Two months you’ve been gone from this world. … The anger that everyone talks about, that all the books and counselors say is “normal” after a loss, has nowhere to go in me. I have no place to focus this anger, so it stays inside, winding me ever tighter. I find myself short-tempered, waspish, mean-spirited. …
Tag Archive: daughter
Apr 07
Adoption immanent and worth the wait
For those who have been following my ‘adoption adventure,’ I finally have good news. I will be soon be adopting a nearly-9-year-old girl – exactly the child I had hoped for when I began this adventure. As a recap, I began this journey more than a year ago as a direct response to the loss …
Feb 02
Get over grief, have a ‘replacement child’! I don’t think so….
I know they mean well. Their hearts are certainly in the right place; it’s their misunderstanding of the situation that leads them to make the comments they do. Some background is probably necessary. My eldest daughter was killed in a car accident in May of 2008. Several months after that, I began the process of …
Feb 01
Transplant recipient has my daughter’s lungs
Introducing Sherri, the loving daughter and caregiver of Didie, who now breathes with my daughter Ava’s lungs. Visit Team Didie for the whole story. This is my mom, Didie. She has Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, a rare lung disease that requires her to have a double lung transplant. She has never smoked or taken diet pills, which …
Feb 01
Home study for adoption is exhaustive
This editorial was published in November 2008, in The Wickenburg Sun as I worked toward becoming certified for adoption. I have been stopped a number of times lately by townsfolk – some I know, some I don’t – asking me the same question, “How’s your adoption going?” My answer is, “Slowly.” This is my third …
Jan 27
The adoption process – a long and arduous task
Earlier, I outlined my reasons for, and the beginning steps toward becoming certified for adoption (www.wickenburgsun.com, August 2008). As the time goes by, the obligations are met and the process continues, I am increasingly excited and enthused. Most people looking to adopt want a newborn or infant and go through private agencies to achieve their …
Jan 20
Loss of child is loss of future; adoption an answer?
When my daughter was killed in a single-car rollover in 2008, my life changed abruptly and dramatically. In recent years I lost both my parents – Mother at age 73 in 2001 and Dad at 84 in 2006. We were a close-knit family, and although their passing was painful, it was expected: they were elderly …
Jan 19
Carl Zimmer, science, philosophy, a tattoo, and love
A design as unique as my daughter. She designed the tattoo I didn’t want her to get. It now adorns both my back and the headstone at her grave. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/01/18/requiem-revisited/
Jan 17
Would you choose to know the date of your own death?
I have lost three of my closest family members in the last ten years. In 2001 my mother died from terminal lung cancer. I was with her and helped my father care for her during the last year of her life. She died peacefully in hospice. My father died in the fall of 2006. I …
