The immortal daughter, the mortal daughter

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The immortal daughter, the mortal daughter

During the five days of festivities, the city never sleeps, and millions of people throng the streets all night, decked in their newly-bought finery. Friends and family return from all over the world, and in many homes, the festival also occasions their own daughter’s homecoming, from a city or country thousands of miles away. The festival is about new unions, reunions, of the coming together and being one again, of dispersed loved ones. There is space for all in these festive five days—from the deeply religious to the merely fun-loving.

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Remembrance

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Remembrance

It doesn’t get said out loud very often anymore. I think that others think that enough time has passed. That maybe they don’t want to remind me of you, my great love, my great loss. I think they think your little brother keeps me occupied and that I’m not missing you always. They don’t understand that both of those things happen simultaneously. I am deliriously in love with your brother and constantly remembering and missing you: “Henry, Henry, Henry.”

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Not like the others

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Not like the others

You can see swimmers behind the people being interviewed—some in bikinis, some in tankinis, some in burkinis, not to mention swim trunks of all imaginable cuts and lengths—you get to understand their confusion. I wished that our world would become a bit more like that beach—that it would be ok to be as we are, that it would phase no one to see each other the way we are each comfortable being seen.

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Grief is a strange thing

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Grief is a strange thing

People come and go like leaves on a tree. To try and avoid that loss only makes you avoid true happiness. We die. But as Snoopy always says, on the rest of the days you live... you only die ONE of the days. I always loved that. Grief can be a good thing if you let it in. When you don't argue with it like a drunk husband, much good can come from its stillness. —Jann Arden

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