A lesson in accepting change and cherishing life — Every morning I take my coffee out onto the front porch. My birdfeeders are there and I enjoy starting my day with the birds. For the past few weeks, I have also started my day with a spider. She is a little black and white crab spider who has strung…

Even a nap becomes a transcendent experience — We traveled four hours to see our grandchildren today. The trip never seems long because I know what’s at the end — two little people I love with a tenderness and fierceness that defies logic. Every moment I spend with them seems illuminated with a kind of magical light. These…

I am grateful to have her as my guide — My mom died on July 31. It was an excruciating loss and I was not sure how I was going to go on. So, not long after she was gone I started talking to her. Because we talked every single day for years, it was not hard to imagine her…

The simple things tell the stories — Since my mother died five weeks ago I have been going through all of her things. We started that process several years ago, she and I, and as I work through boxes I am finding things that I know the story of. This always makes me smile. …

I will never give up looking for a true home, no matter how old I get — Home. I often wonder if I will ever find it, that elusive quality that makes a house more than a house. I can sometimes see it in the distance when driving past a house that calls out to me. What is it that makes a house feel like it could…

A daughter’s journey through grief — As I continue to go through boxes of Mom’s things, I keep holding out hope that I will find a love letter written to me in her own hand. I have cards with little notes written in them, but I want more. I am greedy for the assurance that Mom…

Mom’s little missives of comfort and love — Since my mother’s death two weeks ago, I have been slowly sorting through what was left of her belongings. She and I had been doing that together since her diagnosis with pulmonary fibrosis a little over three years ago. I hauled up from her basement hundreds of yards of quilt…

My journey through the land of grief — My mom left this earthly plane two weeks ago today. She was 82 years old. Yesterday I was going through boxes of her papers and found a stack of photos. As I looked at the photos I was seeing my mom in her prime. …

Because so many of you asked — I wrote recently about my husband and my mom getting Covid. So many of you were kind enough to wish them both well and to ask for updates. My heart breaks to report that my Mom did not survive her bout with Covid. She had underlying conditions that made her…