Grief triggers that bring unexpected joy to mourning — When I first heard that my son had died, I googled his name to look for any information I could find. Since I’ve severed contact with my family (they probably think I’m dead anyway), I knew I couldn’t ask them for it. So, I located the GoFundMe page my daughter-in-law…

I wish he’d been there when my son needed him — When I left Ex Number Two, I moved into a safe house — a nice group home where women of all ages are protected from the reasons that put them there. Most residents were young mothers with little children. At the time I lived there, I was the only grandmother…

But my son still died, so what good did they do? — When I was a young teenager listening to the Osmonds, the Partridge Family, and Three Dog Night on my transistor radio, I gleefully plunged into a world of pure imagination. …

A mother’s analysis — Below, you’ll see the last article my son wrote, published on LinkedIn the day before he died. And here, I openly admit to copy/pasting something from a dead man’s blog. I hope that can’t be called plagiarism. I have attributed the work to him. …

Coming to terms with death by mental illness — Before we proceed, I need to warn you. My son died by suicide, and this article is a mother’s initial attempts to deal with it. This piece has been hard to write, and I really don’t want to face the subject directly. Nor am I too keen on telling the…

One of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received Disclaimer: My current day job is in the kitchen of a rest home. HIPPA laws (protecting a patient’s right to privacy) prevail there, so the residents described in this story have been fictionalized. However, I really did make a couple of…

Warning: Take home only memories from Hawaii. I went to high school in Hawaii. My father was in the Navy, and we lived on a base that has been closed down for at least thirty years now. When we first got there, we did a lot of touristy stuff —…

A few unconsidered realities of time travel My all-time favorite movie is Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. It’s a time-travel love story, filmed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, and released on 3 October 1980. Now, every year a group of fans gets together…

A different take on procrastination I’ve told you about a few of my creative endeavors. I’ve begun the process of sending my middle grade chapter book, Taking Care of Susie, to agents. I never heard back from the latest submission. But I have yet to click the “send” button to…