Posts Tagged "meaning in tragedy"

Last month, I had the honor of read­ing in “The Mama Mono­logues” at Corte Madera Book Pas­sage, along with NY Times best-selling author Kelly Cor­ri­gan and many other tal­ented Writ­ing Mamas. Spe­cial thanks to Dawn Yun, founder of The Writ­ing Mamas, for mak­ing this laugh­ter and tear-filled event pos­si­ble. We raised over $5,000 for Abelina Mag­ana, a North­ern Cal­i­for­nia mother of three who was shot 15 times and lived to tell. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to Abelina and her chil­dren, all of whom are still very much in need of our help, please send a check to: Attn: The Mag­ana Fam­ily Fund, Bank of Marin, 1450 Grant Avenue, Novato, 94945. Please enjoy this video of my piece, “You Think You Know,”...

  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...

The red taxi drove away, leav­ing me there, alone, for three days of writ­ing, lec­tures, read-and-critique work­shops, author pan­els, edi­tor insights, net­work­ing, and the nerve-wracking one-on-ones with lit­er­ary agents. Already, I wanted to board the plane back to San Francisco. Only days before, my mem­oir, DROP DEAD LIFE, a preg­nant widow’s poignant, heart­felt, and often comic jour­ney through death, birth, and rebirth, had been rejected, via email, by yet another lit­er­ary agent. Like most rejec­tions, there wasn’t much com­men­tary on the actual writ­ing, but I con­jured up plenty of imag­i­nary bash­ing on my own. Not feel­ing very poignant or comic, I dragged my horse-sized brown suit­case up to the hotel lobby...

Erik told me about his dad, Hay­den, when we first started dat­ing. We were both 20, both stu­dents at Florida State Uni­ver­sity. Erik majored in com­puter sci­ence while I stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing. Within days of know­ing one another, it was obvi­ous that Erik’s ratio­nal, orga­nized side would com­pli­ment the artist in me. Erik spoke slowly, with quiet inten­sity. “We were on vacation.” I sat cross-legged, on Erik’s bed­room floor, soak­ing in the mas­cu­line whis­per of his words. My atten­tion was focused entirely on him. He stretched out on his back and put his head in my lap, his eyes directed at the cir­cu­lat­ing ceil­ing fan. “We were on vaca­tion, at the beach … I was eleven. It was just me, my mom,...

I give Troy the bur­gundy vel­vet bag that con­tains Erik’s ashes. “Do you mind hold­ing them? I may need to run down to the beach by myself.” “I’ll put them in my back pack.” Troy rests the gray sack by his feet and slides the ashes in. He starts to zip up the back­pack, but pauses. “Jeanette, I might be able to fit yours in, too.” Jeanette hugs her pine box closer to her chest. “No, I want to hold him. Hayden’s fine right here.” My mother-in-law, Jeanette, has held on to her husband’s ashes for 17 years now. When we talked about scat­ter­ing Erik’s ashes, she said, “We’ll scat­ter them together. It’s never felt right to do it before, but it feels right now. Erik can be with his daddy. They can finally be ...