It was my first SAG movie role since the iconic Lunch Lady in Run Hide Fight in 2020.

Career-defining work, indeed; however, you may want to pass on that riveting performance unless you have a strong stomach. In Night at the Oasis, I play Diner Lady. Notice a theme? Well, thankfully I evolved into a named character when I landed on set this time. I became Sandy in the final rewrite. That’s the biz.

Acting is a tough side-gig, especially when you are supporting two energetic sons and yourself—by yourself. The rejection is relentless, but the work is thrilling. There was a time I tolerated, even thrived on, the industry’s kinetic uncertainty.

I’m different now.

It’s still a conundrum, but as I enter my “third act,” creative writing and expression are more precious to me than ever. And lately, I have been prioritizing the precious things.

I have an amazing agent, Jill Lord, with Broad Talent. She has believed in me since my last agent of 13 years jettisoned me, along with about a third of her roster, with no warning or mercy, soon after Elliot died. Another loss. That’s the biz—brutal because it can be.

I’m not sure what I expected in Birmingham, Alabama—showing up in a strange city with little guidance or information. It was a little like Dorothy on the road to Oz, but my destination was a neighborhood BBQ joint. It was a “local-hire” union job, meaning you pay your own way and make your own arrangements.

I hoped to break even.

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After an easy hour-long flight, I arrived three hours early at the Hampton Inn, nestled in a lush, green grove just off the highway. I had twenty minutes to find a place to shoot a live virtual callback on my phone. When it rains, it pours.

Cassandra welcomed me, presiding over the front desk with poise and panache. Her hospitality was like a warm blanket.

“You are a breath of fresh air,” I told her.

“People should be friendly; it’s so not hard,” she said with a bright, wide smile. “I just want you to feel appreciated here.” I missed energy like hers in my Dallas life.

The Zoom callback was pretty herky-jerky, shot in the bathroom with a portable tripod. I made it work, and then I was hungry.

Manuel “lyfted” me downtown to an eclectic café I found in a search on my phone.

“Find something to be grateful for when you wake up every day,” he advised as the ginger fireball sank beneath the verdant hills. “I am grateful for every person in my car. They all have a lesson, and I am ready to receive it.”

“Wow, what a wonderful attitude,” I said.

Manuel looked barely thirty, the same age as Ian.

“Do not fight being alive,” he said.

“It’s time to befriend your life.”

Befriend my life, huh?

I woke earlier than planned the next morning. So, I went downstairs for a dose of coffee and a bite of “complimentary” breakfast before the shoot. Chef James met me there, wearing a large oval nametag with his name and title written in gold script. Six feet tall, in a perfectly pressed, immaculate apron, he graciously pointed out the contents of the buffet like the general manager at the Ritz-Carlton.

“I just made the oatmeal, ma’am. It’s good, but the chafing dish does not heat it enough.” He pointed out an array of cereals in mini boxes I hadn't seen in years, the waffle griddles that swiveled around, and bowls of shiny apples and ripe bananas.

“Thank you so much for the lovely tour, “ I said.

I was the only one in the cavernous lobby/dining area.

“I hope you will sit for a while. People are always in such a hurry.”

“Yes, coffee first, then a waffle.” The Hampton Inn waffles reminded me of weekend breakfasts with my growing boys so many years ago.

He told me he had cooked in hotels and restaurants around the world—from Birmingham to Tokyo. He was a U.S. Navy veteran, and I thanked him for his service.

As he spoke, I noticed strands of gray hair escaping from under his loden uniform cap—and hints of his melancholy. He was grieving disconnection and misunderstandings with his adult children. “Check on your parents,” he said. “Check on your parents.”

I agreed and felt safe enough to mention both Ian’s distance and Elliot’s loss.

“I know your heart will never completely heal,” he said, then asked if he could give me a hug.

I said yes. We stood holding each other in silence.

But it was showtime.

Aiya was arriving to shuttle me to “basecamp,” the actor holding area.

“Wow! Are you a celebrity?” The car came to an abrupt stop at the side of the road, and she whipped around to look at me.

“Oh, no, I’m not a celebrity.” I laughed, transported back to 1987, when shoppers recognized me at Tom Thumb. Hosting those live call-in pledge breaks was part of my job at the local PBS station.

“You’d tell me if you were, wouldn’t you,” she said, flinging her long black braids back around the car’s headrest. “I never know who is getting in my car.”

I reached for my compact to check my face. They had not given me any instructions about makeup. Usually, it’s “clean face,” but I had applied multiple layers of magnolia sunrise concealer on my puffy eyes—just in case. I realized I was getting nervous.

Fortunately, my nerves turned to adrenaline when I walked in the door—even though they handed me rewritten sides for my scene. That’s the biz, but I was ready.

Eli, a handsome young actor playing Toby, walked in with me. After a quick lunch with the crew and time in the makeup chair, a production van whisked us to the set, the BBQ restaurant, where we filmed all day while it operated as usual. Despite the lunch rush and the chaos, Eli and I compared notes and acting stories while we waited.

At my starting position behind the counter, real customers tried to order from me multiple times, and I embraced the “method” opportunity between camera setups. I played a rough-around-the-edges, no-nonsense manager who broke up a fight. So when Eli (Toby) appeared to injure his arm in one of the many combative takes, it was difficult to contain my maternal instinct.

“I am fine,” he said. “The only thing I care about is that it looks good.”

At about 6 p.m., Kim, the warm, articulate director, wrapped our hectic BBQ action, and the actors scattered like dandelion seeds in a sudden gust. We checked out at basecamp, and I took another Lyft back to the Hampton Inn.

