Category Archives: Grief

Not this

December 2025.
He had three months to live.

Context: Written 6/11/26 the day after we arrived in Los Angeles. In December of last year, we flew Danny out and met at LAX and spent many days together at my brother’s.

Prompt: “It was supposed to be fun…”

Retirement was supposed to be fun, or at least fun–adjacent. Relaxing, self-paced, marked only by travel complications and joint pain.

Not this.

It was supposed to be a time to clean out attic and garage, tend the garden, meet up with friends for a matinee.

Not this.

This time was supposed to be anticipatory in two directions — death, yes death, ahead on one side, an unavoidable tally of years but birth on the other, grandchildren, babies coming into the world.

Not this.

We flew over Colorado and I cried. We flew over the Nevada desert and I looked out the window wondering if he’d looked at the same on his last flight west. (His last flight west).

We landed at LAX. I held back tears at baggage claim because the last time I waited for a bag, we were also waiting for Danny’s flight to land. I cried on the way to the Uber pick up area — just folded like a hinge, put my head on my bag near the handle, and cried. Ken didn’t notice. He was so intent on getting to the pick up area which is, I swear, a mile from the terminal.

Later, we picked up Danny’s car from his brother’s and I cried. I sat on the seat where we’d found the box of bullets, an impossible recollection. I looked at the dusty dashboard and asserted, “Danny wouldn’t have let his car get this dirty.” We agreed on that point.

Now, the rejiggering retrospective includes highlights of a long and slow retreat. Did we even talk in the backyard that time, I wonder? Did we talk during that meal or that walk? My memory is poor, but my son’s silences grew to be pretty constant, epic even.

I write letters to Danny almost every day now. Yesterday I asked, “What happened to that joyfully kinetic, friend-loving guy?” Always there’d been fear and panic, doubt and worry, but always that negativity had been braided with the antics and cheer of an outgoing affectionate imp. Where did he go?

And now I recall a visit ago, let’s call it a penultimate visit (a penultimate visit), asking this very question “You’re so tamped down, Danny. Where did that more cheerful guy go?”

There was no answer. He had no answer.

The “what-if’s” take a break for a week and then storm back with a fury.

What if early on I pulled him out of the public schools? Or what if later on, I’d temporarily moved to Boulder to arrange proper psychiatric care? What else did I have to do?

All the interventions were so incremental, band-aids or suggestions of help, not lasting, meaningful help. Why didn’t I treat the situation years ago as a full-blown life or death crisis, which it was. It always was, as it turns out, a life or death crisis.

Reminiscing was supposed to be, if not fun then at least marked by a bittersweet nostalgia – an annoying echo of a Raffi song or a shrug of a memory at being beyond tired but going to Drumlin Farm anyway.

Not this.

Every counter and table is now covered with nails pointed upward ready to wound. Every floor is puddled with black grease ready to cause a slip and a fall. Every shelf is loaded with regret. Dodging the dangers makes one tired. There are retreats, but no actual respite and if I’m to believe half of what I read, there never will be. There is no getting over this. There’s no getting around this, this loss, this grief. Ever.

Update on visit: California weather does not disappoint. Billy is doing well. Lila is fine too except for a prolonged panic attack yesterday when a neighbor’s shrill and piercing alarm went on for hours. Poor thing. We finally gave her a trazadone.

I’m so grateful that I was here in this sports-loving household the night of the Knicks game because it meant I watched every minute of it. Wow!

To just see the comeback in the final quarter would’ve meant so much less without weathering the quarters where the Knicks were losing by a lot.

Also of course we watched the first U.S. Men’s soccer game which as it turns out was played here in LA. Also a gratifying win.

Today? Cary and his girlfriend visit. I’ve already made cold cucumber soup.

And perhaps, a dip in the pool!

Flowers and the other side

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Will spring in all its heady flourishing from here on out remind me of this season of sorrow?

Next year when the peony buds unfist and open and droop under the weight of their beauty, will they force a count — another year without Danny?

