On April 1, my daughter Maya went skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains. She was 19, home on spring break from community college. She went to a resort outside of Truckee with her friends for a day of fun. It was 1992. When she arrived home early that evening, I had...
I've discovered that love trumps grief. Today is the anniversary of my daughter Maya's death 31 years ago. What sustains me in moments of grief is “love in the trenches,” the kind that demands fortitude and commitment – not the easy breezy romantic ideal. Just as the...
I was 43 when my daughter Maya, 19, was declared brain dead after massive head injuries caused by a fall from a horse she was riding bareback. The day before her accident, we learned that she had been accepted by UCLA in its theater arts program. They would provide a...
What I know is that love overcomes grief. It will be 30 years since my daughter Maya was declared brain dead on April 6, 1992. She was only 19 then. This is the year she would have turned 50. How mind blowing is that? What keeps me going is “love in the trenches,” the...
Maya’s blond pageboy gleamed in the early October light when she came bounding into our apartment. She was about to turn 19, at the beginning of her sophomore year in 1991 at Santa Barbara City College. She had come home for her birthday. She was on fire with her love...
The "Jewel of the Sierra" – Lake Tahoe as it was before ecological disaster became our nightmare come true. When the Caldor Fire blew over Echo Ridge in late August, and roared into the Tahoe Basin, I cried, mourning the immense beauty going up in smoke. For many,...
Grief shows its face with fierce waves of emotion that sweep us away as well as gentle memories we can linger over. In our year of lockdown and loss, I’ve experienced all the faces of grief from the benevolent to the malign, from deep gratitude to profound rage. What...
It’s April 6 again, a day to celebrate and to mourn. My oldest daughter Maya died on this day twenty-eight years ago. As the Covid-19 pandemic rages around the globe, millions of us find our lives radically upended; we’re scared, and we’re grieving. For those of us...
Mass killings are happening at such an alarming rate that most of us can’t even remember when – or why – the most recent killing spree filled our Twitter feeds or our TV screens. Grieving faces, flowers and candles left on street corners, and empty rhetoric about...
“Don’t worry about anything – or anyone,” my grandmother said, and thumped her cane emphatically, underlining her words. She was speaking from the “other side,” a world where I could not hear her directly, but a gifted psychic could translate her words to me. I don’t...