Thank you, Hugh! I'm a believer in punctuation as well. The impetus for this post was a question that I've pondered for many years. That comma came to represent a theological, even an existential argument. It's a metaphor, I know, but once my mind makes certain connections it refuses to give them up. As a writer of fiction and poetry, I have a great deal of leeway. A personal essay is different. I don't consult style manuals. However, I hate losing sleep over a misplaced semicolon, as I have. It's not good.
I will look up "Lilac Wine." It sounds lovely.
As for pseudonyms, my attitude is, "Call me anything but late for dinner."
Lilacs. A small bush grows aside my bedroom window. I like to leave it open so their fragrance can drift in once they begin to bloom. Tho being a ranch home, it's the first floor, and it made me nervous, that first year after he died, to leave it open. And then I thought: what nonsense! Someone could have broken in any time over all those years he lay next to me. What would he have done? His best to protect me, no doubt, as we both struggled with our Cpaps, and wondered what on earth, and reached for our cellphones charging on our nightstands. If someone breaks in, let them take me. I'll be momentarily terrified. And then - PLEASE, then - let him be waiting for me, arms open wide, saying, "Hey, baby." And hopefully there are lilacs there, as well.
It’s so painful. Lilacs are so wonderfully fragrant, they stir up so many emotions. Hard for me to imagine a world without them. And harder still to know I live in a world without him. Everything feels fragile. I’ve left windows open and doors unlocked as well. Sending you hugs, and a message.🙏❤️💕
Mary, my son died at age 46 in 2017. It has taken me five years to write, lyrically, a prose piece about him--that no one seems to want to publish, yet anyway, as if he's disappeared, never to be heard of again. I've revised this piece numerous times and now believe it's finally finished. I admire you so for writing this gorgeous tribute to life, to punctuation --brilliant metaphor-- and April as the cruelest month. Though I am Jewish and don't celebrate Easter and Passover moves towards me with force in time, we share this moment. Congrats again on your success on Substack. My honor to have found you through Jeffrey Streeter who mentioned us in the same sentence. Blessings to him and to you.
Mary, my deepest sympathy for the loss of your son. I have a son and daughter, and to lose either one would be devastating. I’m glad you were able to write about him. Your work will find a home. I, too am having a hard time with the feeling that my husband’s death has somehow caused him to disappear to the world. That may be the most difficult part of this anniversary.
I felt incredibly honored to be mentioned along with you by Jeffrey Streeter. I love your work, and am savoring it in small morsels. I’m glad you enjoyed this piece. Once I hit Publish, I thought, Wow, how weird to think about God as punctuation. But I have fun writing quirky pieces. And poetry can always embrace oddity and strangeness.
I’m not a religious person myself, or at least not observant. But I have memories from my childhood of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter that have informed this time of the year with significance.
Thank you for sharing your story, and for your kind words. I’m glad this resonated with you.🙏
I'd forgotten about all the lilacs in Robbinsdale. And this wasn't our church when I was growing up but I certainly rode my bicycle past it many times. There were lilac bushes planted all along Hwy 100. Being an editor I had to Google the punctuation question. A hyphen! Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran Church. Faith-Lilac? Faith, Lilac Way has a better ring to it.
A hyphen? Now that is just criminal. So glad I didn’t Google it. I miss those lilacs and beehives so much. It’s interesting that we went to other churches but never to that one. It speaks to a kind of literal parochialism: you went to one church and stayed there forever.
Right? I don't think I went to any other Lutheran Churches though Peace Lutheran was closer to our house; a block away on Halifax. Yet, I can tell you where every dish belongs in the church kitchen, how the library was organized, which Sunday school classrooms had which grades in them, and how to get back stage in the auditorium of Elim Lutheran. "House" away from home. Agreed the hyphen is a criminal act of punctuation.