My neighbor paused on her way out for a walk recently to tell me that this plaster figure reminds her of Danny. I had always thought of it as female, but now I see it. I see him.

Speaking of the dead, take a look at the sweet little blue flowers of the forget-me-not. Like so many plants in the garden, they tell a story.

After my mother died, I dug up a couple of healthy clumps of forget-me-nots from her yard and planted them out front. With a name like theirs, I thought them a perfect memento — until they all disappeared, that is. They lasted two seasons, maybe.

My mother died in 1996 which means I counted the forget-me-nots as a loss in 1998. So imagine my surprise when this spring, some 28 years later, a brave and lovely forget-me-not showed up among the astilbe.

How does nature do things like this?

With a sense of wonder and gratitude, I moved the little clump to where it would have more room. It lives under the golden chain tree now.

Hi Mom.

We fly to California tomorrow. Since about February, I’ve often been waking between five and six a.m. It’s 5:31 as I type right now. You know what that means, don’t you? In Los Angeles I’ll be waking between 2:00 and 3:00 for at least for a handful of days.

No matter. I can’t wait to see Billy and Cary and the dog Lila and to dwell for a while in that beautiful California light.

Keep going

Lately all I say about my cloth creations is: it’s finished, it’s almost finished, this one’s not been finished for a long time.

Maybe I’ve become vacuous. Maybe thoughts about what I’m making aren’t cohering right now.

The house as symbol of home has endured for me. Home as sanctuary, home as placemarker, home as stand-in for the self.

Let the cloth do the talking is certainly one way to go.

What I will say about this little piece is that I kept working on it long after I might have considered it done in the past. You could say: I fussed.

I kept adding to rooflines on the big houses and kept finding more places to add a roof in the woven foreground.

Unlike business as usual, I wouldn’t quit quilting as long as even the slightest bulge was in evidence.

I might be in less of a hurry. My standards may have shifted slightly. I don’t know. I certainly don’t think of my home as a sanctuary right now, so maybe straightening rooflines and quilting a moon to within an inch of its life gave me something to do other than cry.

We went to three performances in our town’s Porchfest yesterday. The heat stifled and against all reason most songs made me think of Danny. But at least we got out and connected with friends and family.

At 12:18 last night I realized, outside of getting choked up talking to another mom who lost a son to suicide, I did not cry yesterday. Yesterday, then, was the first day since March 16 that there were no tears.

I’m not sure that’s to be celebrated.

P.S. I included pieces of both of these cutter-garments and one other that I bought in Longmont.

P.P.S. The quilt includes a Deb Lacativa scrap (house on right) as well as pieces of six other garments, including one I purchased in Denver a few years back and also including a rectangle from an old pair of boxers of Danny’s (the green plaid under the black window).

Andrea Gibson (deceased) and Megan Falley.

Palette

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June 2, 2026

“You found his palette,“ asserted my mother. This would’ve been maybe January 1996. Pancreatic cancer had made her wan, tired, and gaunt but she still exercised her artistic eye.

I had just held up a newly purchased infant outfit. The baby was due towards the end of March. It was a race at that point between life and death. Mom had already outlived the doctors’ prognostications by a couple of months – a status that will surprise no one who ever encountered her will and determination in life. Would she survive long enough to meet her second grandson?

No, she would not.

Cary was not yet two, so of course I had ample hand me downs. But as a second child the same gender as the first child myself, I knew how important it was to give Danny some new outfits too.

The soft browns and taupes of that tiny vest comprised what my mother called “Danny’s palette.” And it is also the colorway of the quilt that Tina made for me. How did she know?

When she heard that Danny had died, Tina set to work. She lovingly and skillfully made a beautiful blanket, already gift enough — but in Danny’s colors? Woosh.

My mother would’ve approved.

Speaking of my mother and of Tina, Tina enclosed two books with the quilt. I devoured the one titled “Grief is Love” in two sittings. The author, Marisa Renee Lee, talks about grief in lucid, lovely prose. She’d been devastated first by the death of her mother and then some years later, by the loss of a hard-won IVF pregnancy.

I have two important takeaways.

