The evening’s activities put me in mind of the event a year earlier. The tone both similar and worlds apart – a celebration of the start of the Christmas season, but this year without the aching heart and scratchy eyes of the day’s grief. As I walked away, the voices, amplified by microphones, echoed off the trees, the strains of the […]
“There Will be Butterflies.”
I came across the line on the airplane. I had decided only days before the conference to read the book, and here I was, on my way, with half of it left to go. Ah, well, I’d thought. If I don’t finish, I don’t finish. No one will be upset with me. But then I started reading, and words and […]
A Bewildering Reality
Every few hours I find myself clicking this link, and staring at the page, thinking, “Is it really real?” As one of my coworkers put it today, we’re just dealing with her absence, not with the loss; it hasn’t sunk in yet. We keep expecting to see her. And while I don’t want it to be real, I don’t want […]
Missing Uncle Sam
O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here; Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death’s dark shadows put to flight. “Christmas is a time of joy,” my boss said yesterday. “I have to keep reminding myself of that.” It is. A joy tinged with sorrow, as the Man of Sorrows left his throne and […]