I thought after the one year post that I would stop writing these kind of updates. Grief seemed like something I could wrap up with a neat bow – one year of feelings summed up eloquently with words and then set away in a little box. Of course the truth is a lot more complicated. Life is messy. Relationships, with both the living and the dead, doubly so. This summer has been a rough one for me. Some causes were…
Every time I think of Garth Brooks, I think of Greece. I suspect this is not the statement of your average country music fan, so let me explain. Like many people in the south, I grew up on country music. Reba, George, Martina, the Dixie Chicks, countless others and of course – Garth Brooks made up the soundtrack to our family road trips and daily commute. Adding a country music CD to the family’s collection was never a hard sell,…
The Fourth of July has become a weird holiday for me. Last year I was still so numb with grief that the day blipped by in a haze. My friend Stephanye, the first of team LetsMakeSureLaurenDoesn’tKillHerself stayed with me through the long weekend. She was bubbly and happy and everything I needed her to be while we sipped cider and watched the fireworks explode over a lake, but I don’t remember feeling anything. The first month after Tim died was a time…
Being married can be a lot like hibernation. You spend all this time when you’re younger dreaming up the right person that you could imagine spending your life with. They’ve got the humor of your favorite comedian, the body of your favorite movie star, the voice of your favorite musician. We grow up with these different archetypes surrounding us in media, and throw different qualities on our theoretical ideal like slapping clay onto a sculpture. Of course the people we end…
A prayer You who I don’t know how to talk to anymore. You whose body comes to me in a dream only to be gone as soon as I say your face, your mouth, your arms, your breasts, your feet. What happens when you die? The broken light switch in the kitchen, the doorknob glistening in the saucer by the window. How can you get in? This solitude, no match for your solitude, which must want to be sung again in…
As someone who likes to juggle a lot of things, I tend to be at my best when I’m multi-tasking like a mofo. It works for me. The busier my brain is, the more I can keep the crazy at bay. When I focus too much on one thing, well… I get a little crazy. At the beginning of last week I had some things in my life that I was really excited about. You’d think by now that I…
One’s sense of home is a funny thing. I’ve written about it a lot on the blog in the past year, whether it was trying to figure out where to live or buying a new house. Though the front of my house still looks like a construction zone, I’m not struggling with “home” as much these days. Partially I wonder if my assimilation into Texan is complete, although I’m sure my native Texan friends would disagree with me. The droning rain…
Tim was not one for symbolic tattoos, even though he had lots of them. When I met him, I was pro tattoo but hadn’t actually taken the leap. Neither had many of my friends. In fact, my only real experience with tattooing was going with my best guy friend in high school to get his back done. He almost passed out, and I had to go to the grocery store next door to buy him a Sierra Mist to get…