“The ‘I’m Scared’ series is a collection of essays exploring 38 experiences I was afraid to face without my love, Jason, who passed away in 2024.

My teeth rattle. My body jerks forward as the toy plane I’m in sputters off the runway. Glancing up, I count each screw holding together the thin plexiglass of the roof. The entire thing shakes as if it’s about to rip apart. Air pours in from the gaping hole in the right side–which looks like a mouth waiting to swallow us into the sky. Reaching to my left, I grab the hand of the man, Mark, who got me into this. He lets out a small laugh.

With a tug, I am yanked back. The aircraft erupts with the clicking of buckles and shuffling of feet. Monique, my instructor, buckles me to her body. Legs slung over each side of a thin bench, we begin scooting along the bench behind six other pairs of jumpers. We look like a caterpillar inching forward. Mark tears his hand from mine as he tumbles out of the yawning mouth.

“Ready?” Monique yells into my ear, fighting to be heard above the churning wind.

I haven’t been ready for anything that has happened in the last 15 months.

I tap my pen against my journal, sipping my coffee. It’s the same ritual I’ve had since I was eight.

I have made it one year without Jason. I’m not even sure how I did it.

“I never thought I could do this. I just remember last year saying over and over, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.’ I still don’t. I am scared of year two. I miss him so much. I still don’t see where my new life is headed. I feel in limbo.”

I pulled out another sheet of paper. At the top I’d written “One Year Decisions.” Underneath it is a short list:

1. Move

2. Date

3. Wildflyer

I wrote it a few weeks after Jason died. When I was so overwhelmed, I thought I should quit my job, move out of the country, and perhaps try to find a husband. I also thought I should get bangs, a sure sign I needed therapy, not reinvention. I put all major decisions on hold and gave myself a to-do list with just one item:

1. Survive

But now it is year two.

Staring at the list, I lean my head back against the chair cushion and close my eyes. I had hoped by this day I would have the answers to these questions. Work would sort itself out. Love would somehow find me. I would be living in a new country somewhere, finally happy. This list is right where I left it. Unbegun.

Subscribe now

Ding! My phone wrenches me from despair. I read the text with a smile. It’s Jason’s friend, Mark, reaching out to let me know he is thinking of me.

“A crazy thought, perhaps you and I could go skydiving. It gave me a new perspective on faith over fear, which was the point of the whole thing. To have faith. It was a great gift from Jason.”

Skydiving is on my “I’m Scared” list, and I love an adrenaline rush, so I type back an enthusiastic “yes!”

And now, three months later, I am screaming as the mouth of the plane swallows me into the sky.

I am falling down. down. down. Wind smacks my torso. Shoving me up. up. up. My arms and legs splay out like a smashed bug on a windshield.

After about 15 seconds, everything evens out, and we fall in constant motion.

Just like I learned, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. With a snap, I am jerked upward. The harness twists the skin of my inner thighs, stinging. I can’t breathe as air whooshes past my ears and the parachute opens. Everything stills, goes quiet. We seem suspended. Then descend towards Earth. Floating like powdered sugar falling over a fresh cake.

I hear clapping as we land. Mark is already on the ground waiting for us. I hit the ground and feel my entire spine rearrange itself. Popping up, I scream, “That was awesome! Let’s go again!” We are laughing. Holding hands. My heart pounds. I try to lower my voice as I describe the jump, but I can’t seem to stop yelling. Words cascade out of my mouth.

On the way home, once our bodies had gone limp, I asked him a question.

“You said last time you did this with Jason it allowed you to face a lot of fears and do things you never imagined you could. What are you hoping this new time will unlock for you?”

“Hmm. Maybe courage for my trip to Indonesia,” he responds, eyes focused on the road ahead, hands clenching the steering wheel. He doesn’t like city traffic. I hope he doesn’t plan to drive in Jakarta. “I don’t know how you guys just did all that scuba diving there.” He muses.

“Oh, that never scared me,” I respond, remembering how easily I followed Jason to the bottom of the ocean.

But celebrating my birthday in Japan, scuba diving in Costa Rica, or scootering around Vietnam risked my body but never my heart.

“Well, what do you hope this will unlock for you?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about it.”

I watch Wisconsin farmland roll by through the window.

I know what I need this to unlock for me.

Jumping out of the yawning mouth.

Loving again. Hoping again. Dreaming again.

I have engineered a life that looks like healing. Settling into a job I could do but no longer loved. Downloading and deleting Hinge. Reaching for life, then smacking my own hand away.

Mark drops me off, and I step inside my apartment, my sanctuary after Jason died. Lately, it has stopped feeling safe and started to feel stifling.

There is a second half to Newton’s Law.

An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an external force.

The next morning, I tap my pen against my journal, sipping my coffee, and begin a new list.

1. Be disappointed

2. Be vulnerable at work

3. Fall in love with serving others again

4. Say a new dream out loud to someone

5. Have Hope

6. Say “I want”

7. Say something hard

8. Be surprised by joy

9. Follow the Sun

10. Let go of who I was and become who I am

Leave a comment

#1 If it starts with should, shut up.

I have been giving myself a lot of “shoulds” lately. I should be further along. I should be feeling better. I should have had some profound insight into my life and future.

Grief is excruciating enough without the constant fear that I should be better, further along, or somewhere else. So I am removing the burden of “should” and reminding myself that where I am right now, in this moment, is the only place I should be.

#2 Body is friend, not foe.

Grief is a full-body affair, and mine has taken an absolute beating over the past two years. One day, I was training for a triathlon. The next, I could barely hold a downward dog. Twenty-some pounds later, and I’m not happy with what I see in the mirror. But I am also tired of being at war with my body; it’s so 2008.

A wise mentor shared this mantra with me: “Thank you, body, for absorbing the stress that I couldn’t. When I’m ready, I’ll take over.”

These battered bones have carried me through. They deserve gratitude, not criticism.

#3 It’s not too late to say no.

I’ve been worried the “grief excuse” is wearing thin. I’m two years out. Can I still say no because I’m grieving? Yes. It has not been too long. Grief doesn’t operate on anyone else’s timeline.

I’m giving myself a blank permission slip to say no when grief is hitting hard. I don’t care what others think. Sorry.

#4 Sleep first, everything else second.

As goes the foundation, so goes the house. And my foundation is sleep. Once sleep slips, everything slips. A single night of bad sleep can translate to a full-blown panic attack within 2-3 business days. So I just don’t do it anymore. I organize my schedule around sleeping from 9 pm to 6 am and refuse to change. I assure you it is far more preferable that I leave wine night early than the mentally ill monster I become if I don’t.

Subscribe now

#5 Work that ol’ 9-5

I’ve replaced overachiever Carley with bare-minimum Carley. I have committed to working a true 9-to-5. No weekends spent catching up. I’ve postponed all non-essential meetings to August. I am not starting new projects or ideas. I’ve put in PTO for Fridays and the 20th. I’m softening the edges of a hard job wherever possible.

Getting through July is my full-time job.

#6 Survive, not thrive

After Jason died, I discovered the term “lie fallow,” an agricultural strategy in which farmers let land go unused for a period of time so the soil can replenish its nutrients and eventually begin producing again. Some seasons, all I can do is lie fallow. The sun keeps turning. The seasons keep changing. One day, I’ll come alive again.

There is always August for thriving. July is for surviving.

#7 Bless and release

This was a phrase my mom’s best friend shared with me during my divorce: let all my emotions in, then out. No use in blocking or judging them. They are visitors, not permanent residents. It won’t feel like this forever.

Feel. Bless. Release. Repeat.

#8 Come up for air

I can fall into a trap of believing that tending to my grief looks like staying home, journaling, and doing grief-y activities only, and I feel guilty saying yes to anything that might bring joy. But I am always grieving, whether I am crying in a loss support group or traveling the world, the Jason-sized hole in my heart stays the same six feet. So I’m forcing myself to make social contact with a friend once per day. Isolating in grief is the quickest way for my mind to begin creating negative narratives about myself and my future, so I’ve made pre-planned outings with friends who remind me what’s real.

#9 Take the easy way out

July is about taking the path of least resistance. Grocery stores are a huge trigger, and I don’t want to think about cooking, so I set up Hello Fresh deliveries. I switched my Target run to an Amazon delivery. I used ChatGPT (I’M SORRY). I pre-planned each day of the entire month to take the guesswork out of scheduling.

I’m on autopilot until August.

#10 Pursue new

Trying something new reminds me that I’m still alive. That I’m still capable. That my life didn’t end when Jason’s did. When I am drowning in grief, which I am, a new experience reminds me that I have it within myself to rebuild. So I’ve scattered in a few new experiences this month to help me feel momentum and avoid despair.

Extra Credit: Look for the Red Car

My therapist made me add this one.

I believe I am cursed. My mom is dead. I’m divorced. I got up the gumption to try love again, and he died. I am, as the kids say, cooked.

My therapist says the antidote is gratitude. She says looking for what’s good is like looking for a red car. Once you decide to look for one, you’ll see them everywhere.

I still don’t believe her.

But I’m looking for red cars anyway.

These are the rules I’m living by this July. Not forever. Just until the bombardment lets up. August will bring a different way of being.

“The ‘I’m Scared’ series is a collection of essays exploring 38 experiences I was afraid to face without my love, Jason, who passed away in 2024.

I fumble with my helmet, clicking it into place as our scooter drivers shout at each other and us in choppy Vietnamese. “Do we...” Omar asks, but my driver cuts him off by revving his engine and pulling into the flow of honking tuk-tuks and throngs of children filling the streets. The air in Da Nang, thick with the scent of incense and grilled meat, slaps my nose. My college roommate, Becky, appears. Fanning out to my right are Simon and Omar, two men we met just four days ago but already feel like best friends.

Beneath me, the engine rumbles. My spine snaps straight as I realize: I’m on a scooter for the first time since Jason died. Tipping my face up, wind whistles past my ears. I close my eyes. Hear a loud “whoop!” from next to me. Snap them open. Simon and Omar are gaining on me. My legs squeeze around the driver, a silent plea to speed up. He obliges, and we lean forward together. The familiar motion of it brings me back to sitting on the back of Jason’s motorcycle as he rode at full-throttle. Our bodies melding together, sharing heat and vibrations as we shifted with the curves of the road.

And then, as if my thoughts conjured him, he appears one lane over on his own scooter. Air snags in my chest. Jason! No, that’s not right, I remind myself. My neural pathways still glitch—reaching for him, flaring when they think he’s there. But it looks so much like him. The elbows. The shoulders. Brown shirt and khaki shorts. It’s the rust-colored curls tangled in a low bun flapping in the wind that convinces my brain, groping for hope, that this isn’t a mirage. It’s him! Tears blur my vision, and I swallow the urge lodged in my throat to beg the driver to chase him down. Like if we just go fast enough, I’ll have him back. Like the last eighteen months have all been a lie.

Like he didn’t die.

Subscribe now

Instead, he disappears behind a tall white building, which has “Awaken” spelled-out in blocky letters at the top.

The word sends me crashing back to that night.

The one where he died.

Where I died.

Cold from the kitchen floor seeping into my butt. Knees crunched up against my chest. A faceless paramedic crouching down in front of me. Lips moving. My back smashing into the bread cabinet behind me as I tried to elude them.

I can’t hear her words if I disappear. If I am talking louder.

“No. No. No,” I chant. Like if I say it enough, it’s not true. Like I can tell the universe what to do.