Thank you, Rona, for your kind words. The run-on sentence idea came to me as I was thinking about childhood, and how kids are always in a hurry and get “corrected” by their elders. I needed God to say it was okay to be a kid.😊
Beautifully blending your feelings right now with pondering punctuation…brilliant, Mary! What a gift you have! My grandparent’s yard was filled with lilac trees and bushes…the overhanging branches the best to stand under and just breathe. I need to find that old photo of my grandpa and me under that low branch. 💜
My heart is with you as you get through this new month. It’ll be hard… but keep writing about him, telling us how you’re coping. We are all here for you. 😊 Hugs
Thank you, Joan! I’m so glad this resonated with you. I grew up in a house with lilac hedges on three sides of the yard. A pure joy to the senses. I was crushed when one of the cross streets was paved, and the hedge on that side taken down. I lost a big piece of my childhood.
Things are hard right now. I wasn’t prepared for this, but I’ll get through. My kids are wonderful. And I’m so glad for your encouragement. Hugs to you.🙏🥰🤗
Jeffrey, thank you for your lovely words. I believe by writing about it, and with the kindness of the Substack community, there’s so much to celebrate.🙏
Hi Mary, please accept my commiserations. Your question about punctuation made me think of a lesser-known line from Nietzsche: “we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”. But your poem is lovely. Have a peaceful Easter.
Agree with Tiffany, the first year is the hardest. When you are ready, the taxes will be done, and you will know what to do with the phone and the piano and the fascia in due time.
This was a beautiful, tender and vulnerable post Mary…thank you for being so open-hearted in writing about your journey. Those nights when you lie awake full of questions I know so well. And the lilacs-I lived on Prince Edward Island off the east coast of Canada for the last 17 years (where for a number of years I was a flower farmer and floral designer), and the scent of lilacs blooming brings back so many memories…I have not lost my life partner, but I did help care-give for (and then lose) both grandmothers, then my grandfathers, my dad and then mom, with my best friend also passing from cancer in between my parents. The loss of my mother, who was my best friend, in 2019-just before the pandemic shut the world down has been the hardest of these losses, but loss has been a constant for a while now, so that ache is so familiar. I have managed to close every account of my mother’s down except for her email, and I ask myself that same question-when will I close it? Why is it still open? It will be 5 years this August and I still wake up disoriented and lie in bed wondering how it is that my family is gone and I am still here (I don’t have any siblings)-the logic/wisdom still eludes me. My father was a talented composer, and I have boxes of sheet music that I carry from place to place as I move- with every move I wonder why I cart it around with me, and how i could do something with it that might honour his legacy and contribute to the world in some way (but have yet to figure out how to go about this). When you say that you long for certainty, that also resonates for me, as I have not felt certain about much since my mother passed. There have been many moments of joy, travel, growth and expansion in the last five years, but I do wonder whether the kind of certainty we feel before loss returns in the same way, or if it just takes a different form. Anyway I’m with you-different kind of losses, and five years out from mom’s passing, and still trying to find my new equilibrium. I guess it takes the time it takes, and we just have to be as kind and compassionate with ourselves as we can be. Writing has been such a huge support. Long walks, hikes and runs in nature. Going places where I have no prior memories with my people has also been soothing, but inevitably after some time away I miss close friends back home. Anyway- know that many of us are accompanying you all over the world in spirit, and that your Substack posts are building a community of resilience around you. Thank you for your words, and for sharing them to create a soft hammock of acknowledgement in which all of us who are trying to build our new normal feel seen, held and less alone on the journey of resilience. So many blessings coming your way!
My deepest condolences, Ariana. So many losses in such a short period of time. My heart just aches for you. Of all the deaths of those close to me (other than my husband, of course) it was the death of my mother that hit me hardest. She died in 2001, in May, when the lilacs were in bloom. I was obsessive about her belongings. I even wore her nightgown -- flannel, buttoned to the neck -- because I'd given it to her and it broke my heart that she never wore it because it was "too nice." Didn't send us to marriage counseling, but it was not well received.😂 After that I kept a lot of my mother's things in bins in the basement, never looking at them. A few weeks ago I went through them and found an envelope marked "Mary's Story," containing a copy of a piece I'd published, that I didn't know she'd read. It was a very poignant moment. But it took me a long time to get there. I sounds as if your dad's sheet music brings on a feeling of helplessness and a sense of being overwhelmed. My husband was a gifted woodworker and carpenter. Many of his pieces are also stashed away. I don't have room for them, my kids don't have room, but I also want to share that legacy. It feels paralyzing, and deeply sad.