My driver, Alex, was wearing a blue Yankees hat. “NYC was a good sign,” I said.

He explained he wasn’t really a fan. “I just like the merch,” he said with a wink.

When I told him about my day on the set, he said, “Oh, wow, that’s so cool. Can I have a selfie?”

“I am not really famous, but thank you for asking,” I chuckled.

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “You never know. Everyone’s timing is different in this life. You might just blow up on this one.”

I smirked, but he couldn’t see.

“Hang in there and keep going,” he said.

“And you do the same, Alex.”

Wiped out and wired, I ordered a sandwich. The Uber Eats driver, Kathleen, arrived earlier than scheduled, working with her teenage son in tow. That took me back to my days of making ends meet as a single mom. I often worked two or three jobs and had to piece together babysitting on the fly.

Seemed like another life.

Alegi drove me to the airport the next day. When I asked her how she liked Birmingham, she responded: “I love it, absolutely adore it. Been here 20 years.” She praised what she called “Birmingham’s gentleness.”

She said that she and her husband helped their only son with his trucking logistics company. She drove Lyft during the day and worked dispatch for her son’s business at night.

“I am committed to my son and will do anything I can to support him,” Alegi said. The love in her voice brought me to gentle tears.

Birmingham was more like Oz than I ever expected, but like Dorothy, I couldn’t stay.

We had arrived.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said. “And best to you and your family.”

The Birmingham airport was nearly deserted.

“And give your son a hug.”

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I am knee-deep in the messy middle of a memoir about my late son, Elliot, and his absence that never goes away.

Last week, I wrote about my role as executor of my firstborn’s estate and my struggle to access his Amazon Web Services (AWS) dashboard. It was his techie side gig. The very next day, AWS wrote to me. It had been seven years since our last exchange.

Grappling with Elliot’s digital remains has presented many hurdles, but AWS was by far the worst one on this dystopian frontier.

The two emails I received a couple of days ago stated that their “attempt to verify the default payment method was unsuccessful.” I recalled how the AWS overlords had required me to open my own account when I contacted them in September 2018. They instructed me to post weekly reminders to customer service to somehow keep Elliot’s inactive account alive—while I secured the necessary court documents to prove my heirship.

This was highly irregular, as all his other accounts required only the death certificate.

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I had forgotten all about this shell account, EllaBiz, but I remembered the excruciating pain it produced. After a year of check-ins, court delays, legal documents, and escalating expenses, the official missive, dated August 14, 2019, informed me that “the paperwork was successful,” but “Elliott’s (misspelled) account was suspended in August 2018 and all resources deleted in November 2018.”

I was livid. How could this be?

I had obeyed their instructions to the letter for a year. There was no acknowledgment that Elliot was deceased. No recognition that AWS had sent me on a wild legal goose chase that allowed the clock to run out. No apparent understanding of what they had erased or accountability for their heart-crushing deception.

He was dead. He couldn’t pay them. They knew that.

I felt like Dorothy with the witch’s broom. How I wished for the virtual equivalent of a bucket of water. As a side note, this was pre-A.I. The torture was all human.

And the grief was multi-layered. Elliot managed my business domain account, so I lost invaluable data and history, still profoundly triggering. My estate attorney, Ellen, and I fought back and demanded restoration—for a while. She wrote in a response: “Dead people do not pay bills. Probate actions take time.”

We also knew that nothing on the internet ever goes away, but Amazon’s resistance was impenetrable. There was no relief in sight, and I knew the legal path would have been gutting.

Even the mention of AWS still ignites every nerve ending in my body, so this recent rogue appearance in my email box was jarring. I dismissed the alerts as an eerily timed phishing scam, but I also felt a dash of Elliot in the mix. A combination of vintage ire and unexpected grace sank into my tired heart.

Later in the week, I encountered a word on Substack for this kind of high-voltage moment—something grief has been teaching me for years: apophenia, the tendency to perceive meaning in random connections, patterns, and relationships.

I must have an acute case of apophenia.

It even sounds like a rare condition that requires immediate attention.

Could apophenia be the algorithm of grief?

It’s the narrative engine driving my memoir. I’ve been viewing my entire story through the lens of apophenia—coincidences, signs, and Twilight Zone-esque anomalies. Pareidolia is part of it, too: the age-old human urge to find meaningful images in random, vague, or ambiguous patterns. Like animals in the clouds or the man in the moon.

In grief, think of the blob of mud on the sidewalk that looks like a heart or the numbers 11:11 on a clock. For me, it’s jet trails that form sprawling “Es” in the sky. I look for them now, even ask for them, casting my gaze up into the rich, blue heavens. Though bittersweet, they are micro-bursts of joy that always surprise and delight me.

Noticing signs is how I survive.

And what’s wrong with that? What does it matter if they are not really “Es” made out of jet exhaust or cloud wisps? Grief has taught me that meaning does not always require an explanation. Sometimes it asks only that I notice.

However, some folks in my life have limited tolerance for such woo-woo.

“Look,” I say, pointing up at the frothy white lines as we walk. “It’s a wink from Mr. E.”

The response is often heavy silence or a nervous laugh that suggests that they are wondering if I am off my meds. I get it. It takes suspension of disbelief to go there. But if I see the significance, it is there.

The two emails arrived the day after I wrote the chapter about the AWS muck. Something about them seemed real. I asked my trusty assistant, ChatGPT, what he thought, and he suggested I compare the data carefully.

That’s what I did.

