I had a very hard time with my Mother, her words mostly wounding, her anger terrifying. It was my father’s kind and loving heart that saved my childhood and my spirit. So when Mother’s Day comes round a tug of war ensues. I feel my heart segue-ing not to memories of my own childhood but [ Read More ]
It occurred to me today, as I found myself standing in the middle of the family plot talking to the people I love who are no longer with me except in spirit and memory, that anyone not Irish might consider it odd to find comfort in a cemetery. Yet, I always do. I’d gone there [ Read More ]
I’ve been having an imaginary conversation with my heart lately. Not the physical heart exactly, although I admire its pluck and constancy enormously. But the metaphoric heart of me that loves, not necessarily wisely, but pretty well, and that has taken a lot of hits over the years. It occurred to me one day, while [ Read More ]
Life breaks everyone’s heart somehow, somewhere in time. Betrayal or death or illness or failure or war or most any tragedy can do the deed. The question is what happens then? In that dark night of the spirit, how do we live till morning? How do we resilient, courageous, fragile, faltering humans take our licks [ Read More ]
When your worst nightmare comes to pass a second time, a bizarre numbness sets in to keep you alive. When my daughter Bronwyn died, six years after her sister’s death, I simply went underground and for two months did nothing but try to live through it. I couldn’t write or even talk about my loss, [ Read More ]
Losing a child is a special kind of grief, irrevocably out of sync with nature. We’re not supposed to bury our children — the mind and heart rebel and struggle to find a place to contain the unbearable and unthinkable. We give birth to infinite love when we give birth to our children. Joy, hope, [ Read More ]
When my daughter died, I couldn’t find the strength to say the words aloud. Passed away, I could manage, as if she still hovered somewhere just outside my reach. Died was final and irrevocable and I simply could not say the word. The first few weeks after her death were a haze of grief. A [ Read More ]
I had a vision, shortly after my daughter died, in which I saw her standing on a great plain of Light, through which a Golden Road traveled towards Infinity. She stood solemnly, awaiting a command to move on – with Dakota and me standing like sentinels, one on either side. She said we mustn’t set [ Read More ]
Some things you never forget. Like the comfort of your father’s hand in yours when you’re small and afraid, or the final ember of light in the eyes of your dying child. Other threads are inextricably woven into the softer fabric of soul. The sensuous, cold satin of summer’s first ice cream on your five [ Read More ]