Sometimes I think I’m still there. Folded in on myself. Tracing the swirling floral pattern of the cast-iron radiator to my right. Focusing on the feel of its ridges and grooves against the pad of my finger to avoid crashing under.

I did anyway.

The road drops beneath us as we hit a pothole, jostling me back into the streets of Vietnam. From around a corner, the Jason-shaped man reappears. I press into my driver again, and we keep pace—side by side—until we turn left, and he keeps straight.

I’ve lost him all over again.

A few moments after me, Becky, Omar, and Simon arrive, talking over each other about their rides. “Guys,” I try to interject, “I saw someone who looked just like Jason drive past me, and then I saw a sign right under him that said ‘Awaken.’ It felt like he was telling me something!”

“Wow. Carley really had a whole spiritual experience out there,” someone jokes. “What were the rest of us doing?” They laugh.

Shrugging my shoulders, I laugh too. I’ve long since given up on explaining myself to non-grievers. Instead, I turn my attention toward the statue we’ve come to visit. Lady Buddha.

Craning my neck, I take her in. A milky white woman rising from a lotus flower. I find lotus flowers scattered everywhere here. Carved into the crumbling walls of temples. Painted onto walls. Blooming bright in front of statues. Later, I read that lotus flowers symbolize awakening, rising through the water each morning to bloom in the sun before slipping back beneath the surface at night.

Folding in on itself.

I wonder if it’s for protection from the dark.

“I think Awaken is my word for the year,” I mention to Becky as we amble around the statue, unable to get the image of the blocked sign out of my head.

“For 2025 or 2026,” she asks.

I snort. “2026. 2025’s word was just ‘survive.’”

Something in me wilts at the thought of another year of that.

Entering the temple, I’m hit with the sticky-sweet smell of incense and flowers. Yellow chrysanthemums like sparks of fire. Orange marigold pom-poms. Splays of white rest before three Buddha statues. Wondering what they mean, I ask the woman standing next to me.

“I think they represent the past, present and future,” she tells me.

My eyes linger on the Buddha of the future. He stares back. Unflinching.

Almost as if he is waiting for me to admit that I miss the way the sun feels on my face.

For a few dong, you can light incense. I drop the silver coins into the box and draw out a stick. Kicking off my shoes, I kneel and dip the stick into the candle, watch the fire spark then fizzle out. A curl of smoke wafts up. Placing the incense stick into the sand next to a thousand other half-burnt ones just like it, I make my request of the Buddha.

Unfold me.

“Unfold to what?” he seems to ask.

The thought comes unbidden.

To love.

Leave a comment

Irretrievable Breakdown is a series about divorce, faith, grief, and what happens when the blueprint breaks.

My mom always told me my virginity was the most precious gift I could offer my future husband.

She reminds me of this as she slides a box across the table at Alterra Coffee. Wiggling my shoulders, I adjust the wire poking my ribs from the lime green, pink polka-dotted bra I am trying to get used to. Satisfied, I open the box. Inside is a thin gold band with three diamonds layered crosswise. I have to squint to find them, but I don’t care. I slide it onto my ring finger with all the excitement and naivety of a girl who had just ordered a mocha because black coffee still tastes like burnt tires. Holding my hand up, I admire my purity ring and promise not to do a thing I can’t say out loud yet without stammering.

I wore it until I was 25, when I replaced it with a wedding ring. Similar gold band. A rose-cut diamond I no longer had to squint to see.

I grew up in purity culture, although back then it didn’t have a name. It was just how good girls lived. A simple set of rules that separated the pure from the impure: the tattered flower with missing petals from the budding rose. Fresh and full and faultless.

Those girls, the ones who kept their petals, got happy endings like the smiling couples on the glossy covers of books titled “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and “When God Writes Your Love Story.”

Subscribe now

The promise was simple. Follow the rules. Get a good life.

The best part? The rules were easy.

• Don’t date until you’re ready to marry

• Marry the first person you date

• Get married as fast as possible

• Do not, under any circumstances, have sex until you’re married

Lucky for me, I loved rules. A straight-A student with a self-imposed curfew, I built my life around this blueprint with the trademark overzealousness I bring to all my endeavors.

In high school, feeling convicted after watching the Boondock Saints with my friend Zach, I texted him to say I could no longer hang out with him alone to “honor my future husband.” He told me that my future husband “probably wouldn’t care,” but he agreed to it anyway. Zach was right. My future husband didn’t care. Too busy dry-humping his girlfriend in the basement of his parents’ home 185 miles from me.

But I cared. That gleaming, golden future beckoned me. So I followed the plan.

1. I didn’t date in high school because there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to marry any of the over-axed boys of Waukesha West.

2. My senior year of college, that same boy who once lived 185 miles from me ended up my next-door neighbor. Our friendship turned romantic right on time. I felt 90% certain before I committed to being his girlfriend we could get married, and I assumed we’d figure out the rest later.

3. I had my first kiss on a brown hand-me-down couch at 1205 State St. Three seconds long. Hands to ourselves. We stopped there.

On July 29, 2017, we crossed the finish line as virgins. Weightlessness settled over my body and it was like I could finally let out the inhale I’d been holding for years.

It was time for God to honor his end of the bargain.

But four years later I stood in the middle of the street listening to a rattling car clank away after a rat-tailed man had handed me a fat envelope of divorce papers. The surrounding air turned thin. Like the thing that had once kept me alive was evaporating all around me.

I’d lie on my mattress on the floor of my friend’s attic, replaying our entire relationship over and over in my mind. Like a movie on repeat. I’d pause at certain scenes, determined to locate the broken rule that had damned me.

There was that particularly heavy make-out session. But we repented. Confessed. Consulted mentors. Never did it again.

Over the years, we’d given in to the convenience of spending nights at each other’s houses.

And then there was the fact we had dated for about four years. Most Christian couples were married within a year of knowing each other. This was perhaps our greatest failure.

I didn’t know what to do.

Nowhere in those tattered books from the late 90s did they write anything other than happily ever after as an option.

Nowhere did they write a chapter for women like me: the ones who followed the rules but ended up divorced anyway.

So I read my Bible harder. Frantic for answers. My once peaceful morning Bible study became a battleground. I’d slice my fingers on the pages of Habakkuk. Job. Hosea. Flipping back and forth with desperation. Fingers dripping with blood. Even Hosea, married to a prostitute, got a happy ending. I tried to do what he did. Offering forgiveness and unconditional love to someone who met me with a wall of silence.

“Is that helping you?” my pastor, Jenna, asked one day on a Zoom call, her forehead furrowed as I told her about my morning routine.

“Not particularly,” I said for the first time out loud.

“I think it’s time you give reading the Bible a break.” She let out a laugh.

The next week she sent a reflection book titled Prayer. Scrawled in black cursive on the inside cover, she’d written, “Here’s for some new practice for a new season. To healing, my friend.”

I put my Bible on the top shelf around the same time I took my wedding band off, both with a hint of envy toward people still living in the illusion that bad things only happened to people who deserved them.

Maybe that’s why when, after Jason died, I couldn’t help but ask my aunt “Do you think God let him die because we had sex?”

Leave a comment

“Definitely,” she says.

“Okay, well, you didn’t have to answer so fast,” I snap back, trying not to breathe too hard lest I pop the button straining against my stomach.

“You have an excuse! It’s not your fault you had a hard year; I’m just saying yes. You’ve gained weight.”

Stalking back into the bedroom, I stare at myself in the full-length mirror.

I have never loved my body. Coming of age in the early aughts forced an adversarial relationship with it I could never fix. In High School, thin was in. Protruding clavicles, visible hip bones, thigh gaps. Meanwhile, I’d always suffered from chub rub. So I kept exact calculations of caloric intake in a yellow spiral-bound notebook: sugar-free yogurt, carrots and mustard, rice cakes, five-mile runs, hunger.

Every morning, I’d stand before the scale. Take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Step on. Opening them, I’d stare at the numbers in horror. My failures laid bare in harsh, red numbers. At night, I’d lift my shirt and stand sideways in the mirror. Pinching my stomach. Wrapping my fingers around my arms. Poking around for a rib bone.

As I grew up, it got better but never good. I held my body at a distance. A disappointment. Something to be tolerated the same way your little sister is when your mom makes you bring her along.

But then I met Jason, and his eyes became my mirror. For the first time, I liked what I saw reflected back. Fat became curvy. Bulky became strong. I learned to love my body through the eyes of someone who loved me.

When he died, those eyes closed, that mirror shuttered.

And through the long, cold months of grief, I ate every unbearable feeling I could not stomach. And now dimples cover the backs of my thighs and my arms press at their edges like dough.

Returning to my black spandex shorts, free to breathe, I swung my legs at my aunt’s counter and remembered a swim race I’d heard about years prior called “Big Shoulders.” Checking the website, I found I’d missed the registration deadline, but reached out to the race coordinator anyway. My partner died. I run a blog called “Big Arms, Big Issues.” I’m working my way through a list of things I used to do to help heal from my grief. One of them is open-water swimming. The name is too perfect. Would you consider putting me on a wait list?

Closing my laptop, I leaned back, stretching my arms out. I tried. It wasn’t my fault that the race was closed. I deserved the wine and cheese my Uncle was preparing for happy hour. I assumed they wouldn’t respond.

Which is why two days later, when I opened my inbox and saw an email from them, my eyes widened.

Hi Carley,

I am so sorry for your loss! Your story is positively heartbreaking, and we will do what we can to help. I will put you on the list of folks to be sent an invitation to register. There are no waitlists, so we are making an exception.

My resolve had long-since fled my body, but I couldn’t back out now. Thus began my months of tedious training. Dragging my body through the brown lakes of Minneapolis. Stroke after stroke spent rebuilding endurance, speed and mental fortitude until September arrived, and I stood on the shore of Lake Michigan.

“Wave 6” a male voice crackles over the megaphone. I join the throng of women, dressed like me in dark swimsuits and neon pink caps, gathering at the entrance of the chute. A cacophony of clapping, shouting and ringing bells erupt around me. The expanse of water spreads before us. Blue ripples disappearing into the horizon. So much bigger than the lakes I trained in back home. The urge to turn back rips through me, afraid my body will fail me.

We walk like cows to the slaughter towards the shoreline. Sand sticks to my feet until water slaps at my legs. My hips. My chest. Shivering, my breath becomes shallow and I remind myself how to breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. On an inhale, I plunge under. Come up for air. Gasping. One. Two. Three. Four. Plunge under again.

Right arm. Left arm. Over and over. A thick wad of seaweed brushes my stomach, and I jerk. One. Two. Three. Four. It drags between my toes. Just seaweed, I tell myself, trying to ignore the panic lodging itself in my chest.

After a few minutes, the water deepens, I lose sight of the forest below me and settle into my stride. Left. Breathe. Right. Breathe.

I notice the way the sunlight turns the water a beautiful shade of cerulean. As I lift my face, I hear birds singing and waves slapping. Heat blooms in my muscles, and it feels good. Like they’re waking up.

Reaching the first buoy I turn left. The Chicago skyline before me.

My lips quirk up in a small smile as it hits me: I’m here. I’m doing it. Swimming 1.5 miles in open water. I never believed I’d be able to do this again. Move. Swim. Live.

I had spent my life asking whether my body looked good.

Grief forced a different question: what could it carry?

The answer: everything.

These legs that have walked us through 413 impossible days.