I took a deep breath and logged back into the scene of the Amazon crime. I found my dormant account, EllaBiz, the same account number listed in the email, and the inactive credit card.

The emails were legit.

A cold shudder peeled down my spine that made this discovery more than a random coincidence. Seven years ago, AWS had erased the account that contained pieces of Elliot but preserved the very account I created while trying to save them.

Random, maybe.

Synchronistic, yes.

A message from Elliot? Not sure.

Meaningful, absolutely.

Now, I look up above and find Elliot in jet exhaust. I open my computer and find him in the ghost account Amazon preserved after deleting the one that mattered. One pattern is written across the sky; the other is buried inside a machine.

I cannot prove that either one contains him, but both return him to me.

And for an instant, he is here.

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Grief has changed me from the inside out.

, a Substack sis, recently wrote this about losing a child: “I know what cicadas feel like, splitting their heads open and emerging from their old skin; there’s no gratitude for this loss.”

Yet after eight years, the intensity has softened.

Three years ago, I wrote a similar post suggesting that grief was a constant evolution that reminded me of Pokémon, the Japanese collectible card game that Elliot and his younger brother, Ian, embraced with such zeal. They had what seemed like thousands of cards, in notebooks with plastic pages, stashed in blue Tupperware bins around the house. I remember Charmander, who evolved into Charmeleon and then morphed into Charizard. That orange creature was the ultimate power, the holy grail of all Pokémon cards.

Grief moves through you like that, like an evolving Pokémon, and you just have to stay in the game.

That’s still true, but I am feeling the weight of the game today—as I approach what I jokingly call “the Ides of August birthday,” 65 on the 15th. Though it’s my birthday month, and a big one at that, August’s burning contrast overshadows it all, no matter the year since 2018.

Regardless, I’ve been thinking more intentionally about purpose—and my lifelong quest for connection, meaning, and safe relationships. With Ian and his girlfriend, Taylor, in the thick of careers in computer game creation, 200 miles south in Austin, I have been asking myself soul-searching questions like: What’s next? Who am I now? How did I get here? Where do I belong? What should I do? All those 3 a.m. ruminations.

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Writing helps. But it’s often like pouring hydrogen peroxide on a fresh wound. It sizzles with white frothy pain. They say, “Trust the process.” But heck, what is the process, anyway? And, by the way, I am tired of the process. Can we switch things up a little?

I am also remembering my late Aunt Virginia, my only aunt and a tough Depression-era cookie, who died of COVID complications and would have been 103 on August 6. And my mother, who died on August 22, 2012, after a severe stroke that left her completely incapacitated for two years. Her birthday is August 27, and she would have been 93-ish. “Ish” because she fudged her birthdate for so many years that she could not even confirm or deny it.

I can’t help but think of Elliot and my mother on the other side. Where are they exactly? Are they together, as several mediums have suggested? Elliot, my mom, my dad, my Aunt Virginia, and her only son, Scott, all in some parallel dimension, watching me fumble and attempt to function. I’m pretty sure my mom has been reaching out to me through the people who loved her art. So, sometimes, I think so, but I’m not really sure. It’s above my pay grade.

Since Elliot died, I have never reached a point of feeling better— just different.

I’m different now in more ways than I can count or express, evolving like Charizard or maybe even Pikachu. That one made me smile. Elliot’s absence is always present—through his friends, signs, and traces I continue to discover. I’m learning to notice and build a different kind of relationship with him—little by little.

He is here and somewhere else—all the time.

Grief will always be part of me because Elliot will always be a part of me. He came from me. And grief will always be a layer between me and the raw edge of everything else. The awful glimmer of grief has become a strange kind of grace. It’s what illuminates the once-hidden residue of his life and the fresh, new memories of his spirit—that will never die.

It’s just another August.

My Precarious Boy

I need to find a way

to breathe in

this stolid space.

Sleepless nights melt

into heavy days —

sometimes made light.

Persistence of memory

absorbs the absent

and

precarious now

where

saline tears debride

my forever wound

over and over—

A shadow heart,

cast against the raw

edge of everything—

contained yet

always

missing

you

“We just had a baby,” read Brian’s Instagram IM.

I knew his lovely wife, Lindsay, was pregnant, but I was not sure of the due date. Thrilled, I read on. The message contained the usual newborn details, including length and weight. But one stole my breath.

“We named him after Elliot.”

My heart shattered and expanded at the same time. It felt as if the universe had given me a cosmic gift through this gorgeous and profound gesture. I was gobsmacked, and instant tears poured.

“Elliot was so important and special,” Brian typed, just hours after his baby Elliot’s birth in early April, “and it’s really meaningful to us to be able to name him after your son. We had been thinking about names, and it just felt right.”

Overwhelmed did not begin to describe my state.

Brian and Elliot met during our post-divorce days in Plano, Texas, at an elementary after-school program called Hunter’s Glen. They were fast friends and remained close through the wonder years and beyond, including school moves, neighborhood changes, and life disruptions. Elliot was an integral part of Brian and Lindsay’s past. Now, he would be intertwined with their future.

What an extraordinary tribute to our Elliot Everett Wright.

A week ago, Lindsay and Brian invited me over to meet their Mr. E, now nearly three months old. I felt my Elliot’s presence that day in all his vivid whimsy. I walked out the door and saw his E-threads again, high above in the crystal-blue sky, those wispy cloud scrawls and jet trails I’ve been tracking for years—not one, but two Es.

When I merged onto Highway 121 heading north, there were two Miatas beside me, one new, black, and sleek, the other vintage, red, and worn. Then one of his favorite anthems, “Fire” by the Ohio Players, blasted from my SiriusXM 70s radio.

