A few days ago, a friend said to me, “You look thin. Have you lost weight?” “I have no idea,” I responded. “I can’t find my scale.” The bathroom scale is one of the things my husband and I have lost in the move. I remember packing it. I think […]
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The Twelve Days of Christmas: Silver Bells Where They Belong
I’ve written several posts about my grandfather’s clock, which my parents kept for many years and which I now have in my home. I forgot to wind the clock before I went on a weekend trip this summer, and it ground to a halt while I was away. The chimes […]
Continue readingLavender Lotion and “Temps Perdu”
I don’t use much scented lotion. I’m allergic to many floral scents, particularly roses and lilies. They make me sneeze. So I buy hypoallergenic brands. Gifts of scented hand lotions tend to sit on my counter for a long time, to be used only on special occasions when I want […]
Continue readingThe Second Anniversary of Loss
Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of my father’s death, which happened just six months after my mother’s death. I find myself in a much better place than I was on the first anniversary. I wrote a year ago today that I was melancholic—past the immediacy of loss, but still mourning. […]
Continue readingA Story I Couldn’t Tell Before: The Sister I Never Knew
Shortly before my mother’s death, my father and I reviewed the draft obituaries my parents had written for themselves several years earlier, long before my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At the time my father showed me the obituaries, my mother was about to go into hospice. We knew we […]
Continue readingSurviving a Year of Loss
As the first anniversary of my father’s death approaches (he died on January 5, 2015), I find myself increasingly melancholy. I’m no longer in shock, as I was for the first few weeks after he was gone. I recently read through my journal from those weeks, and I wondered how […]
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