These hands that have bloodied themselves gathering the shards of a fractured life.

These eyes that search for better days ahead.

This heart, this stupid little heart, still beating despite everything.

These shoulders.
These big shoulders.
Shoulders that have carried the hollow, heavy weight of loss.

Today, I love these big shoulders.

Cards lay scattered across the living room floor. Pastel eggs askew. The investigator stepped around them, pausing beside the box lid. Baby blue—too pretty next to the thick black leather of his boots.

He glanced back at me, frozen in the doorway.

A horrible thought struck:

Does the investigator with the ugly boots think I killed my boyfriend over a board game?

If anyone was going to be killed, it would have been me. I’d played a Wild Turkey card, gaining eight points.

“How do you like that?” I taunted.

“Shut your mouth, you bushtit,” he yelled, scanning the board as he reassessed his strategy, defeat in his eyes. The first time we discovered the American Bushtit card, we collapsed with laughter.

On my next turn, I drew bird cards, smiling when I picked up the Song Sparrow. Glancing over the edge of the card, I admired Jason; how he looked framed by the window. His rust-colored curls illuminated by the July sun. Blue eyes shimmering. He was so beautiful, I almost felt bad for what I was about to do. Almost. I played the card, winning the game.

Jason threw his cards down with a scoff. I laughed, taking a sip of my coffee and feeling it warm my belly. I liked this life. I liked the future we were moving towards.

And then the investigator with the ugly boots kicked me off course.

That first March without him, I won a free trip to a micro-hotel in Grand Marais. As I flipped through my mental catalogue of whom to bring, faces flashed in my mind. Jason’s. A crack in my chest. Not an option. My best friend. Jaw clenched. Also not an option. Things have been distant since she’d texted to tell me both she and her husband got new jobs and bought a house. More rooms. A better school district. The implicit message behind it all: kids.

I stared at the phone, its light assaulting me. Or maybe it was the words. Or the putrid feeling settling like wet concrete in my gut. I looked around my one-room apartment. Clenching my hand, fingers leaving little half-moons in the soft flesh of my palms. Thoughts racing. Bitter-tasting and acrid.

Why her? Why not me? We were supposed to be doing this together.

Heat flushed across my chest, as if my Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Hurley, were about to materialize before me, glaring from behind her thick, coke-bottle glasses, spouting Proverbs: Jealousy is like a cancer in the bones. I tried to force myself to text back, but couldn’t seem to move my fingers.

I put the phone down. I’ll text her later. When I’m better. More composed.

Hours turned to days. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months.

Now silence stretched between us.

Two other faces filled the frame. Thea. Peanut. That felt right. Although we’ve only known each other for six months, we joke that we’ve been best friends since kindergarten.

Sometimes I like having friends who didn’t know the version of me that existed before Jason died. After-friends.

On our first night at the hotel, we made our way to Grand Voyageur Brewery, where I brought out Wingspan for the first time since that July day. Fire crackled to our left as I explained the rules, interrupted by our server dropping off fresh pints of Brule Blonde Ale. Thea examined her cards. Behind her, large windows revealed Lake Superior. Chunks of ice floated on the waves.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Peanut sighed into her beer, bringing me back.

Noticing a few lone cards left in the box, I grabbed them and started shuffling them into the larger deck. One caught my eye. The Song Sparrow. My finger traced it for a fraction of a second.

Each winter, Song Sparrows migrate from North America to Mexico. Like all migratory birds, they risk being blown off course, usually by extreme weather, before reaching their destination. Far from home and separated from their flock, most don’t survive.

In April I reached out to my best friend. A before-friend.

We met at the Lake of the Isles to talk. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out. For everything and nothing. I’m not a bad friend. I’m a grieving friend. But I realize they look and hurt the same. “It was just hard getting that text. Realizing your life was moving forward. You’re not wrong for that, of course. I just really realized at that moment that I wasn’t getting married and buying houses and all the stuff we talked about doing together,” I tried to explain, training my eyes on the ground.

My voice snagged in my throat.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to be friends with you all.” My voice thinned to a whisper by the end. I let the sentence hang in the air, holding my breath.

Later, reading about migratory birds blown off course, I came across zoologist Dr. Zawadzki, who writes: “There’s this historical narrative around vagrants that they have to be lost. There’s something wrong with them.” She argues it’s the opposite. Those that adapt, rebuild and find other birds to create new flocks with are “more likely to survive.”

I let out the inhale I’ve been holding.

March returns. Kate and I, another after-friend, emerge from the sauna and stand at the open garage door, steam coiling around us as our fiery bodies meet the frigid air. We fold our arms over the black iron gate blocking the doorway and rest our heads on top. “Look, there’s a bird under that truck over there,” a man to our left says, long arm extended, finger pointing. My eyes follow. I recognize that bird. Rounded tail. Plump body. Sunlight lighting up its rust-colored streaks.

“I think that’s a song sparrow!”

Kate leans in to see.

We watch it hop across the gravel. Together.

“The ‘I’m Scared’ series is a collection of essays exploring 38 experiences I was afraid to face without my love, Jason, who passed away in 2024.

I have cried a lot at 30,000 feet. The sky between Minnesota and Washington holds my broken heart. The first time because my marriage was ending. Today because my partner has died. I’m hurtling through the sky in a loop of grief.

And I have a middle seat.

I have never been lucky.

After takeoff, my eyes start to prickle. I stare straight ahead. Blink. Smash my eyelids together. Blink. Too late. Prop my elbows up on the tray. Push my head into my palms. A tear plops down.

Through the cracks in my fingers, I see the hands of the woman sitting beside me–crinkled by time. I count the brown flecks on them. One. Two. Three. They look like my mom’s hands. Back before she died. Hope swells like the tide. Maybe she’ll reach out. Grab mine. Say what’s wrong honey in that velvet way only mothers can.

I sniffle. She raises the book she’s holding higher. Blocks me from her view. The tide of hope ebbs.

Through tear-fuzzed eyes, I read the title: A Bible study of the book of John. The gospel of love.

In John 11 Jesus travels to where his friend, Lazarus, has died. His sisters are grieving. The village is grieving. And the Bible says: Jesus wept.

In that world, grief wasn’t private, it was communal.

Four. Five. Six. I keep counting the spots. Why can’t our world be the same?

Seven. Eight. Nine. Another tear drops.

I read that humans shed three kinds of tears. Two to protect the eyes. The third–emotional tears–are a signal of distress. A cry for comfort.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

The value of them is “more about the social response it prompts than its physiological effects,” writes psychologist Lauren Bylsma.

Mine aren’t working.

When I land in Seattle, my brother and sister take me camping with their friends. “It’ll be good for you,” they say, pushing me into the car. On our first night there, I lose myself in the fire. Mesmerized by its flames as they crack and pop. Behind me, a fizz as someone opens another can of beer. They offer me one but I decline. Next to me, laughter. I keep staring, wishing someone would say Jason’s name. Say why I’m here. Ask if I’m okay.

Nobody does.

We have wordlessly agreed to pretend everything is fine. I try to keep up with the charade. But my lungs start to strangle my sternum. Not wanting to break this fragile illusion, I mumble “I’ll be back,” and stumble away from the campsite. Crossing the one-lane road that separates forest from sand, I loosen my sandals and sink my feet into it, relishing the squish between my toes. Spotting a large piece of driftwood, I plop down onto it. Bleached by sunlight, its bone-colored branches resemble a skeleton with its arms stretched outward.

The sun is a blazing orange bowling ball in the sky, rolling down beneath the horizon. It glints off the ocean. A mirror reflecting rippled fingers of pink and purple across the water. Shadows obscure the outline of the range of pine trees and rocky outcroppings of the shoreline. Clenching my jaw, a wave of red-hot heat works its way across my chest as I glare at the beauty before me. It’s taunting me. My life feels so ugly. My eyes sting. Overflow.

I don’t notice the woman walking towards my piece of driftwood until she is standing next to me. I take in her boots and hiking clothes. Her brown hair is pulled back into a low ponytail. When she turns her head, the setting sun highlights silvery-grey streaks. Her face is plain. Open and honest, like an Iowa cornfield. “Are you okay?” she peers down at me.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I hesitate, then lob the bomb. “My partner just died.” I wait for her to scuttle away.

Instead, she sinks down onto the log next to me and asks “What happened?” in a long hiss, like air leaking from a pressure valve.

“We don’t know. We’re waiting for the autopsy results.”

Silence.

She looks out at the water. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Shuffles her foot.

“Fuck,” she says.

Resolute.

Firm.

Indignant.

“Fuck?” she repeats, this time with a lilt at the end.

Laughter rushes out of me, driving a snot bubble from my nose— and with it, the squeezing in my chest. Nobody has bothered to echo back to me the one word ringing in my ears since this all happened.

“Fuck,” I respond. “Just fuck.”

“Fuck,” she raises her fist into the air.

“Fuck,” I stomp my foot.

My shoulders drop. I stretch my leg out in the sand beside hers. Another giggle slips out before fading away. The silence between us is soft and shared.

Her husband, a shrinking shadow down the beach, waves and calls out. The moment breaks. We’re back on the piece of driftwood. Goosebumps on our arms. The sudden realization that we don’t know each other’s names.

“I have to go.” She stands up, brushing the sand off her pants. “Take care of yourself.”

My eyes track their forms as they disappear down the beach.

I lean back against the log. Lighter.

A small smile passes my lips as I repeat the word again:

Fuck.

1,011 Days Till One Day

We had spent the day on the North Shore.

Dipped our toes into the frosted water of Lake Superior. Ate sandwiches and chips as sand clung to our thighs. Heard orange and red leaves crinkling under our boots.

Felt crisp air on our faces. Felt the magic of falling in love.

Now, driving home beneath a star-studded sky, a haunting song came on the radio. Guitar followed by a soulful voice with a southern twang.

“This is really good.” I snapped up straight. “Who’s this by?”

“Jason Isbell. You haven’t heard of him?” My Jason answered, turning up the volume.

“No, this song is so sad but so good.” I let it finish through, staring out the dark window.

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever /Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone/ Maybe we’ll get forty years together/ But one day I’ll be gone/ Or one day you’ll be gone.

As the music died away, I placed my hand on Jason’s thigh, my fingers digging in with bruising strength. “I have to die first. I can’t live without you.”

Grabbing my hand and kissing it, he snorted, “You’d be fine, probably find a hotter boyfriend.”

We laughed.

62 Days After One Day-Morning

Placing my head in my friend Paul’s lap, I stretched my body out, toes extending beyond the blanket we’d laid out in the grass. I’d dragged him out here with me to visit his sister, my friend, Becky. Sun kisses my pale skin, waking me up after such a long winter. Closing my eyes, I think back to 2011.

Several days before my mom died, I sat next to her in our living room. Held her wax hand. “Do you want me to read some Bible to you?”

“No. I just want to listen.” Her eyes were closed, eyelashes stark against her gray face.

The sounds of her family. Husband. Children. Brothers. Nieces and nephews. The life she’d lived. The life she’d loved. Rang out loud.

I do that now.

Becky’s cat meows. A bird sings overhead. Trees whisper to each other as the wind rushes through. Paul rambles on about something I lost interest in ages ago. Groaning, I interrupt him, “Shut up, Paul,” causing Becky and me to dissolve into laughter.

I have never loved them like this before.