By then, I was paying attention.

I stepped in the door, and there was Brian holding his precious bundle while navigating around their gentle, attentive dog. How I remembered those chaotic, multitasking days.

Baby Elliot was an angel. That yummy, powdery-fresh baby aroma. The flapping, dimply-soft arms and tiny, tightly clenched fists. As I held him, he cooed and flirted with delight and curiosity before succumbing to his persistent eyelids.

Heaven in my arms—and the peace of creation still sparkling in his knowing blue eyes.

More than a name, Elliot is a present memory that lives on in the promise of a new life. I was grateful for this singular moment in time, but also aching for those first sacred hours holding my Elliot and my Ian.

There is so much hope in beginnings.

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Zach Witness, one of Elliot’s lifelong friends, texted me last week to say he was traveling to Toronto for a weekend gig and wanted to know some of “Elliot’s places.” Zach, a successful musician and multimedia artist, exudes an almost feral creative intensity, yet his tender heart is one of the most open I have ever encountered.

He and Elliot met as babies, co-raised by gentle caregivers—Ms. Bonnie, Ms. Rubye, Ms. Cindy, and Ms. Vicky—in the basement day school at First Presbyterian Church in Dallas. Years later, they reunited in the music halls of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts. It was a challenging place to navigate, but they helped each other find their eclectic paths.

From day one, their bond was visceral and indelible.

“Still is,” insists Zach, who is deeply spiritual. “My bestie in this Life and in the great Beyond <3.”

He speaks of Elliot in the present tense and refers to him as “a constant companion and guide in his life.” My heart can hardly contain the expansive beauty and love of Zach’s words.

Responding to his request, I sent Zach several significant addresses and locations as I tumbled into the memories I could still conjure about Elliot’s life in Canada—so far away. Bitter, sweet, and cold.

Toronto, another country, was too far from Dallas for my comfort, given Elliot’s high school battles with depression, but he found his way with the help of so many creative, kindred, and loving spirits. It was truly “the best of times and worst of times,” as Dickens and Elliot would have said.

His friendships have always been such a potent balm. Even now, they send traces of Elliot’s past into my present, like new memories—more meaningful than I can adequately describe.

So, in the middle of my patchwork-quilt Friday last week, Zach texted me his gorgeous photo of Japanese flowers pinned to “new growth” on the tree just outside the apartment where El once lived.

“The guys living there now even came out to help me,” he said.

When I opened the photos—the flowers in the tree, then Elliot standing in that same place more than a decade ago—something sparked low in my stomach. Not memory exactly. More like current. Brief, bright, and gone too soon.

I am endlessly grateful for these micro-moments, fleeting as they are, for the way they keep Elliot’s memory alive among those who knew and loved him most.

It’s the best medicine.

Remembering their connection over so many years, also cut painfully short, I thought of baby Elliot, the boy Zach knew before either of them had words for friendship. I thought of the years of Elliot’s ear infections, the Augmentin he took under protest, and the ache it ultimately relieved, if only until the next time.

I cherish moments like these—when I hear from Zach and others in Elliot’s orbit. They are my everyday Augmentin.

It’s how I live, how I move forward.

Thank you, dear Zach. Love to you and your mom. Thank you for your gracious heart and for shining Elliot’s light so brightly.

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I wrote a short piece for a Reedsy site prompt: “Write a story from the POV of a sidekick, or someone who is happy to stay away from the spotlight.”

As I discovered, point of view can be more than a technical choice. Sometimes it opens a portal. I didn’t expect this prompt to lead me to Elliot’s imagined voice — present, but not omniscient; near, but not fully reachable.

The result is The Other Side. It’s part ghost story, part grief meditation, part Twilight Zone transmission.

The line is always open.

You can read it here.

Two days ago, Elliot would have turned 34.

Still unbelievable. Still excruciating. Thankfully, some memories have softened into sweet nostalgia over the past seven years, losing their hypodermic sting. Others knock me over with the force of a gale-force wind—like seeing a slender young man at the table next to me, surrounded by family, blowing out a blaze of candles on a slice of Tres Leches cake.

The efficient server with the bright smile probably wondered why I was weeping.

These days, I’m more comfortable with a susurrus, as Elliot would say, a gentle trace of the past wafting into the present. And I am grateful for the wisdom of others like Julie. Thank you for sharing this profound poem and suggesting this perfect prompt.

It was a trace of grace.

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Because

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

So I can’t save the world—
can’t save even myself,
can’t wrap my arms around
every frightened child, can’t
foster peace among nations,
can’t bring love to all who
feel unlovable.
So I practice opening my heart
right here in this room and being gentle
with my insufficiency. I practice
walking down the street heart first.
And if it is insufficient to share love,
I will practice loving anyway.
I want to converse about truth,
about trust. I want to invite compassion
into every interaction.
One willing heart can’t stop a war.
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,
I tell myself what’s the use of trying?
But today, the invitation is clear:
to be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.
To take love seriously.
To give love wildly.
To race up to the world
as if I were a puppy,
adoring and unjaded,
stumbling on my own exuberance.
To feel the shock of indifference,
of anger, of cruelty, of fear,
and stay open. To love as if it matters,
as if the world depends on it.

Julie’s Prompt: Find a phrase to use as an acrostic (write each letter down the left side of the page, to begin a new word, phrase, or sentence.) Write about your own commitment and courage, or how you hope to practice love.

