Category: Grief

  • Southern Cemetery Etiquette

    Southern Cemetery Etiquette

    A poignant reflection on memory, change, and cemetery etiquette in a small Southern town in this essay on grief. There’s a certain etiquette in Southern cemeteries. I turn down the long, grassy road just before sunset, when the summer haze has blended lavenders and dusty blues across the sky in the sort of way I’ve…

  • The Single Biggest Regret of my Life

    See there, I know what you did—you saw me say “the biggest single regret of my life” and you rushed over here to see if I was going to dish about a certain someone. Or, maybe, even about you. I’ve tried to live my life without regrets. I understand that I am a culmination of…

  • I’m a Casualty of the War on Christmas (The Yearly Repeat Blog Post)

    Someone last week insisted that she was going to wish people a “Merry Christmas” and not a “Happy Holiday” and that she didn’t wish them a happy holiday at all–ONLY a Merry Christmas.  Wow, that’s the Christmas spirit?  How sad.  If you don’t know what to wish people and don’t have the time or inclination…

  • Schadenfreude, Full Circle

    Long ago and faraway–or at least what seems like long ago and faraway–someone cheated me out of something very precious to me.  There were lies told to me and threats made against me. “Let it go,” my friends said. “Be the bigger person,” they advised. “Put it in the past and move on,” they urged.…

  • How to Survive the Worst Year of Your Life

      “How do I survive the worst year of my life?” a young friend asked, around two months after a bad breakup. She wanted to know because it appeared to her that I’d one day snapped my fingers or taken a magic pill and all my heartaches had disappeared overnight.  They didn’t.  They haven’t.  …