677 Days Till One Day

Jason Isbell is on the radio. The air is warm-crisp, flowing in through the windows as we fly down the highway. Jason’s curls whip around his face as he drives us north.

If we were vampires and death was a joke/We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke/Laugh at all the lovers and their plans/I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand/ Maybe time Running out is a gift/I’ll work hard ‘til the end of my shift

“Turn it up,” Jason shouted, cranking up the volume. “Mmm, I love that line,” he punched his fist into the air, emphasizing the last word.

“So good. ‘Time running out is a gift. I’ll work hard ‘til the end of my shift.” He repeated. Tasting the words.

Forehead wrinkling, I scoffed. “It doesn’t really make sense. Time running out being a gift.”

I’d once lain next to him on the couch, pressing my body against his. Felt the heat of his chest. His arm curled around my stomach. Somehow he was still too far away.

“I wish I could unzip you and crawl inside,” I whispered.

He tightened his grip, but I was still hungry.

One Day

“Kelly,” my voice is flat. Monotone. My sister’s “hello?” is slow, sleep-yanked. Outside, the Minneapolis street is dark except for flickering red and blue lights.

Behind me, I hear the beeping of police radios, the heavy footfall of boots, and the zipping of bags as the paramedics pack up their worthless tools.

Gripping the phone to my ear, I mutter, “I don’t. I don’t know how to say this,” while throwing my hand up in the air as if she can see my confusion. See me gesturing around the home that has turned into a tomb.

287 Days After One Day-Night

I’m just fuzzy enough from liquor to almost forget the reason I’m here: to see one of my two favorite Jasons because the other one of them is dead.

From our spot in the last row at Red Rocks Amphitheater, the city of Denver sprawls out. Lights twinkling beneath a layered sky of orange, lavender, and blue. Scattered shrubs and trees dot the landscape, providing the only spots of color against the desert expanse.

Towering slabs of rock stand tall on each side of the stage, dampening external noise and giving the music played here its signature clarity.

Sipping my beer, one song fades out, and the first haunting riffs of “If We Were Vampires” rise toward us.

Soulful. Southern.

“Oh no,” I mutter as I feel pressure against the back of my eyelids build. I blink. It’s too late. Tears spurt out. I clap my hand against my nose. Sniffling sounds beside me, and I glance over to see Paul and Becky wiping their eyes. A laugh rattles in my throat. A snot bubble pops out–making me laugh, then cry harder. I can’t stop. Closing my eyes, I listen.

The air throbs with Jason’s absence. Like his death has sucked everything out of it, and all that’s left are glass-like shards of sensation. Jagged. Sharp. The sky glows with a new vividness. Becky’s skin against mine burns hotter. The music vibrates between us. I can taste my gratitude for their willingness to be here with me. Sweet, sharp, and humbling. Like the first bite of an apple pie.

As if driven by a sudden hunger to hold tight to this moment, this tender life, we throw our arms around each other’s shoulders. Sway back and forth. Cry as we sing with Jason:

Maybe time running out is a gift

I’ll work hard ‘til the end of my shift

“Tim and I’s relationship is built on what all healthy relationships are built on: hate, jealousy and competition.” I take us back to the halls of high school, when our friendship seemed more about destroying each other than anything else. Between our academic rivalry and hallway spats, we tried to date sophomore year. Six days later we broke up, and I spent the rest of the year ignoring him out of spite. Our entire relationship has been a messy two-step over the thin line between love and hate.

But I don’t hate him. I’ve spent a few thousand dollars and taken a 24-hour plane ride to the opposite side of the world to attend his wedding. The opposite of love, it turns out, isn’t hate.

“The opposite of love’s indifference,” the Lumineers crooned one day in our living room. Mustaches were everywhere, if not on men’s faces then on finger tattoos and t-shirts. Owl necklaces and chunky scarves wrapped our necks. Long cardigans flowed over jeans so tight they made our bellies look like jellied cranberry sauce that had slipped out of the can. We tucked our pants into combat boots and our bangs into beanies. Groomsmen and musicians alike dressed in fedoras and suspenders.

“That doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t the opposite of love be hate” I pointed out to my roommate, Becky, as she sprawled across our battered hand-me-down couch.

“Not if you think about it. If you love something, you feel something about it, even if it’s hate. If you don’t feel anything about it, you don’t love it. So that’d be the opposite.”

“I’m standing on your porch screaming out. And I won’t leave until you come downstairs,” a sad, suspenderd Wesley Schultz continued to belt out as I pulled at the band of my skinny jeans, thinking about how much I hated them.

My dad remarked once that it was ironic how much I vent about God but still get up every morning to spend time with him. It’s been the same routine since I was eight. Pour coffee. Settle into a chair by the window. Crack open my Bible. Wait for something to happen. These days I leave more disgruntled than when I arrived. But without fail, I’m there again the following morning.

People ask me if I’m still a Christian. It’s a fair question. I’ve been vocal about my frustrations with the baby at the center of Advent for the last few years. Which is perhaps why this fourth week, the week of love, has been the hardest for me to write about. God’s love, manifested in the birth of his son, is the whole Advent story. It’s the reason I have been getting up early for approximately 9,500 mornings. It’s the good news the Angels were tasked with sharing, and why the fourth candle is named after them, these messengers of love.

“For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 is the verse. It’s still stored in my brain right next to my 262-650-8121 (my childhood landline) and the script my mom gave us to use when answering it (Kammerer residence, Carley speaking). But like those two things, it’s become a useless bit of trivia from a life that no longer exists.

Maybe I can’t love what I hate.

Maybe the opposite is true.

Maybe I hate what I love.

Most interactions with Tim in high school would leave me red-faced and pulse pounding because I knew he was capable of more than the trouble he was getting into. You don’t get that angry at someone you are indifferent to.

Most mornings with God leave me wooden and withdrawn because I believed His promises enough to build my life around them. Now I am stuck in the gap between what I trusted and the losses I have experienced. You don’t get that angry at someone you are indifferent to.

My struggle isn’t about disbelief. It’s about betrayal.

The day after Tim’s wedding, I went to a small temple in Hoi An. I threw a few dong into a donation box to buy a stick of incense. I lit it as an offering to one of the deities there. I figure my God isn’t listening, maybe someone else’s will. The somber face of the golden statue stared down at me as I closed my eyes and asked that love, in whatever form, would find me in the new year. I just can’t quit trying.

Call it hate. Call it anger. Maybe love is a sad suspendered man standing on the porch screaming out.

Can you hear it?

“Man, something is happening here,” the driver noted as he weaved through the flow of pedestrians and cars. His voice was like gravel, and I leaned forward to hear him.

“We were at a baby shower that just let out.” I explained.

“Got it. How’s your night going?” he asked, turning left out of the parking lot.

“Hmmm…good,” I answered.

“You sure about that? That was a long pause,” he chuckled.

“Yeah. I think. My life is a lot right now.” I flipped through my catalog of issues.

A $4,000 car repair bill. An ongoing conflict at work. Celebrating my mom’s birthday without her. Again. The party I came from.

“Well. We’ve got twenty minutes,” he merged onto I-94.

“I was supposed to adopt, and it fell apart. This was my first baby shower after that. I’m happy for my friends. Just sad about me.” I replied, tucking my hands under my thighs and staring out the window. Dirty snow was piled high on the side of the highway.

At the party, we’d filled out sheets guessing how many inches and pounds we thought my friend’s daughter would be. If she’ll get her father’s eyes or her mother’s hair. Jason and I used to ask the same questions. Would our baby have his long legs or my short ones? Would he be soft like a Weegmann or loud like a Kammerer?

I’ll never know.

“It’ll happen for you,” he tried to reassure me. I snorted.

I try not to think about my age, but it’s hard not to read it as a damning math problem.

Carley will turn 34 next month. If she starts dating and it takes about 2 years to find one (1) emotionally intelligent human male and another 2 years to confirm he is not cosplaying stability.

1. How old will Carley be at the end of this 4-year Expedition of Romantic Due Diligence™?

A. 36, because math is fake and we reject it

B. 34, if, like Mary, an angel appears and just tells her what to do

C. Book another trip to run away from the relentless arithmetic

D. 38, because that’s what the calculator—and her therapist—keep saying

2. If she then begins thinking about having a baby right away, how old will she be?

A. 38, because Immaculate Conception

B. Pushing 40, depending on the Big Beautiful Bill and medical copays.

C. Skip the baby and open a third coffee shop instead

D. The age where she has to consider if she wants to risk being mistaken for the child’s grandma at its High School graduation

3. If every step in the process takes 50% longer than planned, how old will she be by the time she can have a baby?

A. The biological clock is ticking, and I can’t hear myself think

B. Give up now and buy sperm online; it’s only $500

C. 42(ish)

D. Age doesn’t matter; “nothing is impossible with God.”

Answer Key: B.A.D.

Subscribe now

The third week of Advent is also known as “Gaudete Sunday,” Rejoice. The candle is pink instead of purple. An intentional brightening as we move away from the somber and penitential mood of the first half of the month. Right in the middle of all this waiting and longing, a sudden flicker of anticipation starts to show.

The rose-colored candle isn’t the arrival; it’s the first flutters crying out, “Joy is coming.”

Like a mother in the second trimester, we’ve moved past the fragile beginning. The whispered hope that this little thing inside will become real, even if we can’t see or feel it yet. We aren’t holding a baby, but we are holding our breath.

To me, joy tastes like consolation.

I was deliciously happy with Jason. Our life together was a pastel spindle of spun sugar. Fairy floss and fat with fantasies. We held it in our hands and ate until our stomachs hurt, but we still couldn’t stop. But the sugary threads snapped and my hands held heavy air. I kept licking my lips, desperate for one last taste. They were still wet when others crowded around, trying to sell me joy. But all I could see was that they all still held their own perfect pink puffs.

After he died, I had a wild hope that I was pregnant. That he’d left me with a little piece of himself. A boy with blue eyes and rust-colored curls. I begged God that my birth control had failed. Anytime I felt a twinge in my abdomen, I convinced myself it was a kick, not a cramp. I sank to the bathroom floor and wept when spots of red stained my underwear.

I don’t feel joy when I imagine Jesus lying in a manger. His birth is both familiar and foreign to me. I’ve heard the story a thousand times, but I can’t make it matter in my life. When I place my hands over my flat stomach, I can’t see how December 25th brings me good news.

Maybe Jesus isn’t the problem; maybe it’s that I want joy to taste like cotton candy.

But maybe joy tastes like something sturdier—the intoxicating intrigue of divine possibility spun from impossibility. It tastes like God taking a 16-year-old nobody and turning her into the main character of his sacred story. It smells like a stinking barn and the fear of two young parents that somehow results in the birth of Immanuel. God with us. It sounds like a newborn’s cries. Looks like a human baby, covered in blood and goo, but bringing salvation for all.

I’ve had sixteen periods since the one that killed my dream. I am very much not pregnant. But I am expecting—expecting the divine to take my empty womb and aching arms and fill them with something new. I’m in the second trimester, feeling the first fluttering kicks of a rewritten story.

Call it the hollow ache. Call it the sugar-stained silence after the cotton candy dissolves.

Maybe joy is the pregnant pause where God begins again.

Is it possible?

Leave a comment

He prescribed me anxiety medication.