Ridiculously Courageous

Reckoning with loss’s weight,

I still can’t contain the

Depth of your presence

In this Möbius

Cycle of

Uber ache—

Life doesn’t promise

Our

Unending

Safety—

Like

You being gone.

Can this liminal

Ocean of tides,

Unrelenting, ever

Retreat when no

Anchors remain?

Grounding me somewhere,

Elliot oh Elliot,

On this day, I will always be

Undone.

So, I will live—

and so, I will love.

Appalled.

I guess that word describes my current state. I keep trying to come to terms with the abhorrent behavior of our 45^th president [now 47th, of course]. Though I work daily to find a place of personal peace, the fear still creeps in. I know all is in “Divine Order,” but I am struggling to discern what kind of order that might be. What could be the silver lining here? What is the gift in this, as great spiritual teachers might ask?

Well, I have a theory, and I guess I’ll go with it, because it’s really the only way I can contextualize the escalating chaos. I had a light-bulb moment when I saw Jeffrey Lord, a conservative pundit on CNN, attempting to defend 45’s alarming “Morning Joe” Twitter rant. [NOTE: CNN has since severed ties with Lord following a tweet containing the Nazi salute.] Lord resolutely proclaimed, “You can’t call the president crazy.” Wow! I had to put my phone down. That one sentence summed it up.

1. Why can’t you?

There’s something distressingly potent in Lord’s protest. Why can’t you question a disturbing, unhealthy pattern of behavior in the leader of the free world ― that could endanger the lives of others? Lord’s claim shines a light on the cultural denial that strengthens the stigma of mental illness in the U.S. Admittedly, this is not easy terrain to navigate, but mental illness is not a weakness. It is not an insult or a bad choice. It’s a disease ― a disease of the brain. If you have a stroke, as President Eisenhower suffered in 1957, someone says, “Hey, something is not right with you. You are ill. Let’s get some medical attention.” But with mental health issues, it’s much murkier. There is so much shame and embarrassment involved; we don’t speak up. We don’t get involved. We often don’t get the help we need. The condition may not be as ostensibly life-threatening as a stroke, but it can certainly result in tragic consequences ― especially if you are President of the United States.

2. “Crazy” perpetuates stigma.

On another level, I was shocked that Lord used the word “crazy.” It seems to be the media catchall for all aberrant or irrational behavior, and its derogatory connotation helps propagate stigma and patient isolation. We are so uncomfortable talking about diseases of the brain that our default is “crazy” or now ― “cra-cra.” This language leaves no room for dignity, recovery, or healing. And the shame prevents many from pursuing treatment (if their insurance will even cover it, that is) ― even if they are diagnosed or silently contemplating suicide.

In a world where “the overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics… and the suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the same period,” we cannot continue to humiliate or ignore those who exhibit signs of mental illness. [UPDATE: According to the CDC, “Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States…Suicide rates increased 37% between 2000 and 2018 and decreased 5% between 2018 and 2020. However, rates returned to their peak in 2022.”]

3. An inside job.

There is also the reality to face that if we elected a man suffering from untreated mental illness, he is our mirror. It is time to take responsibility for our own denial and for our own healing. We must choose authenticity, conscious communication, mindfulness, compassion, and healthy boundaries.

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But Trump’s coterie of codependent enablers is not helping matters. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s tweets, saying he “fights fire with fire.” And Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert minimized the threat of violence associated with the president’s hostile CNN-assault tweet ― actually saying he was “proud of the president” for creating a social media platform that connects with the people.

The 25th Amendment offers some guidelines, but defining “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” becomes inherently political and complicated in practice. And the psychiatric profession is still hamstrung by the 1973 Goldwater Rule ― enacted after Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee in the 1964 election, was declared psychologically unfit for the presidency by psychiatrists surveyed in Fact Magazine. Goldwater won a defamation suit against Fact, and the resulting rule still prevents psychiatrists from voicing a caveat publicly without conducting an examination. Unfortunately, this further perpetuates stigma, stifling open discussion of mental illness concerns under a cloak of disgrace. There is probably a middle ground we should explore somehow.

From a quantum perspective, is Trump’s purpose to open our eyes that have been “wide shut” [Republicans, anyway]? Maybe it’s time to end the silence, as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is trying to do in our schools nationwide, freeing our voices to tackle taboos that keep mental illness under the treatment radar. We are only as sick as our secrets, and questioning the mental health of our president is constructive, supportive, and democratic.

I am not sure I have the answer, but at least we can ask the questions about the very real behavioral concerns of this unconsciously virulent, externally triggered man leading our nation. It’s about his health ― and ours.

From NAMI: If there is NOT AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER but someone is acting irrationally due to his/her mental state, contact your local mobile crisis team. In the Dallas area, individuals may contact ADAPT Mobile Crisis at 1 (866) 260-8000. If someone is acting irrationally due to their mental state and there IS AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER to themselves or someone else, call 911.

It’s strange how grief keeps changing in the digital age. The past isn’t fixed. It surfaces, disappears, reappears in traces—emails, websites, thumb drives—each one carrying a version of the person you lost.

This essay was my first attempt to understand that terrain.

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My essay, Data Scrounger: Navigating Death in the Digital Age, is out in Months To Years, a journal on loss.

Losing a loved one used to mean sorting through letters, papers, files, and photographs. Now there’s another layer—their digital remains.

My son Elliot was a data savant. His footprint was vast and elusive: encrypted laptops, passwords without authenticators, obscure forums, profiles that dissolved without explanation, and files filled with fragments of a life I wasn’t meant to see.

Grief in the digital age means inheriting that lingering presence—and trying to make sense of it.

