Mother's Day Over Madagascar
Mother's Day Over Madagascar

Fucking first times, my therapist calls them.  First holidays, significant occasions, anniversary of the death.  The first time after you’ve lost someone, lost a child.  It caught me off guard the first year, things that I didn’t expect took me to my knees.  Easter, why did that leave me weeping, lashing out at everyone, feeling like a horrible failure?  We weren’t religious and even if we were, Nel was most certainly not.  She’d called me from prison the last Easter she was alive, Happy Easter! I tried to chirp at her.  She stopped me mid-happy.

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GriefJulia Nusbaummotherhood, Death, mother and daughter, grief Comments
Primer For One Left Behind
Primer For One Left Behind

A / Anyone

You want to become anyone, a head placed on any random body. At the county fair, faces from the crowd fill the cut-outs where heads of farmers or cows should be. The souvenir photograph, a reminder of a new identity. You want to go into witness protection, become someone else, anyone else, an image the mirror recognizes. This is normal.

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GriefKristina Buschgrief, mental health, widow Comment
Grief and the Dentist
Grief and the Dentist

 “Hello,” I said holding the phone to my ear as I walked into the master bedroom, shutting the door behind me to drown out the sounds of the boys wrestling in the living room. I answered even though I didn’t recognize the number. I had assumed it was either the NICU or the funeral home and as much as I was dreading those calls, I wanted to get them over with.

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GriefSelena RaygozaComment
What I Didn't Say When I Gave Your Eulogy
What I Didn't Say When I Gave Your Eulogy

06.25.2022

Umma understands one out of three of my poems. This is why she declares I sound like a poet. I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her before I gave up on art, small girl of ten brimming with precious audacity not yet oxidized by sharp gust of outside air; recited Jabberwocky in a basement, sang Maya Angelou over the counter of an addressless existence. As long as we had no house, I could not be contained. But I gave up on art when I got my first room, blunt molasses space concretizer of reality, snuffer of dreams. Word became flesh and I hated mine, blunt molasses block of pound. What words could soften the thud of me hitting air?

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GriefKristina Buschgrief, grandmother, poetryComment
All My New Friends Are Widows
All My New Friends Are Widows

My first widows’ picnic is where I learned that having partner loss in common is enough to bridge gaps of religion, politics, age, language, and more. Since then, I have hugged and cried with people whose names I don’t know, whose language I don’t speak, whose paths will probably never again cross mine. There are widowed people I hardly know except for how they lost their person.

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GriefSelena Raygoza Comment
James
James

The box from James arrived months after my birthday, tattered and misshapen. In it, a black-and-white striped purse, gray scarf, face masks, a knockoff Purple Rain CD, and two cardigans: one small yellow one for my eleven year old daughter and another for me the color of a bright orange Boston autumn leaf where James and I had gone to college together. 

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GriefJulia Nusbaumdeath of a friend, healing, griefComment
My Three Griefs
My Three Griefs

“John has dementia, probably Alzheimer’s.” The diagnosis came at us like an arrow shot from a crossbow. The arrow went straight through my husband and embedded itself in me. Of course, the disease was inoperable and couldn’t be treated. We both knew the outcome. There was nothing to do but carry on regardless of pain or grief.

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GriefSelena Raygoza Comments
Exempt Human Specimens
Exempt Human Specimens

According to the United States Postal Service website, it’s illegal to send body parts through the mail.

“Heavily restricted,” is a better way to put it. You need the necessary permits, containers, a transport license from the American Association of Mortuary Shippers. There are rules involved, special restrictions; same goes for dry ice and lithium batteries. You can mail live bees, but not medical marijuana. Those thin, translucent lines that keep us from stuffing a toe into a manila envelope on the way to work.

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GriefJulia Nusbaumdeath and dying, grief, Family, pregnancy, motherhoodComment
Babies I'll Never Have
Babies I'll Never Have

I walk troublingly late. None of the doctors know what to make of me.