I was staring at my bottle of pills, sitting like an unwelcome intruder on my kitchen counter, while talking to my aunt. She was reminiscing about how fun my parents used to be together. “I don’t remember that,” I said. “They were,” she responded, her voice was wistful; “before the cancer.” Everything in our lives is BC and AC. Before cancer. After cancer. I was 12 when my mom was diagnosed. Most of my memories are AC, but some of the BC days still stick like fuzz on the fringes of my brain.

Subscribe now

In BC, my dad would read us the nativity story on Christmas Eve before going to Chuch. The service always ended with our pastor turning off the sanctuary lights and passing out candles. We took turns lighting each other’s until the entire room was radiant with flames as we sang “Silent Night.” The music would cut out at the final verse, leaving a chorus of soft voices crooning “sleep in heavenly peace.” I’d go home and do just that.

In AC, he stopped doing that. Maybe because of the cancer. Maybe because we all grew up and lost the magic of Christmas. Maybe because some of us stopped believing that the birth of Christ was capable of bringing peace on earth. Something even two world wars and the United Nations haven’t been able to find for us.

But for a brief moment, five months into World War I, there was peace on earth. Along the Western Front in Belgium and France, British and German soldiers were stuck in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare. Their boots sank into waterlogged mud. Bellies roared with hunger. Rats ran over their legs at night. The air stank of human waste, body odor and smoke. Separating the two sides, sometimes only 20 to 30 steps apart was no-man’s-land. Littered with the dead bodies of their fallen comrades.

As the skies darkened on December 24th, the Germans began lighting candles and singing. The words of Stille Nacht floated over the corpses and wove their way through the British trenches.

Recognizing the tune as Silent Night, they joined in.

The enemies began singing back and forth. Finally, the Germans asked the British to cross no-man’s-land, shouting, “If you don’t shoot, we don’t shoot.” They exchanged gifts of hats, buttons and cigarettes. Shared sips of rum, decorated small Christmas trees they’d been sent and wrapped lights through the barbed wire that had once separated them. They gave each other the freedom to bury their dead.

Nothing like The Christmas Eve Truce of 1914 has happened since.

A spectacular silent night.

Nights were hard during my marriage. I used to spend them on the couch so I wouldn’t wake Spencer up with my restlessness, watching Parks and Rec to lull myself into an uneasy slumber. Only in 2021, after eight hours of unbroken sleep beside Jason, did I realize what I’d been missing. Sleeping in heavenly peace.

We had a name for the calm we found with each other: our “love bubble.” During the week, when the stress of work, parenting and the tiny inconveniences of being alive caused us to fight, we’d remind each other, “Stay in the bubble, babe.” It was safe there. Happy. Cozy. Peaceful.

The bubble burst when his heart took its final gasp, blasting a hole through mine and riddling my mind with PTSD. I used to think that was something only soldiers got. I guess it’s not. Now, everyone is an enemy. I am always vigilant. No tacit agreement of, “If you don’t shoot, we don’t shoot.” No tender voice sings out Silent Night. At night I obsess over our last week together. My right foot twitches uncontrollably. I roll from side to side, pushing pillows around my body to trick it into thinking Jason is there. That our love bubble still exists. But sleep in heavenly peace never wraps its way around the barbed wire of my brain. I wake up at 3am slick with sweat.

To light the second Advent candle for peace feels absurd.

But we’re promised peace. I inherited my mom’s Bible. It’s eggplant-purple with a splintering spine. I was flipping through it, seeking to soak up her wisdom, and came to Philippians 4:7. She had underlined it: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. At the bottom of the page in a flowing cursive she had written, “Peace: The calm assurance that what God is doing is best. 10/2005” AC. Her cells had already begun their mutinous assault on her life. She always had more faith than I did.

I don’t understand God’s peace, but maybe his creation holds the key. Maybe we sit by each other’s beds when we can’t sleep. Carve out a calm corner amid the chaos. Leave scribbled notes to guide the way. Maybe we can sing a song to someone still stuck in the trenches.

We can set the world on fire.

Call it a bubble. Call it a flame. Maybe peace is the light we lend in the fight.

Do you understand it?

If this piece met you somewhere tender today, feel free to share or leave a comment about how peace finds you, even in the unlikeliest of places. 

Leave a comment

I read Ezekiel 37 about God making dry bones live and listened to Rattle! every morning as I got ready. I’d stare in the mirror, putting on my mascara and singing:

“Oh, this is the sound of dry bones rattling/ Yeah, this is the praise/ make a dead man walk again.”

I devoured books titled “One More Try” and “Fighting for Your Marriage While Separated.” My browser filled with tabs for online support groups for abandoned spouses like me. I listened to podcasts. Fasted. Prayed alone. Prayed with others. Begged. Wept.

If prayers prayed and fasts fasted could save a marriage, this essay would end here.

Instead, on a sunny spring Monday, a greasy man with a low-slung grey ponytail handed me an envelope. My ex never warned me this was coming. The cruelty never stopped stinging. I held the documents in my shaking hands and stood in the middle of the street, watching him drive away. His broken-down red car clanked and groaned down Irving Ave., turning left and taking my hope with it.

During the divorce, I read Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I am doing a new thing; I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” I did not know what God was doing. Most likely, nothing. I have a theory; he hates the Kammerers. But I still wrote the verse on an index card and hung it on my refrigerator.

I signed my papers on October 22 and felt bitterness settle into my belly with every flourish of my pen. What the actual hell had all that waiting been about? Why did it seem like God called me to fight for my marriage if I would not get that marriage? We had agreed on an outcome, and he’d betrayed me.

Hope had made me a fool.

Subscribe now

But then a long-haired, blue-eyed man barged into my life, and we began dreaming of a family and talking baby names. I wanted a boy so badly.

“You know what name I’ve always liked. Zay. Short for Isaiah.” He mentioned while folding laundry one evening.

I’d been lying on my back on the bed next to his stack of clothes. I rolled onto my stomach with excitement and propped my head up with my arm. “That’s the baby name I want! After the prophet Isaiah and that verse I love!”

And so baby Isaiah became the symbol of my new thing.

The way in the wilderness.

The river in the desert.

On July 20th, 2024, I found myself once again hoping that God would intervene in the life of a man I loved. I begged. Wept. Pleaded. Hoped that God would spare Jason. Deep in my gut, I knew he wouldn’t. God doesn’t come through for me.

The ashes of my new thing sit in a tiny purple mason jar.

Purple is the primary color of Advent, which started Sunday. In the past, I’ve celebrated by lighting the first candle in the Advent wreath. It’s purple to signify the hope we are supposed to have in God’s promises. Promises I feel like he has never kept for me. This year, I can’t bring myself to light it. My fingers still burn from last time.

Still, I keep searching for God, or something like God. So on April 28th I celebrated Jason’s birthday in Auburn, California. A small town we lived in during the Y2K scare. I went on a hike along the American River. The sky was a perfect shade of blue, as if Jason’s eyes had blended into it. Birds sang to each other in the background as my feet tramped along the packed dirt. With each deep breath, I smelled damp earth and the inexplicable scent of sunshine, which was glinting off the shimmering surface of the turquoise water beside me. I could almost taste the pine trees I passed.

Lately, I’ve been trying to be more like a river. When they come upon an obstacle, such as a large boulder, rivers don’t push against it or demand that it move. They go around. Ultimately, this is the path of least resistance. But for a while, as the flow splits around the rocks, it creates unstable structures. Swirls and eddies. The water is dynamic. Turbulent and unsafe. Pressure and speed increase, forming dangerous rapids. This doesn’t last forever. The flow diminishes with distance downstream and eventually reattaches to the main flow. Someday, another obstacle will force it apart, and the pattern will repeat as long as the river runs.

Perhaps hope is not about praying for the boulders to stop appearing, but for the courage to see a way around.

To remember there is always a reattachment to something new on the other side.

I’ve done it many times, this stubborn going around. I no longer know if it’s God or my tenacity. My Christian friends would say it’s prideful to think I’m doing any of this on my own, but I don’t know where God fits. I still believe in him; I just don’t know what he does for me.

So call it God. Call it grit. But hope is just a river running to the sea.

Do you not perceive it?

Leave a comment

Under all of this is the implicit demand that we bury our grief to make room for gratitude. As if the two are mortal enemies locked in an eternal battle and only one can emerge the victor. But like complementary colors, whose opposing placement on the color wheel makes each hue appear more intense and vibrant, so grief and gratitude work together. Illuminating each other. In art, this is called “simultaneous contrast” — the way our brains perceive color in relation to each other. The effect is strongest with complementary colors as they intensify one another, making each color appear more vibrant and saturated. The bitter blue of grief heightens the glimmer-lit orange of gratitude. Without simultaneous contrast, the world would be dull. Less like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and more like the faded photograph you find in your grandmother’s scrapbook.

I don’t want that, not anymore. So this year, as I continue to hold the pain of grief, I want to hold gratitude for having a love worthy of the magnitude of that grief. I am grateful to Jason for the way he wrapped my world in yellow.

Out of that desire, I wrote a reflection exercise for the griever in a season obsessed with gratitude. Since it’s best to carry our grief together, I invited two of my widow friends, Mari and Shaley, over to do it with me.

We made pumpkin red lentil soup and joked about having “sad soup Saturdays.” The tone shifted as we began talking about all the things we don’t share with our other friends. What we miss most. How hard year two has been. How sometimes we smoke and do little things that betray how little we care about our bodies because sometimes we still want to die just to be with them again.

After we ate, the mood shifted again as I gathered us into a circle. I had bought each of them a candle that reminded me of their lost loves.

Green lotus for Taylor, our nature-loving hippie.

Coconut water for Ricky, our runner.

Lavender for Jason, our sweet boy.

Mari lit our candles for us. Their flames danced together. Three men who had never met, but who had brought us together in an undeniable bond of love, loss and understanding. We think they’re all together, wherever the afterlife is, keeping each other company while they wait for us.

We settle into our spots. Mari on the couch, Shaley above us on an ottoman and me cross-legged on the floor. A thick hush falls over the room.

I begin our reflection.

“Right after Jason died, one of my friends shared a Jewish condolence with me: ‘May his memory be a blessing.’” I had loved how different it was from the words my Christian community said. You’ll move on. God has a plan. Everything happens for a reason. Instead of forcing me to abandon my grief, she allowed me to honor his legacy.

“As Thanksgiving approaches, and with the focus on gratitude, I’d like us to pause and reflect on the blessings Taylor, Ricky and Jason left us. I’m going to ask three questions, and after each one, I’ll pause for you to think and answer.”

With that in mind, I asked the first question: “What did your loved one teach you in life that you’re thankful for?”

I expressed my gratitude to Jason for his sense of adventure, which he reignited in me. I was once a free-spirited girl who had big dreams that got lost in my desperate attempts to save my first marriage. Jason brought them, and me, back to life. I became thirsty for travel, culture, and experiences. He planted the seed of how to work abroad in my mind. And even in his death, it has grown into a youth program in Costa Rica that is expanding into other countries. He changed me. He changed the trajectory of my career. He will change the world. All because he inspired me to dream again.

May his wisdom continue to live on in me.

When I finished, I offered the second question “What did your loved one teach you in death that you’re thankful for? “

Death is the harshest of teachers, but she teaches the truest lessons. After Jason’s death, she whispered, “You were loved.” How I wish I had comprehended the value of that gift while he was alive, but loss has a way of revealing what we can never see in life. I did not know how unloved I was in my first marriage until I was loved, well and truly, by Jason. It felt like finding a pool of fresh water after wandering the desert. It healed something deep in my bone marrow, and I live differently now.