👉 [Read the essay here.]

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The image they chose—a tabbed copy of Infinite Jest—felt like him.

I’m taking a rich and powerful virtual writing class with poet called Heart Write Soul. The goal is to access the wild and precious truth of a singular moment in time—no editing, no revising, no overthinking. Co-hosts John and read poems and play music to serve as “off ramps” and prompts for our eight-to-ten-minute writing sprints and sacred group shares. This week, the notion of peace captured me. Here is what surfaced.

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A Peace of Me

Peace.
It’s not so simple.

You can’t point to it and say,
There it is.

Peace.

Calming
raging conflict
and racing thoughts
from a diaspora of the mind.

A global agreement
or a deep, slow breath
in the presence of nothing.

I think peace might be

negative space—

like a pristine pool
surrounded by cacophony,

holding the possibility
of everything.

Both ephemeral
and substantial—

ever-taunting disruption:

A baby cries.
A pot boils over.
A bottle of olive oil shatters on the floor.
A bomb drops.
A party capitulates.
A mother of three is shot

for no reason at all.

Peace is
precariously strong
and
powerfully fragile.

We must cradle it
with intention,
carry it with respect.

Peace doesn’t just happen.

Like democracy,
it does not spread unattended.

Peace is not something we get—

but something we find
in the next exhale.

I’m still pondering this one.

As John Lennon might say, joy is “what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Especially in a grief-shaped life.

After losing a child—after losing what you thought your life would be—you struggle and flail against a kind of perpetual undertow. Grief never disappears. It just morphs and changes you. But, over time, if you’re paying attention, you may notice small glimmers of joy floating to the surface, here and there. Unexpected. Fragile. Glistening.

Yesterday, I was reaching out to former clients about their writing plans for the year to help build my business pipeline. One of them, Bethany at Precocity, an AI data consulting firm, wrote back warmly. We’d worked together years ago on crafting some case studies and web content. I’d admired her clarity and kindness.

Gathering brand intelligence, I clicked on her website.

And froze.

Her company had moved into the same building as Global Payments, my son Elliot’s employer at the time of his sudden death.

I knew that building well. Last year, one of the Global Payments executives contacted me about a tree they had planted in Elliot’s memory—a Weeping Ficus. They had tended it for seven years in his honor. Their office was moving fully remote, so they asked if I wanted to take the commemorative tree.

It now lives with my younger son, Ian, and his girlfriend, Taylor, in Austin.

Seeing the building’s address again felt like a gentle hug from the past. A living tribute.

Elliot was right there. With me.

The “Elliot Tree.”

I hesitated before replying to Bethany. We hadn’t spoken in years. Our relationship had been essentially transactional and professional. She didn’t know my personal story.

But a small voice said: Share it.

So, I did.

I told her about the building. Global Payments. The tree. The tragic loss of my son.

She replied almost immediately:

“Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful tree of remembrance. I’m so sorry about your son. Thanks for telling me and reminding me how precious each day is.”

That was it. My heart overflowed. Perfect words.

No fixing.
No platitudes.
No retreat.

Just presence.

Tears trickled down my cheeks as I typed.

In that precious moment, I felt seen, witnessed—not as a “strong woman,” not as a survivor—but as a mother who loves her child and will carry him forever.

That was joy.

Not happiness.
Not cheerfulness.

Pure joy.

The kind that wafts quietly between the cracks of my broken heart. My life still feels like a contradiction. I am restless most days.

I’m lonely, yet crave solitude.
I’m devastated, yet hopeful.
Grieving, yet alive.

Grief has stripped away the layers I once thought protected me. That’s what grief does. Cuts you to the bone. I am raw and vulnerable but more honest—with myself and the world. Less willing to perform. To finesse. To cajole. And, after decades of crisis and caretaking, I am learning to breathe again.

Like Odysseus passing between Scylla and Charybdis, I know that sometimes there are no good options. Only careful steering. And yet, even so, joy peeks through—if I remain attentive to what matters.

It appears quietly in emails.
In memories.

In tears.

In trees.
In moments when someone receives my truth without flinching.

I know.

Elliot mattered. He matters now.
His life continues to ripple outward, touching places I will never see.

And, if I’m willing to notice, joy will find me.

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I love finding fragments of Elliot, startling winks that insistently pierce the thin veil between now and eternity. I found this poem, “Light Waters,” earlier this week in a stack of “important” papers haphazardly stored in a white wicker basket under my desk. Buried in the prosaic clutter of a year gone by, I discovered profound poetry, a potent reminder of Elliot’s presence and brilliance. It saved me, diverting my attention as I struggled to make sense of the senseless—the overwhelming chaos of our disordered world.

LIGHT WATERS by Elliot Wright

embroidering

the fabric of the

miasmic nothing,

the unknowable one

unspools,

a triploid embryo

ensconced among

four aeonic choirs,

again, the gap between divine

perfection and entropy

is inexplicably bridged—

in the shadow of four luminaries,

there, Sophia,

drifting in defiance,

all platypus, or seahorse,

bears that strange fruit

Yaldabaoth,

The second innermost husk

In a Matryoshka doll,

decaying.

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Saying goodbye and hello, it’s that time of year when we reorganize the old stuff to make room for the new. In this year’s transition, I felt a little precarious and uncertain, navigating another liminal space as murky as a miasma. I’m still not sure what’s next, but I am finding glimpses of peace in the nooks and crannies.