The first is that I didn’t grieve my mother. I didn’t have time. Danny, born one month and three days after her death, was a super fussy baby. Not only that but the minute Danny was born, two-year-old Cary decided that he’d outgrown naps. Money was tight. Ken left the house at 6:30 a.m. and returned at 6:30 p.m. Most mornings both boys were raring to go at 5:30.

I can’t tell you how many times in those days my jaw dropped to look at the clock in the morning and learn that lunchtime was still three hours off.

We had a calico kitty back then. Calypso. In the June after my mother’s death and Danny’s birth, she was hit and killed by a car. Oh, how I cried! And I knew that when I sobbed for our sweet Calypso, I was also sobbing for my mother.

But?

Maybe some of the tears I cry for Danny are also tears for my mother.

The other takeaway was the author’s notion that we who survive are part of the dead loved one’s legacy. In other words, I am part of Danny’s legacy.

How thought-provoking. What about his person could I express in some measure to continue his energy?

I’ve talked about what a curious person Dan was – remarkable enough in any adult, really, but especially in one who struggled academically. His general knowledge was impressive. He would’ve been all over that meteor story of last week. He would’ve understood that the hail that fell in Denver recently was a product of a warm weather trend, not a cold one.

Can one cultivate curiosity and if so, how?

I plan to support the National Parks because they were such a source of inspiration and succor to Dan — but that will have to wait for a president who isn’t spraying pesticides all over Yosemite (or is it Yellowstone?), who isn’t lifting kill-bans on wolves or selling off forest lands, and who isn’t eviscerating endangered species protections for creatures in the Gulf (the Gulf of Mexico, I don’t need to add).

Gratitude update: yesterday we received notice that the federal government has discharged Danny’s student loans. I’m grateful that is done.

Ferryman coins

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When will a stiff breeze stop feeling like harassment, an immediate and traumatic reminder of Longmont in the days before Danny killed himself?

The wind blew almost constantly during our time there this spring.

In early March I collected bits of rusted metal out in front of our rental unit. I always do this. They were mostly squashed bottle caps, so the comparison to coins came naturally.

“Rusty coins for the ferryman,” was a thought I had out there in that windy alley. Bending to pick up yet another “coin,” I’d think: “Passage across the River Styx.”

Across the River Styx lies the Land of the Dead.

The presence of Death and a relentless wind were inescapable in Longmont during those nerve-scraping final ten days of Danny’s life.

I’ve been going back there in my mind lately. Unlike the parent who is stunned to find their child gone to suicide, unaware of their despair, I knew. Those ten days ask for healing as much as anything else. Terror, panic, and hope walked in stride with me every minute of those ten days.

I haven’t been going back to scour out my complicity in Danny’s suicide. No apportionment of blame — for now. More, it has been simply remembering. There’s Danny at the sink filling his water bottle before going to the gym. There’s Danny sitting in bed after dinner, laptop open, face illuminated by the screen. Danny eating the final meal I made us.

Or there we were, walking over to the vintage store around the block where I picked up two garments to use as “cutters.”

Except it wasn’t with Danny, I now realize.

The scrambling of time during acute grief is harsh and disorienting.

No, Danny was already gone. It was with Ken and his brother and sister (who’d flown to Colorado immediately to help) that I went to that vintage store. Cary and his girlfriend too. Shopping was a momentary distraction in between sorting through all of Danny’s worldly goods. Clothes, books, bed linens, sporting equipment, kitchen stuff — all had to be shipped home or dropped off at Goodwill.

The used clothing around the block was deeply discounted because they were closing. I bought a brown and black woodcut-inspired patterned jumpsuit. Cotton. And a rich blue, voluminous shawl with whitish swish patterning. Organza.

I know from other garment-finds that these cloths could last for years, becoming part of my visual vocabulary in both casual and intentional ways.

What do I make, then, of the association with Longmont and Danny’s suicide? Does that elevate the cloth and demand a quilted requiem? Or maybe the darkness condemns the fabric, contaminating it with Death’s forceful and unwelcome intrusion.