May death continue to teach me how to live.

Finally I asked, “What is one thing about yourself that has grown from this loss that you are thankful for?”

I have become bolder since his death. Like being loved gave me a backbone, and surviving this loss a spine. I no longer tolerate what I once did. With my advocate dead, I have become my own advocate. I speak. I write. I live out loud. Like my tongue was locked, and the only thing that had the key was his death. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I love who I am and what I stand for.

I bless the person I am becoming

After we had all shared, we blew out the candles, whispering a “thank you” as the flames extinguished. The smoke carried our offering, gratitude and grief, toward the sky.

Our own simultaneous contrast.

Subscribe now

A Thanksgiving Gratitude Practice for the Griever

If you’d like to honor both your grief and your gratitude this season, here is the reflection ritual I used. You can do it alone or with others who are grieving. I recommend doing it with others if you are able.

1. Light the remembrance candle.

If you’re practicing with a group, you may want to say aloud:
“I am lighting this candle for ___.”

2. Reflect on the first question:

What did your loved one teach you in life that you’re thankful for?
After you share or reflect, respond with:
“May their wisdom continue to live on in you.”

3. Reflect on the second question:

What has their death taught you that you’re thankful for?
After you share or reflect, respond with:
“May death continue to teach me how to live.”

4. Reflect on the third question:

What is one thing about yourself that has grown from this loss that you are thankful for?
After you share or reflect, respond with:
“I bless the person I am becoming.”

5. Close with a collective blessing:

“We carry our beloveds with us, and we carry each other.
May the gratitude named here stay close in the days ahead.”

The outside of Fox River Christian, the church that raised me, had changed so much that I got lost trying to enter it. Trendier chairs have replaced the pews I used to run through with friends after service. Once-beige walls we’d loiter against during the weekdays when the church was dark and lifeless are now coated in matte black. They condensed the three screens that broadcast my 7th-grade baptism into one mega screen. The only thing that seems to have aged is my childhood pastor.

This day, April 20th, 2025, has formed a trinity from hell.

Easter Sunday.

In the auditorium where we held my mother’s funeral.

On the nine-month anniversary of Jason’s death.

I thought the next time I would mark a nine-month anniversary it would be for my due date. That I would bring life into the world. Not count the days of death. I realize my hand is touching my stomach and snatch it away. I am celebrating Resurrection inside a tomb.

But today, Christ’s exhilarating triumph over sin has swept all hints of gloom away. The sanctuary is bursting with the jubilant promise of new life. Except I swear if I breathe deep enough I can still make out the scent of lilies that clung to everything the night of my mom’s funeral. The saccharine scent of death.

The new mega screen blares to life, and the face of a man with rough black stubble around his mouth lights up. The screen cuts off his eyes. Music starts soft and slow, but I know the predictable pattern the video will take. The eyeless man talks us through Jesus’s last days. Pilate’s attempt to release him instead of Barabbas. The crowd’s shouts to “Crucify, crucify.” His skin lacerated by the Roman scourge. Blood raced down his face from the crown of thorns. The walk through the city, stumbling under the weight of the wooden cross. Iron stakes driven between his feet and hands. Hung between two thieves. The crushing sense of defeat that deafened the land when he cried out, “It is finished.”

Subscribe now

The Paschal Mystery. Christ’s passion, death, resurrection and ascension, are the meat of our faith. The cross our physical symbol of God’s plan for redemption. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and author, argues that the Paschal Mystery was never finished. Rather than a onetime historical event that occurred only on April 3, AD 33, this pattern of “down and up, loss and renewal, enslavement and liberation, exile and return, transformation through darkness and suffering” is the way of the universe.

Our bodies turn over 330 billion cells daily.

The death of winter births spring’s new life.

As stars flame out, they create the clouds that form new ones.

From the smallest unit of life to the greatest vastness of the cosmos, the Paschal Mystery is the blueprint.

Except we like to skip the first half and get to the good parts.

Only 26% of Americans observe Lent, the 40-day period of fasting, reflection and prayer to prepare for Easter. I’d never heard of Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday, days of mourning, until I was in my mid-20s and attended a liturgical church. Growing up, we’d give lip service to sorrow on a Good Friday service, but it didn’t matter because we knew the ending. I have never attended a Holy Saturday service. This day of waiting, of “watchful expectation,” is a time for us to pause, a symbol of the transition between death and resurrection. We rush over it to get to Resurrection Sunday. We want the brunch and the ham, the glazed carrots and cheese-crusted potatoes. The white flowers and candy.

We want the ascent. We do not want the suffering.

But life’s major losses will crucify each of us. And it is through these losses, by allowing ourselves to fully enter the descent, that we find new life. Suffering, if we let it, is a “cauldron of growth and transformation.” What do we rob ourselves of when we try to find a path past the cross?

I get drinks with another widow from my church. In early July, I was sitting on Jason’s cracked leather couch when I opened our church’s weekly newsletter, saw her GoFundMe and learned her husband had died suddenly. I read it out loud to Jason, remarking how sad to lose your husband so suddenly. Fifteen days later, my GoFundMe replaced hers.

The restaurant is dim. A candle flickers between us, casting a shadow over her face. I sip my tiny drink and feel permission to talk about all the things I keep inside. How I long for human touch. How quiet my apartment is. How much I miss sex. We both laugh and then sigh over that one.

“Do you ever feel annoyed at how other people live their lives like tragedy won’t happen to them?” I ask as the server sets another drink in front of me.

She bobs her head with a knowing look.

I sometimes envy the innocence of those around me who haven’t had tragedy strike their lives yet. They live differently. Taking their existence. Their time. Each other for granted. And yet, I don’t. When I look back over my story, every bright green seedling of life that I love has pushed its way out of the blood-soaked earth of a crucifixion.

I look around like I’m about to say something bad.

“I hate it to admit it, but everything good in my life came from something bad. I always think without my mom’s death, Wildflyer wouldn’t exist. And without my divorce, I never would have found Jason. It’s too soon to even tell what will come of Jason’s death, but there might be something.”

My voice starts trembling.

“I’ve paid a terrible price for it, but I am thankful for the way death has taught me to live.”

Leave a comment

My friend makes me a Hinge account, but swiping is not helping.

I skip the profile of a bald man boasting, “Dating me is like great sex life and food.” A new man, whose eyebrows melt like wax into his bush of a beard, appears. His profile says, “Never have I ever had sex.” It’s like their hairlines reveal their body count.

My forehead crinkles in horror as I jab the black “X”.

Then we find Tom. He seemed normal. We have no potential. I felt nothing when we matched. Low-risk and safe. We meet at distillery where I try to remind myself that I’m an extrovert who can handle this. I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again like the goldfish I won at the county fair in elementary school.

“I got you this,” he rescues me by placing a book bound in twill-cloth on the table. The spine reads “Essays, Poems, Addresses. Emerson.”

“I was at a used bookstore and grabbed it. It’s one of my favorites.” I crack the book open and stick my nose between its pages, inhaling its musty scent.

He whips a small blue notebook out of his back pocket and scribbles a list of his favorite essays.

As we talk, I twist my engagement ring around my finger. Before leaving, I’d hovered over my jewelry box. Taking it off and on so many times, my finger looked like the inside of a rare piece of steak. My stomach cramped when I realized I was thinking of hiding years of love for a stranger I met on the internet. I jammed it back down on my finger and fled the house like I’d been caught.

In June, I am puttering around my apartment looking for my will to live when I spot the book. Pulling it down, I let the pages fall open, and Tom’s list of essays slips out.

Nature

Self-reliance

Love

Friendship

Forbearance

I open the essay on love; the language and sentence structure make it difficult to comprehend, but I am drawn to a quote from a John Donne poem:

It reminds me of the E. E. Cummings poem, “I carry your heart, (I carry it in my heart)” I had tattoo’d on my ribcage after my mom died.

An essay takes shape around my belief that we carry our loved ones with us, but I miss my mom and Jason, run out of inspiration and stop writing.

In July I won the Dames D’Escoffier Legacy Award, which took me to Massachusetts to study food systems. I’m kneeling in the dirt, pulling up white, parchment-papered bulbs of garlic, when I overhear a man in the next row mention Henry David Thoreau. I sit up.

“I’m writing an essay about Emerson right now.”

“You know we’re like 20 minutes away from his house.”

I look at the dirt as if it’s sacred.

“If you want, we can take you there; we have time.”

Tod and his wife Diane drive me through Concord to Emerson’s home, named the Old Manse. I walk the gravel avenue under the cover of ancient elms, and there she is. Windows and shutters clutter the front of the colonial-style, greying house. Inside, I beg her for the same revelation she gave the transcendentalist authors who penned their culture-changing works here. Who fought the Enlightenment’s focus on reason and rationality with spirituality and intuition amongst these groaning floorboards and splintered window frames.

The next day, I dig my toes into the Atlantic. The fog has rolled in, thick and oppressive over the silvery-blue waters, and the sand dunes and sea grass are a layered cake. Everything here feels windswept and historical. The date is July 13, 2025. In one week, Jason will have been gone for one-year. I close my eyes, the pulse of the waves throbbing in my ears, and relish the comfort of that old familiar salt smell. I feel the ghosts of the transcendentalist writers haunting the land.

They don’t scare me. I feel at peace with these big-nosed old men I’ve never met, but share a profound understanding of love and loss with. They too knew the bitter truth that in this world “our affections are but tents of a night.” But also believed that in death, our souls “lose their finite character and blend with God.” Death doesn’t mean we lose them. They become part of us. Part of the greater river of love we all exist in.

My relationship with Jason didn’t end on July 20, 2024. It transcended. From finite to infinite. This is why I hate when society tries to reason its way out of grief. Pushes me to wrap it up and tie a bow on it. As if mourning could be so neat. Tells me to “move on.” I could no more move on from my liver and kidneys than I could from him. He lives in my bones.

Blended into the universe.

That night, the dames threw me a dinner party. One of the guests, Scott, showed me how to prepare lobster. I grimaced as I cracked, twisted and broke their bodies. As the skies darkened, we dipped chunks of white meat into warm butter that dripped down my wrists. We drank wine that cut my tongue with lime and green apple. The room bounced with laughter. We yelled over each other like I’d been part of them all along.

Scott proposed a toast. We held up our glasses and, pointing to my ring, he declared.

“You’ve got shit to do, but you’re bringing him with you.”

My aunt said my mom cried when the doctors said she was going to die. That they sat in his white-walled office, which stank like chemical death, expecting another round of chemo. Instead, he steepled his hands before saying, “There’s nothing else we can do.” That she drew in a sharp intake of breath before her shoulders started shaking.

I didn’t know this until now. Fourteen years after the fact. Something about it cracked my rib cage wide open. For the first time, I realized she did not want to die.

The bitter residue of Lexapro coats my throat in guilt as I think about how badly I do.

“Happy Birthday,” everyone cries out as we clink our glasses together. I flash a feeble smile. Trying hard for those around me who are trying hard for me. Conversation resumes, and I slump back against the booth.

“With this new snow tonight, I think we’re gonna have perfect pow tomorrow,” my brother says to his friend as they compare weather apps on their phones.

“Hey, lay-lay no!” my sister-in-law shouts as she pulls my niece’s pudgy hand back from touching the steaming hot pot on the table in front of her.