Writing. Yes. I was away from it for so long. Hence, "Writer, interrupted." I had no idea how healing it would be when I started writing after my husband's death. I felt that my heart opened, and words started pouring out. Then I felt drawn to share, to start a Substack, and it's the best thing I've ever done. What a wonderful place. I feel connected on a deeply personal level in ways I never expected. "A community of resilience" as you so beautifully said; as well as "a soft hammock of acknowledgment." I'm so grateful to be here. You are such a fine writer; I feel honored by your kind words. Gratitude and blessings to you.❤️🙏
Thank you for your reply Mary. I do not often share with such open heartedness publicly, but your post was so tender and open hearted that it made me want to respond. So glad I have found your writing here and look forward to your next installment! 🙏🪷
Ariana, I'm so grateful you're here. Your response was moving and deeply felt. I'm honored that you chose to share your story here. I look forward to reading more, if you choose to do so. You can always message me as well.❤️
Thank you, Hugh! I'm a believer in punctuation as well. The impetus for this post was a question that I've pondered for many years. That comma came to represent a theological, even an existential argument. It's a metaphor, I know, but once my mind makes certain connections it refuses to give them up. As a writer of fiction and poetry, I have a great deal of leeway. A personal essay is different. I don't consult style manuals. However, I hate losing sleep over a misplaced semicolon, as I have. It's not good.
I will look up "Lilac Wine." It sounds lovely.
As for pseudonyms, my attitude is, "Call me anything but late for dinner."
Thank you, Andrea! I appreciate your sharing this.
Lilacs. A small bush grows aside my bedroom window. I like to leave it open so their fragrance can drift in once they begin to bloom. Tho being a ranch home, it's the first floor, and it made me nervous, that first year after he died, to leave it open. And then I thought: what nonsense! Someone could have broken in any time over all those years he lay next to me. What would he have done? His best to protect me, no doubt, as we both struggled with our Cpaps, and wondered what on earth, and reached for our cellphones charging on our nightstands. If someone breaks in, let them take me. I'll be momentarily terrified. And then - PLEASE, then - let him be waiting for me, arms open wide, saying, "Hey, baby." And hopefully there are lilacs there, as well.
It’s so painful. Lilacs are so wonderfully fragrant, they stir up so many emotions. Hard for me to imagine a world without them. And harder still to know I live in a world without him. Everything feels fragile. I’ve left windows open and doors unlocked as well. Sending you hugs, and a message.🙏❤️💕
Mary, my son died at age 46 in 2017. It has taken me five years to write, lyrically, a prose piece about him--that no one seems to want to publish, yet anyway, as if he's disappeared, never to be heard of again. I've revised this piece numerous times and now believe it's finally finished. I admire you so for writing this gorgeous tribute to life, to punctuation --brilliant metaphor-- and April as the cruelest month. Though I am Jewish and don't celebrate Easter and Passover moves towards me with force in time, we share this moment. Congrats again on your success on Substack. My honor to have found you through Jeffrey Streeter who mentioned us in the same sentence. Blessings to him and to you.
Mary, my deepest sympathy for the loss of your son. I have a son and daughter, and to lose either one would be devastating. I’m glad you were able to write about him. Your work will find a home. I, too am having a hard time with the feeling that my husband’s death has somehow caused him to disappear to the world. That may be the most difficult part of this anniversary.
I felt incredibly honored to be mentioned along with you by Jeffrey Streeter. I love your work, and am savoring it in small morsels. I’m glad you enjoyed this piece. Once I hit Publish, I thought, Wow, how weird to think about God as punctuation. But I have fun writing quirky pieces. And poetry can always embrace oddity and strangeness.