Turns out, space is an extremely valuable commodity, filling the void where choices and discomfort coexist. Maybe that’s the point. That’s where we face our demons head-on and learn why we often hide them under the covers of busyness and digital addiction. However, I contend our most persistent demons cannot hide in the great wide open. That’s why I carved out some year-end space to write, read, and carefully consider what I genuinely want, a new muscle for me that I hope to strengthen.

No matter the day, month, or year, space comes in many different shapes and sizes. Case in point: my cranky Gmail account. It is constantly chiding me, “You are almost out of space,” the ultimate digital disaster. By what measure, I ask? Since when did cyberspace become finite? Ah, when it becomes a revenue opportunity. The Google gods tell me incessantly, “Clean it up or else.” Yikes. The “or else” is that I will be unable to send or receive emails. Therefore, I will be forced to buy more space, to add yet another monthly subscription to my vast digital wallet.

Space is expensive.

And it’s painful. I think of my heartbreaking space debacle: Amazon Web Services (AWS) elimination of Elliot’s business account while I was serving as executor of his estate. Although I went to court to secure the small estate affidavit they required to prove I was his heir, they still denied access. It was like presenting the witch’s broom to the Wizard of Oz, as the corporate overlords summarily deleted his account anyway. I do not understand this realm of digital providence, especially since much of the data was mine—my business’s ElaineGantzWright.com email box and web files, which Elliot managed. But AWS’s law firm claimed that they “needed the server space,” and Elliot had not paid his monthly subscription.

Elliot was dead, and they knew it. I told their customer service rep he was deceased—when I called the first time, fighting back the avalanche of tears. Saying those words: “I am calling because my son is dead” is like swallowing an icepick, and the pain becomes almost unbearable when the call center agent responds as if I am telling them I am out of milk.

AWS had his death certificate. He could no longer pay anything. To anyone.

This massive, heartless corporate behemoth could not “make space” for the concept of subscriber mortality and next-of-kin grief, and I could not find an attorney who would even attempt to sue Amazon on my behalf.

Space was the final frontier.

There were obviously too many miles (of space) between the lawyers who litigate estate concerns and those who handle intellectual property cases. Precedent is everything, and some spaces are sacrosanct, like fighting the demise of my late son’s digital footprint. As you can see, I am still not over this one.

But some spaces are bitter and sweet.

Like the necessity to create ample space for the endless ache. Grief never goes away, and that’s OK. We learn to carry both the joy and the pain of our memories, stored for safekeeping in the depths of our marrow. Kahlil Gibran teaches: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” I guess that’s the yin and the yang of grief. Likewise, sorrow does not pass through us; it reshapes and reconfigures us from the inside out, like an emotional makeover. Dr. Robert Neimeyer says, “grief is a reconstruction process.” We rebuild ourselves and our identities around our losses, as they become inextricable parts of our being. We never get over them. So, we must consciously allow the space without pushing the pain away. We integrate it.

In an NPR interview this year, actor Mark Rylance likened the “hollow space” of grief to the air cavity in a musical instrument. He said, “There’s an enormous amount of soul in a brass instrument’s empty, hollow space. That’s where the music is.” I immediately thought of Elliot’s saxophone. I remembered how the precision and mastery of his breath filled his horn with such glorious bravado. There was the bore, the internal cavity of the saxophone’s body, and the mouthpiece chamber where air resonated after passing the reed. The size of the space in the mouthpiece significantly impacted the sound quality. Space made it art. So, I’m thinking the hollow space of grief within me could yield a sacred song or a meaningful melody. I can be an instrument of his memories ... filling some of the space in my broken heart.

As does Elliot’s exquisite poem, artfully untangling the tendrils of time and creation. It reminds me that despite the raging turmoil that confines us in these darkest of days, we can hold space for each other—for grief, for grace, and for good.

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Synchronicities. Carl Jung called them “coincidences with meaning.” I say they are “surprises with significance.”

Either way, there is nothing like the endorphin rush that fires off like a Roman candle when I uncover a miraculous small-world story. Wild shared epiphanies enable connection with a divine thread, the universe at work. Some say, “God’s way of remaining anonymous.” They are seemingly random acts, but they expose the truth that has always been there, hovering just below the surface—waiting for us to see it. The surprise and wonder can be spiritually intoxicating, assigning glimpses of meaning to the ineffable, like the loss of my late son, Elliot.

After Elliot died seven years ago, I could barely function or find my bearings. Everything in “the after” felt surreal, irrational, and out of alignment, but synchronicities, then and now, have provided metaphysical meaning beyond the harsh reality. They are a spiritual balm of sorts—soothing but a little sticky. They remind me of the infinite interdependence of living things, and there is another dimension, or a parallel realm, that we cannot fully experience. It’s where logic defers to intuition, and those passed become present. Synchronicities have the power to anchor us in the now, which is a much healthier place to live.

Some of the most startling examples belong to my mother, gone 13 years ago, and Elliot. These wrinkles in time help me construct a new narrative built on mysterious spiritual ah-ha moments and grace. Perhaps that’s why I’m becoming increasingly aware of them—strengthening my synchronicity muscle, a socially acceptable version of hope. I can say to myself, “Maybe Elliot is here, close by me, in another dimension.” That even sounds like Elliot or dialogue from an episode of The Twilight Zone, the reality-bending show Elliot, Ian, and I watched with unwavering consistency every New Year’s Day. It was our favorite holiday ritual.

Or the British science fiction series, Black Mirror, the modern brain-twisty favorite that Elliot introduced me to. I was instantly absorbed in its mysterious fables of digital dystopia. Several weeks before his fatal motorcycle accident, he insisted I watch San Junipero, probably the gentlest episode in the unsettling series. It featured a couple in a futuristic world trying to find each other in life and then in the afterlife.

