left me hungry; he was happy to just be together. That’s how it…

  • now I wake

    I take baths at three in the morning now, when the babies rest and sleep escapes my halfhearted grasp. It used to be after school, when Eric was alive, because he would see how tired I was by the time I got home from school and he would want to see me relax. He loved…

  • the pieces of

    I miss you. Your physical presence next to me when I wake up in the middle of the night. The sounds of you puttering around the house while the rest of us sleep. The knowledge that you will lock the doors before you go to sleep. These comforts exist no longer. They were buried with…

  • but myself more than all

    What doesn’t make sense to me is how this loss, the death of my husband, the person who knew me more intimately than all others, has turned me into a stranger to even myself. I don’t recognize that woman in the mirror. That hand holding my child. The voice in the video. I can wrap…