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Category Archives: Grief
Food, screens, mediums
FOOD
Blistered string beans, mango salsa, and spiced salmon. Doesn’t get much better than this, especially when you don’t have to cook it!
(Finn’s wondering if I want that second slice of French bread?)
That was Thursday. Last night a neighbor dropped off lasagne and the most delicious chop salad ever. Oh, and a crunchy walnut-covered pastry filled with chocolate ganache. Let me say it was so rich and tasty that I’m glad we split it three ways.
Tonight I’m gonna try one of Jamie Oliver’s quick recipes. These tubers will get chopped on a cutting board drizzled with olive oil along with feta cheese and cilantro. Thirteen minutes in the microwave was his “cheat.” Also, I might mix in some couscous from a meal dropped off on Wednesday.
KNOWING
Here are two things I’ve recently learned about grief. One I’m glad to know, the other, not so much.
I’m glad to know that loss can and often does cause intense heaviness in the chest. My father died of a heart attack at the age of 54 and I know two people who have had “broken heart” heart attacks. Knowing the commonality of this physical symptom eases my mind.
What I’m less psyched to learn is that many folks observe that Year Two of grieving is much harder than Year One.
To that I say, great. Just great.
Yes, yes, the kind neighbors will move on, the meals will stop, but more what seems to get people is how the aching permanence of the loved one’s absence becomes more real.
I’m not seeking out depressing notions or dwelling on them (well, maybe a little), but things cross my screen and I notice them and sometimes I find myself telling you about them.
MEDIUMS
Just read another book about a local medium. For a person who can barely get through six paragraphs of a Booker Prize-winning novel, it’s very noticeable that I devoured this book in three sittings.
It wasn’t particularly well written but it didn’t matter. The point about the permeability between life and death was made over and over and that’s something I need to believe right now.
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Mourning not morning
I wake to the cries of the mourning doves. Coo, coo, they call. Then the dog’s sigh. He hops up for his morning pets moments after.
How the day starts.
A light frost this morning underscores The Globe’s reporting that the runners in the 130th Boston Marathon will face slightly cooler temps than usual today.
Last week with the race on the horizon, I was prompted to remember that when we toured CU in April 2013, the Marathon Bombing happened. The days that followed were a weird split screen between highlights of the campus and the horror coming out of Boston.
When we landed at Logan we weren’t sure we’d be able to get home. Cabs were not allowed. Busses weren’t running.
We could however retrieve our car. Once off the Turnpike, we drove through the part of Newton that abuts Watertown where an intense police search was going on.
It was spooky. Both towns locked down. Very few cars on the road.
I look back and go, “Huh. So that was Danny’s introduction to CU/Boulder.”
Sunday in Boston: the gorgeous plantings at the Gardner Museum were food for the soul.
They also pained me as reminders of our trip to a butterfly garden north of Denver about this time last year.
Once again I lament the stupidest things. How I took endless close ups of the tarantulas next door or that I recorded several two-minute videos of fluttering insects. And only these two pictures of Danny. They’re not even decent pictures.
And it wasn’t just the plantings at the Gardner that got me. Italian marble and sculptures put me in mind of our trip to Rome and Florence in May of 2024.
He had blond hair that season. I liked it. Danny was relaxed and engaged for those eight days. It was such a good trip.
Today I take Finn to the vet for a check up and finish the Raskin memoir. I might bake some shortbread to bring our neighbor who broke his hip. I don’t know how people get through early grief while working or tending to a family.
The experts say.
The experts say, and I believe them, that some of us walking around on this earth are in so much pain that it is unbearable to linger. And further, that for those of us that can manage to put one foot in front of the other, we simply cannot understand the depths of their despair.
I believe this now but nevertheless can’t help trying to understand. I want to understand.
I think about the gym shorts that Danny hand-washed two days before he killed himself. Those shorts hung to dry in the rental unit bathroom like a flag celebrating the ordinary. It was such a pedestrian act. It was an act that suggested continuity — continuity of habit and hygiene. Wasn’t wanting to be clean for the next visit to the gym a good sign? Didn’t it point to there being a next visit to the gym?
Nothing about hand-washing gym shorts hints at having a fully formed plan to kill oneself. But Danny did have a plan.
I brought salt scrubs for the bath to Longmont. It’s one of my things, bath salts and scrubs. I suggested that Dan use them, particularly on his knees and elbows almost as if he was a battery that had corroded and could be restored. We are, after all, electrical beings, sensitive to light and water and salt.
One morning in Longmont, I was elated (yes, elated) to see that the bath salts had moved from the bathtub’s rim to the windowsill, indicating that Danny had in fact used them. He was listening. He was scrubbing off the corrosion. He wanted to live, right?
No. No, he did not want to live.
As he left that final morning, I popped open the fridge and said, “Wait! Your water bottle!” But he shook his head and left without it. That, in retrospect looks like a refusal with import.
Those days of March were rife with refusals.
But there were also some signs that looked healthy and affirming. He joined a makers’ space and went first to their orientation and next to a training on how to use their 3-D printer. He went back yet again and made a figure on the printer that was teeny tiny because he’d input the wrong dimensions. We thought he’d go back and try again but he never did.
We had some rain overnight.
One friend brought croissants this morning, another a bunch of purple/blue iris. Yet a third will come this afternoon and help me pick up the catalpa pods that litter our yard. It’s a busier day than usual but I feel up to it.
Today marks one month: March 16, 2026, April 16, 2026.
Note: Hazel can be found on insta at HazelCMonte and Maggie at rozemadly