DROP DEAD LIFE

    My dad is Lutheran, my mom is Jew­ish. My child­hood exposed me to tra­di­tions from both denom­i­na­tions, but I cer­tainly wouldn’t describe myself as religious. Spir­i­tual, yes. Reli­gious, no. In fact, if there is a god, I’m still pretty pissed off at him. Today, though, I can’t help but con­tem­plate the reli­gious mean­ing in both Easter and Passover. Seven years ago, on Easter Sun­day, my hus­band, Erik, and I admired our 17-month-old daugh­ter, Tatiana, as she care­fully grasped pur­ple and pink polka-dotted eggs in the grass. “Do you think about how lucky we are,” I said to Erik. He rubbed my ripe, preg­nant belly. “Yeah, I think about it at least five times a day.” Erik was a rising-star...

  A friend of mine recently asked me, “Do you ever have sex with Evan and imag­ine, just for a moment, that you’re hav­ing sex with Erik instead?” Nor­mal thing to won­der about a remar­ried widow, I suppose. Actu­ally, I love that she asked me this. But the answer is NO. Never have I imag­ined, in the heat of pas­sion, that Evan was Erik. I did, how­ever, imag­ine that other men I dated were Erik. Of course I wanted them to be Erik. When you watch your 29-year-old hus­band slide down the kitchen counter and die, there is a cer­tain amount of denial that comes along with the territory. Like star­ing at the door. Wait­ing for the knob to turn. Erik, you home? Nope. Not home. Or com­pletely vacat­ing your preg­nant body...

Guilt. Mommy guilt. Daddy died guilt. Always the guilt. Each morn­ing, at 6 AM, Julian, 2, calls out, “Ma Ma. Ma Ma? Ma Ma,” and the race begins. Ugh! I shouldn’t have stayed up so late. Four kids, like newly hatched spi­ders, crawl up my skin. They nip at my arms, my shoul­ders, my feet, and I want to flick them off. I want five min­utes, just five freak­ing min­utes, to make my cof­fee, before I get them ready for school. “Clothes on, hair brushed, then come to the table for break­fast,” I com­mand, but they con­tinue to swarm, com­pletely ignor­ing my orders. “Ewwwwwww!” Tatiana, 8, screams, as she holds her Hello Kitty tooth­brush an inch from my swollen brown eyes. “Tati, WHAT are you doing?” “Mommy, Juju just put...

DROP DEAD LIFE, the blog, must make a shift. Despite my own inse­cu­ri­ties as an intel­lec­tu­ally under-stimulated mommy of four wild chil­dren, ages 2 through 12, my mem­oir, DROP DEAD LIFE, a preg­nant widow’s poignant, heart­felt, and often comic jour­ney through death, birth, and rebirth, has recently sparked enthu­si­as­tic lit­er­ary agent interest. So, what this means, I imag­ine, is that my book will even­tu­ally end up in your local stores. Still dif­fi­cult for me to believe, but it is going to hap­pen. In other words, I can no longer post chapters-in-progress on my blog, for fear that you will not want to stand in line to pur­chase the actual book. A solu­tion? Sug­ges­tions? The best I’ve come up with is to...

Erik folded his hands beneath his black sweater, his thumbs fid­get­ing with the wool. “I know we’ re sup­posed to go to din­ner,” he said, “But I don’t know if I can even eat right now.” I laughed. “What? Am I mak­ing you sick?” “No, no, not at all, it’s that … it’s just a lot, being with you.” Our break-up three years ago was the far­thest thing from civil, and I knew, after not see­ing eachother for all of that time, we were both uncer­tain of what we should do with the pal­pa­ble sex­ual ten­sion that now filled the two-foot gap between us on the couch. “I was just teas­ing. I know exactly what you mean. I didn’t think I would be so happy to be with you. Oh, wait, that came out wrong. It’s not that...

I walk out of the closet, my arms full of Erik’s shirts, all still on hang­ers. My 8-month-pregnant belly acts as a shelf, enabling me to carry more. “I hope you’re alright with this,” I say to my brother, Troy. “That you don’t think it’s weird I’m giv­ing you Erik’s stuff.” I pile the shirts on top of my bed, the white plas­tic hang­ers clink­ing together like falling domi­noes. “No, I don’t think it’s weird, as long as you’re fine, as long as you feel ready,” Troy holds up a navy blue button-down. “This one will def­i­nitely fit.” “Erik would be really happy you had these, I’m sure of it.” It hasn’t even been three weeks since the blood trick­led down the side of my husband’s mouth on Easter ...