Month: March 2021

“A friend in need is a friend indeed.”  She was a court reporter. I was a lawyer.  We bonded over our German heritage, working in the juvenile court system, and having alcoholic fathers.  Each year I endure three months of teasing from Gretchen that she’s “younger” than me. Today the annual ribbing ends as I celebrate the birth of my friend of nearly 40 years.  We expect our closest friends to show up for our big life events. Gretchen was there for the funeral of my father, my brother, my mother, and my husband.  But Gretchen always went beyond. She opened her home for one wedding, one memorial service, and plenty of parties just because she loved me.  Gretchen can

I stopped attending art openings. I took up lifting a kettlebell, staying inside instead of going out to the gym. I was unsure how long before it would be over and whether life would ever be the same again.  It wasn’t a winter with coronavirus.  It was the last winter of many winters of John living with cancer. Ten years ago, the rooms of tea parties with macarons and brunches with bubbly became a home hospice and I became the gracious hostess greeting guests arriving to say their goodbyes.   The same sofa to which John trekked to and from each day from our bed—proving to himself and the world he wasn’t quite ready to leave— became a place of rest again this winter after my son Benjamin had two limbs crushed in a head on crash. The walker, the pillows,

“I had no idea there’d be such an outpouring…I’m not used to being on the receiving end.” Tears started to stream down the face of the child turned man whose blue eyes matched his hospital gown. My first-born Benjamin gave his first Facebook thanks two weeks after a driver on I-80 crossed the median at full speed, hitting Ben’s car head-on, crushing his limbs and his hopes for the year ahead.  Ben’s friends had been eager to start a GoFundMe to help. He was reluctant. Being white and male and educated he knew his privilege. What he did not know was the duration of his healing journey and the high cost of not being able to walk or work or open a jar.  Ben is both