Not like the others

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Not like the others

You can see swimmers behind the people being interviewed—some in bikinis, some in tankinis, some in burkinis, not to mention swim trunks of all imaginable cuts and lengths—you get to understand their confusion. I wished that our world would become a bit more like that beach—that it would be ok to be as we are, that it would phase no one to see each other the way we are each comfortable being seen.

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Grief is a strange thing

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Grief is a strange thing

People come and go like leaves on a tree. To try and avoid that loss only makes you avoid true happiness. We die. But as Snoopy always says, on the rest of the days you live... you only die ONE of the days. I always loved that. Grief can be a good thing if you let it in. When you don't argue with it like a drunk husband, much good can come from its stillness. —Jann Arden

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Empathy

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Empathy

Individually, none of them were aware of each other nor would they have been enough. But collectively, they brought their own tools and skills to my huge mess of severed dreams, and thoughtfully stitched together my rough and ragged edges as the months went on. I clung to them carefully, with a gratitude not yet realized, and over time, was able to see their unique contributions to my story.

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On moving

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On moving

On the wall in the family room is Lydia’s name—painted, framed and gifted to us—sitting above the small patch of carpet where a little boy eagerly puts on his shoes to go outside, where a little girl shuffles across as she cries out for her mother, and where two parents collapsed nearly two years ago, sitting numbly and staring out into the grey sky of a world that no longer made sense. Above the fireplace mantle, her name carved into stone, her body burned to ash.

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Memory

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Memory

This is where my memory begins to fade. Wanting, what I now believe was the protection of my sanity, my mind started uprooting entire events and details of Raahi's hospital stay, as I could not bear to remember the nuances, grief sweeping through me like a forceful mudslide. My memory wanted to forget death, and with it, it had to forget life too.

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