I try to latch onto the wonder of the moment. Being in Japan. On a trip my brother is paying for. At the number one ski resort in the country. Eating sushi and Wagyu. But it all feels too normal. Too opposite of my reality. Instead, I float above the warm wooded hut. The cheerful people around me. Out into the open Japanese sky. Away from a world where I don’t fit. Away from a day I do not want to celebrate.

I fought this birthday. Grabbing at rocks, twisted tree roots and even digging my bare, bleeding fingers into the dirt. Kicking and twisting against Father Time’s gnarled, brown-spotted hands as he drug me by the ankles, dumping my bruised body off here. On January 8th, 2025. My fingernails tore off, and mud streaked my stomach. I glared at him as I snatched a twig out of my hair.

I have entered a year of life where Jason has never existed. He won’t know me as 33, then 34. At 40, 50, 60, he’ll never know the many iterations of myself. Never have felt my skin paper past the age of 32. Can’t press his finger to this new gray hair or read my writings. Doesn’t know I’ve changed my mind about God. He can’t pick up the book I bought about the periodic table and ask me why on earth I’m reading it?

When I was in 11th grade chemistry class, we studied isotopes. I sat at the back of the beige-colored classroom while our bald teacher dimmed the lights. The projector whirred to life. A fuzzy image of circles appeared on the off-kilter screen reflected on the wall ahead of us.

“The half-life of a radioactive isotope is the time it takes for one-half of the atoms in a sample to decay,” Mr. Willis’s voice is a low hum. It combines with the whooshing of the projector, lulling me into a half-sleep.

Why not just measure the full-life and make this easier on all of us?

On my 25th birthday, my boyfriend took me snowboarding. As we careened down powder-packed hills, all I could think about was that if I lived only as long as my mother, I was at half-life. Jason’s half-life was at the tender age of 18. On the day he became an adult, he entered mid-life. I wonder if at 33 I’ve reached my half-life. Will I live to be 66? Or did my half-life come and go?

We will never know until after I’m gone. Radioactive decay is, after all, a random process.

Francium-223 has a half-life of 22 days. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

I know how this reedy wisp of life and half-lives should make me ignite.

Like Jason full-throttling his motorcycle. Hair flying. Eyes twinkling. Elbows up. Shoulders forward. Body bent into the future. Throat unlocked by the heady scent of gasoline and infinite road.

But, fuck if I know how to do that right now.

I watched a YouTube video about isotopes. My search for metaphor takes me back to 2008. Technology has advanced, but I felt a nostalgic ache for the whir of a dirty projector in a dark room. I learned I had misunderstood the concept of half-lives. I scraped through chemistry that year.

Radioactive decay is exponential, not linear. As the material decays, the rate of decay slows as the amount of the substance decreases, but it doesn’t stop. They can’t measure in full-life because there is no meaningful concept of a full-life. Radioactive decay is, in theory, infinite.

Human decay is linear. Our rate of change is always constant. Hurtling towards death from the day we are born. We are finite beings. Each of us arrives on earth with a predetermined expiration date. We aren’t isotopes. The only thing we have in common with them is that our decay is also a random process.

“Birthdays are a gift not everybody gets.”

And this should make us ignite.

Like Jason full-throttling his motorcycle. Hair flying. Eyes twinkling. Elbows up. Shoulders forward. Body bent into the future. Throat unlocked by the heady scent of gasoline and infinite road.

We are bowling when my sister sets his name on the screen as Pluto. She follows it with our names. Kel. Boo. Carcar. We are in a dilapidated bowling alley in Citrus Heights, California. It smells like old socks and stale beer and tastes the same. It opened in 1959 and looks like it hasn’t changed since then. Long wooded lanes topped with small buzzing blue TVs. The sound of clattering pins bursts into our conversation. My aunt shakes her head as she brushes crumbs off a seat before sitting down.

We are here because my cousin’s brain tumor has grown and half her body is numb. She can’t see out of her right eye and struggles to remember the difference between Friday and Monday. We practice the words with her. “Friday. Today is Friday,” I try to enunciate without sounding condescending. She was a schoolteacher in her former life. How humiliating now to be the student. “Monday. It’s Monday,” she repeats. She can’t untangle the two and laughs. I pat the right side of her body to tell her it’s okay. She hunches over, shoulders shaking with more laughter. “I can’t feel that side.” She doesn’t want pity, so I laugh too and switch to patting her left leg. But I also try to memorize the warmth of her body next to mine. The sharp angles of her face. What she sounds like as she talks to my sisters.

That night, we had a family dinner. Uncle Pluto cooks steak and asparagus because Kat is on the keto diet. Someone told her it can slow down cancer. So she isn’t drinking alcohol or eating carbs or sugar or any other number of items I would shove my face with if I were dying. She wants to stay alive for her daughter, Mia.

Kat rests her head on my shoulder as we watch Mia twirl around the living room. Her dress billowing out like a lavender flower in bloom with each spin. “I’m worried she won’t remember me,” she whispers.

“She will. We don’t forget our moms. And we won’t let her forget you.”

I don’t tell her that my memory of my mom, gone fourteen years now, is fuzzier than I’d like it to be. That I now need pictures to remind me about the curve of the nose and the exact shade of blue the eyes of the woman who carried me were. That even though her voice was the first thing I heard, it’s gone grainy in my mind. That I’ve forgotten the feel of her hands, which seems like a cutting betrayal because I held them the day she died.

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to a dwarf planet because it failed the third criterion needed to be considered a planet-it could not clear its neighborhood of other objects. Pluto failed to establish itself as the dominant gravitational body in its orbital path. It was not significantly influential enough to be considered a planet any longer.

And so, after 76 years, its legacy faded.

My therapist asked me why I’m so focused on leaving a legacy. Perched in his chair, leg crossed over the other, he listened as I described my fears about leaving my business, which is killing me. I worry about being forgotten. Wildflyer, I say, is how I’ll be remembered.

“Why does that matter?” He tilted his head in that needling way therapists do when they’re trying to lead you to a certain conclusion. My body recoiled back against the brown leather couch as if he’d pushed me.

I have won eight awards and have pages upon pages of articles, blogs and features written about me. People will remember me for many things. Passionate. Visionary. World-changer.

I don’t think anyone will remember me as happy.

My lungs stick together as the thought washes over me that maybe it doesn’t matter what people think of me when I’m gone. Maybe I spent so much time focused on the next life that I’m missing what’s happening in this one.

That I so badly want to be remembered, I’m forgetting to be known.

They collapse when I realize that no matter what I do, it’s likely it will not be enough to be remembered in the end.

I slump back against the couch under the heavy weight of realization: I am not significantly influential.

My therapist’s lips twist up in a small, smug smile.

I am supposed to be on PTO from the business that is killing me. But like an addict jonesing for one more hit, I couldn’t resist looking at my emails. I am hiding on my aunt’s patio to do this when she comes outside to talk to me under the guise of wiping down her already spotless coffee table.

“I called your uncle and told him it’s May 1st.” She scrubs at no spot at all.

“He said, ‘Yes, I already sang the May Day song to Mia.’” She lets out an exasperated sigh.

“I told him, ‘You know, Al, it’s the day Mom died. And all he said was, “Oh yeah, I know, I don’t really think about that anymore.’” She scoffs and stares at me, as if wanting affirmation that this was indeed a horrible thing to say. I purse my lips and make a tsking noise in return. She deems it satisfactory and stands up, propping her arm against her hip, ready to head back inside, but pauses.

On a wistful exhale, she whispers, “It’s kinda sad how people stop keeping track. We live our whole lives, and only a few people remember.”

The sun will RISE in the morning.

I always marvel at that. How the world keeps spinning even though death ripped a hole clean through its core. But on this 335th rising since then, I have a shiver of hope.

I’ve got a date. 

Anticipation sours to panic as I realize I am going to have to talk to this man, Hayden, in real life very soon. I contemplate cancelling but instead find myself loitering outside the restaurant he chose.

He opens the door for me, and I make a mental note to tell my friend Britta this. A cacophony of clattering silverware, rumbling conversations and scraping chairs smacks me in the face. My eyes dart around, hand tugging at my ear. I picked up an infection while scuba diving, and despite waging war with two antibiotics, it sounds like a blanket of cotton is covering my eardrums. We settle into our high-top, and he notices my fingers, fidgeting with a straw wrapper, and hands me the menu. “You need a drink.”

The words slant together and tumble off the page. The server materializes. Hayden orders. I feel everyone’s eyes on me. Sweat gathers under my bra. I blurt out the first thing I recognize. “I’ll have an old-fashioned.” Then I remember my antibiotics and anxious-empty stomach. 

“So, what do you do for fun?” Hayden asks, breaking the stiff silence.  

I hear so. Do. For.

“What?”

He leans in closer. “What do you do for fun?”

My mind picks this exact moment to restart its hardware. I stare at Hayden with a blank face. 

“I love writing,” I spit out.

“What” he touches his ear. I can’t hear myself, and I don’t want to yell, but I must be overcompensating.

“I love writing,” I whisper-yell back. 

“What got you into that?” 

I can’t tell him Jason’s death cut my throat open.

“I don’t know. I always read as a child, so it seemed natural to get into writing” It’s a lame answer.

My eyes start to fixate on his hands. I can’t stop staring. They’re big. His index finger isn’t right. I don’t like the shape of his thumbnail. Jason’s was adorable, especially how  it curled around his coffee cup.

I touch the urn necklace hanging around my neck. 

Drop my hand like it burned.

Now isn’t the time to fondle my dead fiancé’s ashes.

The server drops our burrito bowls off. I pick at mine, chiding myself to drop my shoulders. They spring back up. My head feels like a merry-go-round. I shift in my seat but worry I’ll fall off. The ground seems far away, but at least then I could lie down. 

Later that week I shared this story with a friend. “You were, as my husband likes to say, tripping balls.”

Wheat will RISE from the earth.

“So this is your first time being back here without Jason?” Erin asks as she frees her breakfast from the black-and-white checkered paper it’s wrapped in. Steam bolts out.

I take a bite of my own before answering. “Yeah, we’d always get this.” I hold up the arugula, egg and havarti cheese sandwich scorching my hand “and then a sesame seed bagel with chive cream cheese.” I close my eyes, savoring the nutty, almost sweet taste of the chewy bagel. Everything is as good as it was when we’d come here on Saturday mornings to drink coffee and do the NY Times Crossword. 

“How was last night?” She tips her head to the side, chocolate-colored hair sweeping over her shoulder. We’re supposed to be writing, instead we are gossiping.

“I don’t think he liked me.” My eyes look down at the table. “I was weird and awkward, and I feel like I let him down.” 

I cringe, picturing how much I’d put into getting ready. Trying on every pair of shorts I owned. Littering my floor with discarded shirts. Sending SOS texts. Curling my hair. Coating my eyelids in gold until they looked like the fields of wheat we’d drive past on our way to church as children. I felt pretty. Like a seedling emerging from the dirt. Feeling the warmth of the sun on its face after being buried in so much darkness.

“I think it’s courageous you went at all. You should be proud of putting yourself back out there.”

Dough will RISE to bake.

Instructions for baking a New York Style Bagel. 

Lightly brush a large bowl with oil and turn the dough to coat. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour. Punch* the dough down. Let it rest for another 10 minutes.

*Be prepared to get your hands dirty. Punching down dough involves physically manipulating it with your hands, pressing your fist into the centre to squeeze.