I’m not a religious person myself, or at least not observant. But I have memories from my childhood of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter that have informed this time of the year with significance.
Thank you for sharing your story, and for your kind words. I’m glad this resonated with you.🙏
I'd forgotten about all the lilacs in Robbinsdale. And this wasn't our church when I was growing up but I certainly rode my bicycle past it many times. There were lilac bushes planted all along Hwy 100. Being an editor I had to Google the punctuation question. A hyphen! Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran Church. Faith-Lilac? Faith, Lilac Way has a better ring to it.
A hyphen? Now that is just criminal. So glad I didn’t Google it. I miss those lilacs and beehives so much. It’s interesting that we went to other churches but never to that one. It speaks to a kind of literal parochialism: you went to one church and stayed there forever.
Right? I don't think I went to any other Lutheran Churches though Peace Lutheran was closer to our house; a block away on Halifax. Yet, I can tell you where every dish belongs in the church kitchen, how the library was organized, which Sunday school classrooms had which grades in them, and how to get back stage in the auditorium of Elim Lutheran. "House" away from home. Agreed the hyphen is a criminal act of punctuation.
Oh, so funny! The things we carry from our childhoods, even though it sometimes takes a nudge to remember them. 😊
Powerfully written and tenderly too!
Thank you, Diane!❤️
You’re so welcome, Mary!
The two terriers. The untuned piano. And your beautiful poem. I particularly like you child self as run-on sentence.
Thank you, Rona, for your kind words. The run-on sentence idea came to me as I was thinking about childhood, and how kids are always in a hurry and get “corrected” by their elders. I needed God to say it was okay to be a kid.😊
I loved the run-on sentence line, too
Thank you, Jeffrey!😊
Beautifully blending your feelings right now with pondering punctuation…brilliant, Mary! What a gift you have! My grandparent’s yard was filled with lilac trees and bushes…the overhanging branches the best to stand under and just breathe. I need to find that old photo of my grandpa and me under that low branch. 💜
My heart is with you as you get through this new month. It’ll be hard… but keep writing about him, telling us how you’re coping. We are all here for you. 😊 Hugs
Thank you, Joan! I’m so glad this resonated with you. I grew up in a house with lilac hedges on three sides of the yard. A pure joy to the senses. I was crushed when one of the cross streets was paved, and the hedge on that side taken down. I lost a big piece of my childhood.
Things are hard right now. I wasn’t prepared for this, but I’ll get through. My kids are wonderful. And I’m so glad for your encouragement. Hugs to you.🙏🥰🤗
The first year after loss is so hard. My heart is with you, Mary.
Thank you, Tiffany. So glad to have your support, and that of the Substack community. It means the world to me.❤️
Mary, your poem was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Please know you have touched me deeply.
Monica, thank you for your lovely words. I’m so grateful that it reached you.🙏
Spring brings that powerful lilac scent - very satisfying indeed.
It’s so powerful. I can’t imagine spring without lilacs.
This was so moving, Mary, and resonated for me on so many levels. I hope that boulder of grief will get smaller with every passing year.
Jeffrey, thank you for your lovely words. I believe by writing about it, and with the kindness of the Substack community, there’s so much to celebrate.🙏
❤️
Beautiful, Mary. My heart aches reading your story.
Maureen, you are so kind. I’m glad this touched you.❤️
❤️
Hi Mary, please accept my commiserations. Your question about punctuation made me think of a lesser-known line from Nietzsche: “we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”. But your poem is lovely. Have a peaceful Easter.
Thank you, Thomas. That’s a great line from Nietzsche; I will have to remember it. You have a wonderful Easter as well.
Agree with Tiffany, the first year is the hardest. When you are ready, the taxes will be done, and you will know what to do with the phone and the piano and the fascia in due time.
