The Ring Theory of what (not) to say

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The Ring Theory of what (not) to say

'How Not To Say The Wrong Thing' was originally published in the LA Times in 2013. There is a way, it purports, to show up in the company of people in the middle of crisis, trauma, and loss. People say there is no right or wrong way to grieve and that's true. The aggrieved grieve as they must, a hundred different ways, as is their emotional autonomy. But there sure as hell is a wrong way to be around grieving people. I've seen it. I've witnessed it. Have you?

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Completely incomplete

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Completely incomplete

A baby entered my home for the first time, but she wasn't mine. My son watched the baby tentatively, and finally went over to say hello. Uncertain of how to greet her, he waved. He was fascinated by her tiny fingers and toes, miniature in comparison to his own. All the while, I was fascinated by his bravery, strength, and resilience. He was thinking about his lost sister, the one he never met. The one he often longs for. He handled this other baby, his cousin, so well. So did I. If he could handle it, so could I.

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"Our baby died yesterday. Please help us..."

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"Our baby died yesterday. Please help us..."

We are strangers to one another. You arrived to me through a website in a series of zeroes and ones. But we are space travellers connected forever by shared astrophysics. I was once pulled apart into a drifting cloud of atoms and molecules. Like oil in a dish, my specks magnetically drew to one another over what felt like millennia until there were enough atoms and molecules for an arm, a kidney, an ear, until I was myself again.

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I know it's sad, but...

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I know it's sad, but...

"This isn't just sad," I said. "These are the best stories. The ones that take someone's suffering and shape it, form it, use it. As writers, we take this character—you, me, Chanie, even baby Liam—who might be feeling lost, and scared, and brave, and determined all at once—and we give them love by paying attention. We will almost always find understanding. Even a bit of magic. Even if it's fifty years too late, it counts. It matters to try, and this is art."

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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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