I am blessed by wonderful friends. A number of them are women young enough to be my daughters. Today, I opened my mailbox to find a letter from one of them, Kelli Jones. It was a fan letter, a love letter, a blast of encouragement strong enough to make me vow to write...
It is April 6, the anniversary of Maya’s death in 1992, a day when my internal clock stopped. My daughter is dead. After more than two decades, I am still not used to that. I see Maya as a vibrant 19-year-old. But she would be turning 41 this October. Her grave lies...
Talking about the death of my daughter detonates every parent’s worst fear. “That’s the ultimate loss,” they say. “I can’t even imagine it.” Telling people you are a bereaved parent is like telling them you have cancer. In the early years of grief, I felt like a...
In the movies, relatives gather around for last words from their dying loved one. They lean in for that last pearl of wisdom or poignant plea for forgiveness. Real life is a little different. My sister Cathy bent over my father’s bedside and said, “Dad we all love...
I made raspberry pancakes this morning in honor of my 92-year-old father. Dad has become a will o’ the wisp of himself, gasping for air, his cheeks and eyes sunken, barely able to sip water, drugged to the gills on morphine and Atavan. But when the nurse came in and...
Here's the story of why I named this blog "That's the Way Life Lives." When Maya was five years old we moved to California. In Swimming with Maya, I recount the joys and difficulties of adjusting to life in the Sierra foothills outside of Nevada City. Just six weeks...
I first met Madeline Sharples at a writing workshop at Esalen. I was immediately drawn to her calm, empathetic manner, her beauty, and her poems. We quickly learned that we shared some important life experiences - we were both grieving mothers and both of us were...
Maya’s 19-year-old heart was keeping Fernando alive but as I held him I realized in a new, deeper way that Maya herself was never coming back.