This was a beautiful, tender and vulnerable post Mary…thank you for being so open-hearted in writing about your journey. Those nights when you lie awake full of questions I know so well. And the lilacs-I lived on Prince Edward Island off the east coast of Canada for the last 17 years (where for a number of years I was a flower farmer and floral designer), and the scent of lilacs blooming brings back so many memories…I have not lost my life partner, but I did help care-give for (and then lose) both grandmothers, then my grandfathers, my dad and then mom, with my best friend also passing from cancer in between my parents. The loss of my mother, who was my best friend, in 2019-just before the pandemic shut the world down has been the hardest of these losses, but loss has been a constant for a while now, so that ache is so familiar. I have managed to close every account of my mother’s down except for her email, and I ask myself that same question-when will I close it? Why is it still open? It will be 5 years this August and I still wake up disoriented and lie in bed wondering how it is that my family is gone and I am still here (I don’t have any siblings)-the logic/wisdom still eludes me. My father was a talented composer, and I have boxes of sheet music that I carry from place to place as I move- with every move I wonder why I cart it around with me, and how i could do something with it that might honour his legacy and contribute to the world in some way (but have yet to figure out how to go about this). When you say that you long for certainty, that also resonates for me, as I have not felt certain about much since my mother passed. There have been many moments of joy, travel, growth and expansion in the last five years, but I do wonder whether the kind of certainty we feel before loss returns in the same way, or if it just takes a different form. Anyway I’m with you-different kind of losses, and five years out from mom’s passing, and still trying to find my new equilibrium. I guess it takes the time it takes, and we just have to be as kind and compassionate with ourselves as we can be. Writing has been such a huge support. Long walks, hikes and runs in nature. Going places where I have no prior memories with my people has also been soothing, but inevitably after some time away I miss close friends back home. Anyway- know that many of us are accompanying you all over the world in spirit, and that your Substack posts are building a community of resilience around you. Thank you for your words, and for sharing them to create a soft hammock of acknowledgement in which all of us who are trying to build our new normal feel seen, held and less alone on the journey of resilience. So many blessings coming your way!
My deepest condolences, Ariana. So many losses in such a short period of time. My heart just aches for you. Of all the deaths of those close to me (other than my husband, of course) it was the death of my mother that hit me hardest. She died in 2001, in May, when the lilacs were in bloom. I was obsessive about her belongings. I even wore her nightgown -- flannel, buttoned to the neck -- because I'd given it to her and it broke my heart that she never wore it because it was "too nice." Didn't send us to marriage counseling, but it was not well received.😂 After that I kept a lot of my mother's things in bins in the basement, never looking at them. A few weeks ago I went through them and found an envelope marked "Mary's Story," containing a copy of a piece I'd published, that I didn't know she'd read. It was a very poignant moment. But it took me a long time to get there. I sounds as if your dad's sheet music brings on a feeling of helplessness and a sense of being overwhelmed. My husband was a gifted woodworker and carpenter. Many of his pieces are also stashed away. I don't have room for them, my kids don't have room, but I also want to share that legacy. It feels paralyzing, and deeply sad.
Writing. Yes. I was away from it for so long. Hence, "Writer, interrupted." I had no idea how healing it would be when I started writing after my husband's death. I felt that my heart opened, and words started pouring out. Then I felt drawn to share, to start a Substack, and it's the best thing I've ever done. What a wonderful place. I feel connected on a deeply personal level in ways I never expected. "A community of resilience" as you so beautifully said; as well as "a soft hammock of acknowledgment." I'm so grateful to be here. You are such a fine writer; I feel honored by your kind words. Gratitude and blessings to you.❤️🙏
.
Thank you for your reply Mary. I do not often share with such open heartedness publicly, but your post was so tender and open hearted that it made me want to respond. So glad I have found your writing here and look forward to your next installment! 🙏🪷
Ariana, I'm so grateful you're here. Your response was moving and deeply felt. I'm honored that you chose to share your story here. I look forward to reading more, if you choose to do so. You can always message me as well.❤️