grief

The Call

grief, memoir, momming

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021 It was just after 9pm when the call came. I was in the rocking chair in the nursery, breastfeeding my son. My husband, who had been fielding all of the phone calls for the last week – from investigators, and search parties, and the news reporters – was presently on a flight to Arizona, to join the search for my missing brother. “Mrs. Neuberger?” “Yes, this is her,” I answered in a low voice, not wanting to involve my newborn in what was likely to be a life-altering conversation. She chose her next words carefully and delivered them with a clinical degree of care, “We located John below the…

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Reads Like Fiction

grief, memoir

February 27th, 2021 It was an unseasonably warm Saturday for late February in Ohio. So warm, in fact, that we opened the windows, letting the fresh air blow through my house. An oasis in the dead of winter. My husband and I were sitting at our kitchen table playing cards with my parents, feeling like actual human beings considering it was the first time we’d been able to do anything besides eat or sleep since the day my water burst and a newborn was thrust into our world. We were new parents drowning in all the wonderful, exhausting chaos that comes with the role. Our son was napping in the living room just…

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On Death, Loss and Resurrection

faith, grief, momming

Easter looked different for us this year. I hesitated to even post this picture because it is so shockingly deceiving. What you see is the smiling faces that have posed on this same back deck for the last 20+ years. What you don’t see is the pain, the heaviness, and the deep, deep grief that is carried behind each of those smiles. At first glance, you might notice my brother is missing. Not uncommon, as there were years in the past he was “too busy” to come to Easter. But, my brother died two years ago, so, of course, he will never be in another Easter photo again. That’s an image I’ve already…

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