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Step 1. Ignore the people who say it takes half the time you dated to move on. They probably learned this from Charlotte York. Newsflash, Charlotte and Sex and the City aren’t real. Your grief is. Accept that it will ebb and flow for five-and-a-half years, almost the same length of time you dated. I promise, that’s OKAY. Save yourself the anger, anguish, and self-doubt in year three by ignoring this advice from the start.
Read MoreIt was the four of us— me, Hannah, Aaron and Kyle— sitting around in Hannah’s living room after a board game night that probably ended with me making Aaron so mad he packed everything away. I had lots of tricks for that. Like moving my little piece off the board when we played Monopoly as a protest of capitalism, or reclaiming America for my Indigenous ancestors in Risk, and then refusing to conquer any other continent. Hannah and Aaron had only been dating a year and some change at that point, so pissing him off was still a bit of a sport for me. Kyle and I had already broken up.
Read MoreOn the day of my best friend’s funeral, I received a friendly text from a colleague asking how I was enjoying my summer. Not knowing I was in despair, I did not want to distress them. So, I replied with a number of clichéd nautical terms. I felt like a ship without an anchor. I was lost at sea, set adrift. This proximity to water, without the sight of land, creates disorientation and resignation. My early grief came with a strange apathy born from a newfound loneliness and struggle. Will power and the habit of duty kept me tethered to the deck. I hoped I was not at risk of falling overboard. I am not a strong swimmer.
Read MoreWhen I sent Karen the picture of the great blue heron that had sidled up to me as I sat reading on the beach, she did not yet know that she would die soon. Of course, neither did I. She was sick, and her illnesses were frequent and never satisfactorily explained, but we still believed they would be cured, that someone would figure them out and apply the right treatment.
Read More“Like, would that string really have stayed on her finger for fourteen years?” Lindsey asks, and I laugh in the carefree manner typically brought about by cheap vodka.
“Well, it’s magic string,” I respond, “because it’s infused with love.”
We continue to watch, a bowl of popcorn between us, buzzing on the fruit-flavored Smirnoff I am finally able to buy legally now that I’ve just turned twenty-one. It is summer; the semester has ended; we are each home from college.
Read MoreThe new English teacher—the fourth one in less than three years—looked like a punky Tinkerbell.
She wore her starlight blonde hair pulled into a bun, big oversized glasses perched on her upturned nose (the kind of cute nose I always wished I had) with a dainty twinkling stud. Despite her scarf, a tattooed comet of Fall Out Boy lyrics flowed across her shoulder with a spray of falling stars.
Read MoreMargaret and I are much too sober for this place and I’m not in the mood for what’s on the menu—stale beer and dim neon lights. Eileen, a friend who used to work with me at a now-defunct magazine, wants to stay out at the Legion-style bar across the street from her studio apartment. It’s not a particularity shady late-night bar it’s just not where Margaret or I want to be.
Read MoreIt’s hard to disappear in this digitally-connected world. Have you ever Googled yourself? I have. It’s amazing how much someone can find out about me in just the ‘top hits’ when I put my name in. In all, close to 25 relevant entries appear, and I’m not remotely famous. I think most of my friends can say the same, yet when I tried to find Ben Krieger on the internet, I came up empty.
Read MoreI moved to a new city where I knew no one in the fall of 2016. I was twenty-three at the time and had graduated college the year before. Now I was settling in this new place with a new, real adult job. Like many people in many places, I turned to dating apps for entertainment. To make friends, to find dates, to explore the new city. Sometimes it was for a physical connection, but sometimes that was just a bonus if it happened at all. It was more about creating moments of connection, even if they were brief.
Read MoreTo prepare for a friend’s wake, you will need a good, sturdy, circling-the-wagon group of friends because, even if your friend has family, she will still need her friends. Over the years, she has gathered you up like so many buckeyes and strung you together. Now, you will need each other. Together, you must attend to the details, like where the body will be displayed. If the dying person wants to be placed in a casket, you can buy one or, if someone, for example, the spouse of the dying person is good with his hands, he can whip one up from some slabs of pine, then store it in the tool shed next to the lawnmower and kayaks and mountain bikes.
Read MoreI want to go back in time. Back to when you and I were friends. Thirty years ago, when we were neighbors living at home with our families.
My mum passed away that year. The same year we moved into the house next door to yours. You always said our crossing of paths was “meant to be.”
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 MoreA week before Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to be a Supreme Court Justice, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority with the potential of overturning most landmark decisions protecting queer and female reproductive rights, my roommate and I drive aimlessly around St. Louis in her tiny, two-doored, baby blue Mini Cooper.
Read MoreI snapped Amelia’s car seat into the stroller and fanned out the visor to keep out the sun and the wind, which were both persistent. Amelia slept undisturbed. I put on my sunglasses, pushed my hair out of my eyes, and headed for the zoo’s entrance.
Read MoreWe began with Martha the cat, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974. Mary and I had not yet met, but Muffy, a mutual friend, was helping Mary find a place to leave her cat, Martha, for a week or two during Christmas. Jeffrey and I lived in the country, and Muffy delivered Martha to us. Three weeks later, Martha was still with us.
Read MoreMy pale, Nordic friend, Dahlia, arrives on the station platform in Goa in late afternoon. We embrace each other in the brilliant sun, surprised to see each other in this place. I hold her trim, wiry body tight against me, surprised she’s really here.
Read More“Hi, I’m Bunny, how are you?” she said. Her name caught my attention. “Bunny” is “an informal name of a rabbit, especially a small, young one” in the dictionary. I looked it up; those days, I carried a pocket size English dictionary with me.
Read MoreParis, City of Love, where we lay our scene of adventurous study abroad college students. Me and the girls were out in a little bar late at night. The lights were cool, a featured musician was playing acoustic, and my friends and I were ready for some dessert.
Read MoreI encountered pornography for the first time in sixth grade. The video, left up on my friend’s laptop, kissed my chin and invited me to observe. I wasn’t horrified. I didn’t mind that the actors were naked. I somehow expected it. But an eerie disquiet settled in my stomach, heavier each moment I waited for the woman to realize someone was watching her.
Read MoreDear N_____,
This letter is a little late, fifty years is a sizable chunk of time, but I wanted to tell you that you can stop searching for that lovely brown linen skirt you left behind after a week’s visit with me when we were young girls on the brink of life. I hope you have not spent too many of the decades between that summer and this one riffling through closets, calling various hotels, reaching out to friends to whom you might have lent it.
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