Grief is an angry baker. Squeezing. Deflating. Crushing you into submission for daring to rise and then having the gall to expect you to do it again. 

It looks courageous from outside the kitchen.

But when you’re the one getting the knockdown, it’s not heroic. It just hurts. 

You will RISE from your slumber.

I am trying to write. Read. Do anything other than check my phone. I’ve lasted three minutes this time before I tap the screen, slumping back when it lights up to reveal he hasn’t texted. By noon, I crawl onto the teal couch I spent the last year tucked into. Cries that feel like they are cracking my body in two force their way out of me. I wonder if the neighbors can hear. An entire roll of toilet paper lies in wadded-up piles on the floor and coffee table.

“I think I put way too much hope in it. I desperately want to be done with grief. I am so freaking tired. I felt excited for the first time in a while.” I texted Britta.

She responds with a voice message. 

“I think about hoping that it would all just magically work; that’s normal cause you just want to be okay. I think you should feel encouragement that you had a little hope again. Hope in any form shows movement. The reflection of some sort of healing for you. Even if it went nowhere, it shows that you had enough feeling to feel some sort of hope.”

Together, we RISE to the occasion.  

I need to be outside the walls of my apartment. The walls of my mind. I go to my friend Kayla’s porch. Her face contorts with laughter when I relay that I wore an earring shaped like a skeleton hand giving the middle finger.

“I didn’t want him to get any ideas that I liked him.” I defend my actions.

“Oh, Carley, you’re really something else,” she says, trying to catch her breath. I start laughing too. I am coming back into my body.

“Okay. It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll be fine without him. I’ve lived through worse.” We laugh again.

The sun is setting for the 336th time when I hear a ding.

I get up and grab my phone.

“It’s him!”

I’d love to hear how you’re getting back up in the face of grief or loss these days.

Leave a comment

So as July 29th, our anniversary, approached but my husband was gone, I threw a themed party called “Let’s Taco ‘Bout Love” to honor all the love that was left. Divorce can only steal what you let it. My friends gathered in a circle in the backyard. The smoky scent of Carne Asada and Chicken Tinga wound its way through the air alongside laughter and the murmur of conversation. Sweat trickled down my back as I piled the steaming meat high on taco shells, passing out plates with beans and rice.

We lifted our Coronas in a toast.

“To love,” I shouted. Giving a lime-coated middle finger to the dissolution of my marriage.

During the divorce, everyone told me, “You’ll find love again.” It seemed simple to them. My husband had left, taking love with him. A new man would bring it back. Enter Jason. But now he is gone. And so is love.

His ashes were still hot in my hands when that old familiar refrain began.

“You’ll find love again.”

After Jason’s funeral, when I’d given the last hug. Heard my last “I’m sorry.” Said my last “it’s okay” even though everything was so far from okay, a group of us returned to my friend’s house. Like a fly in a spider’s web, I was caught in the gauzy in-between space of the tragedy having happened and the “what now” ache forming in my bones. We assembled in a circle in the backyard. Sweat trickled down my back.

As the adrenaline from the day melted from my body, my stomach announced that it still existed. The only thing that sounded edible was Indian. Scrolling through DoorDash, I added Chicken Tikka Masala and Malai Kofta to my cart from our favorite spot, Spice and Tonic. I had the sudden feeling someone had kicked my gut so hard my stomach lining kissed my spine when I realized I wasn’t ordering for two. “Who am I going to share food with now?” I let out a cracked half-cry.

“Us!” my friends said as they passed my phone around and added their orders. Once the food arrived, we filled our plates with rice, curry, and naan. As we ate, I saw the same faces I’d seen at my Taco ‘Bout Love Party.

There is Chelsea, who came within thirty minutes of me calling her the night he died. Helping me understand what was happening and later, when my body rejected everything inside of it, she helped me expel the stress, adrenaline and grief into a brown paper bag outside.

Kayla sits to her right. I arrived on her doorstep with one backpack, a stained sweatshirt and a laundry basket the morning after and didn’t leave for several months. Ghostlike, I wandered from the bed to the patio to the couch. In the mornings, while I sat outside counting blades of grass, she’d send her four kids outside to deliver a glass of water and a plate with two eggs and a piece of toast on it.

A few months later, when the shock had fled and something far worse took over, Dani let herself into my apartment. “My God, this is what depression looks like,” she said, flipping on the lights. I squeezed my eyes shut against the assault and shrank into my chair, but not before seeing a bug go running across the floor and leap into hiding. Calculating how many days it’d been since I had showered, I kept my arms glued to my sides as she attacked the mountain of dishes in the sink with all the ruthlessness of a Catholic sister.

Laura is in the circle. The blonde neighbor girl I’ve known since I was eight. We’d meet where our yards did and talk. Our conversations shifted over the years from baby dolls to braces to boys. She drove six hours pregnant to be here even though we don’t talk as much as we used to. So much more distance than a few feet of grass lies between us now, but inside I’m still eight years old reaching across the yard for simpler times.

The Greeks have seven words to describe seven different forms of love.

Eros. Philia. Storge. Agape. Ludus. Pragma. Philautia.

We have one.

Love.

It almost always implies the romantic kind. Which is the holy grail we all chase after. The measuring stick of a successful life. Like a failed long jumper, I have fallen short twice.

Have I lost love again?

Or has the world just forgotten all the other magnificent ways she makes herself known?

In our quest for romance, we overlook and discard other vital and life-giving relationships, ones that can be far steadier and equally fulfilling. I’ve been questioning if I even want to find it a third time when all it’s ever done is cause me such profound grief. It’s not that I’m bitter. Real, romantic love is a gift I am grateful to have experienced with Jason. I just no longer see it as the only path to a fulfilling life. When I look around. When I take stock of all that has been good. True. And above all steadfast. All I see is that it’s the women who keep being the last man standing when all the men have gone.

So when people tell me, “You’ll find love again.”

I want to gesture around at my life, at this splendid circle of love, and say,

“I never lost it.”

How are you finding love in today’s world? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

For months, the seven calendar squares making up the first week of October with “Julie’s Cabin” sprawled across them had haunted me. Julie’s cabin, situated right on the jagged shoreline of Lake Superior, was Jason and I’s favorite place. Cut crystal waves, an endless march of emerald pine trees, air that smells like clean sheets on a soft summer day. We planned our wedding there for the first week of October.

And then he died.

Julie still invites me to come, promising that my “North Shore Moms” will take care of me. But as the week approached, I wondered what one does when their wedding day is here but their husband is not? Losing the day we’d planned was an injustice I refused to accept.

So I had it anyway.

Pulling up the treelined drive of the familiar cabin, my North Shore moms greet me with warm, full-bodied hugs and a fizzing gin and tonic that tickles my nose. Around the crackling fireplace that night, Sue and I work our knitting needles back and forth with muted clinks as Julie writes postcards encouraging people to get out and vote. We make our plans for the week, determining that Thursday will be the wedding day.

I like this plan; it gives me time to figure out how to marry a ghost.

But on Thursday morning, as I watch my coffee drip into my cup, I realize I still don’t know what to do. “What do you want from us?” Julie asks, resting her hand on my shoulder, startling me out of my reverie. “Um.. maybe just join me in a bit?”

Taking my coffee to the rock pile, I sit down, shivering in Jason’s oversized “End Youth Homelessness” sweatshirt. My fingers trace over the spot where, two years prior, I’d confessed my love to him. I wonder if any of his DNA remains. I want to lick them. To consume whatever is left of him.

I open my journal and put pen to paper. My hand hovers. I’d planned to write wedding vows, but am unsure how to write those to someone who isn’t here to live them with me. I don’t even know how to live. So I start there, scribbling out how I want to live from now on.

Then, I assemble my props. Butter yellow sunflowers. Empty wine bottle. The little purple mason jar of his ashes. My ring. Two painted rocks. Vows.

I hear footsteps and look behind me to see Julie and Sue hovering at the edge of the rocks as if scared to cross an invisible border into my grief. Their usual boisterous energy is now heavy. “Your flower girls matched for you,” Julie gestures toward their jeans, white tennis shoes, and flannel tops.

The only sound is the waves swishing over the rocks. I realize they are waiting for me to say something. This is, after all, my wedding. But nothing is right. I’m unsure what to do. Shifting my weight from left to right, I break the silence with an awkward snort.

“Why don’t I read my vows?”

In a rushed exhale, I begin.

“To you, Jason, I vow.”

“To live, even the days I don’t want to.”

“To love, even though my heart feels so closed.”

“To heal, because you wouldn’t want me to stay a shell of a human forever.” My voice wobbles. Healing feels so far away.

“To travel, to say yes to adventure and to our big, beautiful life.” My mind wanders to our plan to move to Costa Rica. I am desperate not to go alone.

“To resist bitterness, even though anger threatens to overtake me.”

“To stay present as a helper in this world, even though I feel like I never get anything back for my efforts.”

“To go skydiving and do all the things you will never get to do now, I will do them for you, even scuba diving.” I pause, the wind rustling the paper as I try to continue.

“To relentlessly pursue happiness, even though without you, that feels impossible.”

“To forgive, because you taught me how.” I pause; what I’m about to say seems impossible.

“To keep the faith, even though I hate God.”

“To laugh, though my joy is gone.”

“To follow the sun.”

I promise to feel, even though I want to retreat into myself.”

“Jason, my love, my sunshine, my best friend. I vow to live a life that you’d be proud of. Until we meet again.”

More silence.

I roll the vows up. The tube of brown paper looks like the fat cigars my grandpa used to smoke in the garage after dinner. I shove it into the wine bottle. Pushing the cork in tight, we count down together. “One. Two. Three.” I pull my arm back. Swing it forward. Let go. The bottle flies from my fingers. Arches through the air. Sunlight catches it — a flash of light. It lands with a small plop. Eventually, the bottle becomes a speck we can no longer track with our eyes.

We go to dinner at the Angry Trout and clink glasses of red wine together. “A toast to Jason and Carley,” Julie proclaims.

Afterwards, I go to bed. Just Carley.

On the way home, a heaviness washes over me. With each mile south, I contemplate the vast divide between how I vowed to live and the reality of how I feel like living. It is as wide as the lake I just left. Myself, my therapists and two anti-depressants have yet to figure out how to cross it. My red, puffy eyes bounce between the road and my engagement band, glinting off my ring finger as it rests on the steering wheel. It looks almost the same as the one I inherited from my mom. Gold Band. Single Diamond.

She liked to say, “Love is a verb, not a noun.” Fancying herself a preacher, she’d close her Bible in the morning, plunk her coffee down and bang her fist with that diamond ring on the table, accentuating each word. My siblings and I, blurry-eyed and slumped next to our morning bowl of cornflakes, would roll our eyes before shuffling out to the bus stop.

But this truth wound itself around her marriage, holding it together through two decades and a six-year fight with terminal cancer. Because “love,” as she proclaimed, “is a choice, not a feeling.”

I’ve given my vows to this life. I don’t feel like keeping them, but maybe I can choose to keep them. Commit to them. Work at them. And maybe in doing so, I can thread together a life worth living.

A small smile plays across my lips as an image of my mom enters my mind. Clad in her eggplant purple bathrobe, she plops a cup of coffee down next to my body, slumped over the breakfast bar of our old house on Leslie Lane. The noise startles me into lifting my weary, aching head up as she bangs her fist on the counter. Reminding me. “Carley!”

“Life. Is. A. Verb. Not. A. Noun.”