“You came out of the womb singing your ABCs, but you didn’t walk until you were two-years-old!” my mother jokes. “You were just so smart. You wouldn’t even crawl. You’d just roll everywhere, like a little log. You were very efficient.”

A very expensive doctor on the Upper West Side finally steps in and fits me for special shoes with arch support. They are pink leather and make my feet look comically large for a child so small, and I wail when they are strapped on to me, wriggling as the velcro crunches into place. I detest the process of learning to walk. I fall constantly. My little knees remain perpetually bruised.

Once I finally get the hang of it, though, I am unstoppable.

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GriefKristina Buschdisability, Infertility, griefComment
Funerals
Funerals

A 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.

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GriefKristina Buschfamily, religion, deathComment
Milk Teeth
Milk Teeth

For years, I kept my children’s teeth in a drawer. Wrapped in a rainbow silk, I tucked them behind the protection of scarves and mismatched socks. In preparation for a move to a new life, our belongings would sit in the liminal land of a storage unit. It didn’t feel right to put the bundle of teeth in the cardboard box behind bars.

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GriefJulia Nusbaumgrief, childhood, growing up, motherhoodComment
Lazarus
Lazarus

Uncle George lay on his back on the hospice bed looking his ninety-four years for the first time. His usual ruddy face was as pale as the bleached sheets nearly shrouding him.

My cousin had warned me, "Dad's unconscious. He won't recognize you."

I thought I was prepared.

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GriefSelena Raygoza Comment
Good Enough
Good Enough

I came home to wisps of white paper blowing through the screened-in porch like feathers in a chicken coop. Rosie, the rescue puppy, was sitting on haunches with head bowed and tail wagging sheepishly, white exclamation points in the black spots of her scruffy fur. The trail of paper led from the porch, through the dog door, to the living room floor, to the black leather cover of my grandmother’s Bible, her name in gold on the lower corner.

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Women of Faith, Female Fatihleaders, Female Faith LeadersJulia Nusbaumwomen of faith, religion, Faith, LGBTQIA Comments
Holy Donuts
Holy Donuts

The sidewalks in West Philadelphia are notoriously uneven. Cracks splinter across a cement landscape of protruding roots and gnarled knots, a battleground of nature’s rebellion against the cages built by mankind. Litter adorns small patches of grass like jewelry, reflecting the sun’s rays as it pierces through thin layers of clouds.

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Women of FaithJulia Nusbaumwomen of fiath, women of faith, female faith leaders, religion, Cults, Donuts, spirituality Comments
Searching for Faith
Searching for Faith

Hasbun Allahi wa nimal wakeel. These words had become my mantra. “God alone is sufficient for us, and He alone can rectify our affairs.” These were the words that I would recite thousands of times a day that winter. I would repeat this phrase in the early morning hours when I couldn’t sleep. As I heard myself murmur the words, my own voice seemed to lull me into a trance-like state, as if I floated out of my body.

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Women of FaithKristina Buschreligion, family, pregnancy, divorce Comments
Girl Toy
Girl Toy

I have learned not to get burned.

The year that I turn sixteen, which is a very long year, I often work the opening shift at McDonald’s. Other than babysitting, this is my first job, and I take it quite seriously. Twenty hours a week; more in the summer. I have no license, so my mother drives me, both of us heavy with the want of sleep.

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PrideJulia NusbaumLGBTQIA, Queer StoriesComment
Heterochromia
Heterochromia

“How fat do I look in this shirt?” my mother asked me, grimacing as she stared at herself in the department store’s tri-fold mirror. All three versions of her fussed in unison with the shirt’s delicate buttons.

By the time I was in the sixth grade, this was not an unusual question. “Mother,” I started, my voice lingering on the last syllable, dragging the er into a nasal whine. “You look fine.” 

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PrideKristina BuschLGBTQIA, LGBTQ+, body image, Mother daughterComment