On a clear late summer afternoon along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Sandbar slid off its foundation and washed into the Atlantic Ocean, the footage so dramatic, it went viral on social media and made the national news. The house was now called Dolphin’s Point, but for my friends and me, it would always be Sandbar. I thought about how the owners must have felt watching something they loved drift away from them, as they stood helpless, knowing they would never see it again.
Read MoreWhen my ex-husband told me his father was dead, he said it casually. The way you'd mention an alma mater, or that you'd lived abroad for a while.
"My dad died five years ago," he said. We were at work, in a courtroom with no privacy, dressed in our lawyer suits. He reached down to tug up his socks when he said it. I remember searching for significance in how he announced his tragedy while adjusting his outfit. It made me wonder if his father's death was an easy thing to bear. Or if it were so painful he needed to reveal it in the bright bustle of a courtroom, with busied hands. He usually seemed so guarded.
Read MoreThe platter was lovely. It was a vintage looking black and white interpretation of a sea turtle on melamine. The species was a Kemp’s Ridley. Despite being the rarest and most endangered sea turtle in the world, it is the most common turtle to see stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod.
Read MoreThe week I got back home to New York after spending my junior year of college in England, two unexpected things happened. I got a phone call offering me an internship in Manhattan that I’d been rejected for months earlier and my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Read MoreOn the darkest dark night of winter, one small light marks the start of the festival.
This darkest night is the longest night, too. In winter, in Maine, daylight can last maybe eight hours—if you’re lucky. And as the moon of the month of Kislev wanes from quarter, to sliver, to new, the Chanukah festival begins.
Read MoreWhat was said: The cancer has returned, Bob. Your pelvis lit up like a Christmas tree on the PET scan. There’s nothing more to do, but go home for hospice.
What it felt like: We’ve scheduled your plane crash, Bob. Prepare to depart at Gate 7D.
Read MoreA funeral is an elementary school gym. The same gym where, in the evenings, you memorize the faded lines that mark the borders of the volleyball court, the gym that you and your ten-year-old teammates sneak away from to peek into the boys bathroom, to see if it really is bigger than the girls (“It is!” you squeal, waving over the other girls to see for themselves). The gym where your P.E. teacher sets out little black X’s on the floor to mark each kid’s spot. “Don’t move from your place,” she says, so you sit criss-cross-apple-sauce, even on the day that you sob all through class because you got in trouble for forgetting to write your name at the top of your multiplication test.
Read More“Why are we here?” Karl asks and sinks back into the floral, wing-backed chair. His lower legs jut straight out of the seat.
“To dress Dad’s body for the viewing.”
I see Rob’s family arriving.
Ansel goes on a hunt for funeral home candy. Barely-a-teenager, he returns with slump posture and announces, “No candy!”
“Darn it,” Helena, my cheeky tween says, pretending to be angry. She gauges Ansel’s woeful expression and laughs.
Read MoreI was nursing my three-week-old baby when the phone rang. It was Jim, the husband of my dearest friend Marjy. He called to tell me she was dead.
Poof. Gone. Just like that.
Read MoreI had to wait until I was fifty-seven to learn that something quite profound happens when we are given the opportunity to care for our own dead, to bury them in a way that is personal and meaningful and feels like a true labor of love.
Read MoreOfficially, I do not believe in ghosts. Unofficially, I eat that stuff up. If someone has a ghost story to tell, I want to hear about it. Tapes of ghostly words? I’ll listen! (heart pounding, head under covers). Pictures? Yes, please. It is perhaps true that I have seen every episode of Paranormal State.
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