Life is Your Story

How do you comfort your mom after your dad passes away? How do you convince her that everything is going to be alright when you are unable to convince yourself? How do you expect her to just move on after having having spent most of her life with the same person? He was her best friend. They loved each other, they hated each other, they put up with one another, they ate breakfast together, they ate dinner together – he asked “how was your day?” and she asked “how was your day?” and other times they ate in silence. They forgave and forgot, they gave and they took, there was hurt and pain and joy and laughter. There was all that life could throw at them and all that they withstood as a united and powerful force created from love and devotion. They sacrificed for you and your siblings as all good parents do in wanting more for you than they had for themselves. They made a promise – in sickness and in health – knowing one would eventually fall ill while the other w

When someone we love dies, we want them back. Plain and simple. It's like a crime has been committed. They've been taken - sometimes with warning and sometimes without warning - sometimes expected yet always unexpected. There are those we accompany as far as we can toward whatever comes next. We sit by their bed and we wish we could take the suffering and pain away. We are ready to give ourselves in their place. We are aching and frightened. We know what is coming as the butterflies move at warp speed in our stomachs and photos clips turn into horrid collages of the darkest scenes from the obituary in which we can't say what we really want to say and to the funeral that too many strangers attend and the eulogy that will never do them justice and the burial - the shovel to the dirt, the dirt to the coffin, a final curtain call without ample applause to a life well lived and the love they gave. Then there are the ones that just happen the way things just sort of