Why we glow

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Why we glow

I am one week away from the release of my fourth book—my first for adults, and first non-fiction—NOTES FOR THE EVERLOST: A FIELD GUIDE TO GRIEF. I’m spinning. Nervous-spinning. Beset with twitches and dreams of falling and thick with memories and gratitude. Shambhala, my publisher, worked with me to prep for this busy season, and they said: We know you’re a photographer, and that’s great—how about videos? Readings, excerpts, that kind of thing. Can you do that? Always that same moment, the pause of the bereaved. How much can I say? How warm is this room?

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A collection of dismantled almosts

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A collection of dismantled almosts

Comfort and companionship is everywhere. People you'd automatically turn to can turn up empty, like a house with all the lights out. Nobody is home. Nobody answers the door even though you know they're inside there, somewhere. You can only walk away. And people you'd never expect to be comfort-giving companions appear in your life mysteriously equipped, regardless of knowing baby death or not. Many do not. Yet there they are, standing with you.

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Awash

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Awash

Rattled, I listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson as others might listen to a preacher. Science in the face of the fear that comes with being human is the only thing that calms me. And not just science for its own sake, but the joy in science. The marvel at all we don't know. That we feed on flora and fauna, and then die to feed flora and fauna. That we are, actually, made of stardust, and so is everything, right down to every grain of sand on Hirtle's Beach.

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Year ten

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Year ten

Ten years later, I still feel an excess of unspent love—there is no place to put it, aside from into the air around me, along with the wishing, the longing, the dream of him. I still play with the active designing of my own afterlife: I die an old woman and revert to my 34 year-old self. I enter into a room and see Liam waking up clammy, whole, and gurgling in a crib. This is my daydream, my most divine and deepest regret spun into active language, a positive state. It’s different now. I can love him, forgive myself, and breathe.

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