“You’ll love it, Mom. You really have to watch it, OK,” El said with conviction.

I watched it after he passed, perhaps even looking for a message. The Elliot-isms were many and startling—from its primary setting in a retro 80s arcade, much like his favorite FreePlay in Dallas, to the shining convertible Miata, so similar to one of his, that drove the reunited couple into a metaphorical heaven. It’s hard to ignore the signs and connections that still give me chills. Even Belinda Carlisle’s song, “Blue Heaven is a Place on Earth,” which plays over the final scene, conjures El whenever I hear it. Something is at work here that I do not understand, but I feel.

Synchronicity is so tantalizing because it externalizes that constant inner ache, becoming a new, active story to tell about your loved one. Like when I walk out the door of my condo on a challenging day, and I look up in the pristine blue sky to see his contrails forming an E, or I turn on my car in the morning, and “Tell Me Something Good,” one of his high school R&B ensemble’s signature tunes, blasts out of the speakers. There’s no denying Elliot is with me in these precious moments.

With my mom, synchronicities enliven our uneven history. Throughout her life, we shared an obsession with uncanny coincidence, which we seemed to attract more often than others. Communication about synchronicities came easily for us, unlike many of our other conversations. One story was her favorite. She recounted it early and often—in large groups and small gatherings.

When I was a sophomore at Northwestern University, I formed an instant, intense friendship with a witty, wickedly brilliant art history major named Peter. With his lanky-tall Midwestern good looks and impish twinkle in his sparkling eyes, Peter’s magnetism and charm attracted admirers of all genders and proclivities. I was among those willingly in his orbit. It couldn’t be love because he was gay. Let’s call it extreme “like.” I just needed to be with him, and the feeling was mostly mutual. We were souls in sync, almost like we knew each other before we met. We spent hours and days devouring the world’s masterpieces at The Art Institute of Chicago, dancing all night with our great friends at the Windy City’s go-to nightclubs, and waiting in line for student tickets to The Joffrey Ballet. It was a glorious time.

We were standing in front of a painting in the Art Institute’s contemporary wing on an ordinary artsy day when I remarked, “That reminds me of Albert Christ-Janer, one of the artists my mother represented in her gallery.” It was a large, pastel abstraction of a landscape with visceral textures and evocative forms.

“Albert Christ-Janer! No way! Not Al. I know him!”

“What!” “How?” I shouted, disturbing the museum-quiet peace. I was amazed. He was not exactly a household name, but my mother considered him one of the gallery’s most important artists.

“He was my grandfather’s roommate at St. Olaf College. His work is enchanting and haunting.”

I was dumbstruck. “Really? You are kidding. Christ-Janer was from Minnesota?” As we stood there vibrating in astonishment, I explained, “My mother has a full catalogue of his work in storage. She closed her gallery a year ago, but she couldn’t find Albert’s widow or his estate contact.”

“Yes, it was about five or six years ago. He was driving his Alfa Romeo or Aston Martin on the winding roads in Como, Italy,” said Peter. “His sports car flew off the road and over the side of the mountain. It was tragic and sudden. Papa was devastated.”

“I guess the exact circumstances of the accident were never clear,” I added.

“I know. It was a treacherous road, but there were no witnesses. Hey, I am pretty sure my Papa has Virginia’s contact info,” and he gave me a gigantic hug.

Like my late mother, I still feel unimaginable awe when I retell the story. What were the chances of such a coincidental connection? And solving a mystery, too. My mom returned the stored art collection to Virginia, his widow, who insisted we keep several. I have two—one called Dreamscapes, which is over my bed, and another, Sea Forms, which hangs in my powder room. Seeing them still reminds me daily of the universe’s tangled web of spirit tendrils. Albert Christ-Janer’s story is similar to Elliot’s in that he flew off the highway entrance ramp’s tight turn, and the exact circumstances were never confirmed. No witnesses of the accident, only a good Samaritan who came upon it afterward. Time is always looping—intertwined with everything—yesterday, forever, and now.

Synchronicities can condense all of time into a single moment.

This story connects me with Elliot, my mother, my friend Peter, and the Art Institute. where I would learn, Christ-Janer studied years earlier. Elliot was quite the Christ-Janer fan. In particular, he loved the Sea Forms piece when it graced the wall over his toilet in our former condo.

He would smirk, “It’s just so meditative to look at while I pee, Mom.” The painting makes me smile and sigh whenever I see it, one of those mousetrap memories that seizes my breath.

Synchronicities are both intimate and universal. There are way too many from my life to list here, but they all have manifested surprising awe. According to New York Times columnist Hope Reese, awe is one of the most healing emotional states we can experience. Research shows that awe and wonder down-regulate the brain’s rumination center, reducing activity in the Default Mode Network (DMN) to shift focus outward. The result is stress reduction and healthier cognitive patterns. Further, awe triggers the release of “the feel-good hormones,” the body’s natural mood elevators. Dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins function as hormones and neurotransmitters known to enhance feelings of well-being, generosity, and social bonding. States of awe can also reduce inflammation and nurture our notions of time and possibility

That’s probably why my recent surprise meeting with Andrea, the founder of TheArtistLives.org, affected me so deeply—an undeniable sign, a dollop of awe from my mother across the veil or parallel dimension. The Twilight Zone was also one of her favorite programs, too. She introduced me. When Andrea asked me to submit an essay about my mother on Thanksgiving Day, I sensed a synchronistic wink—especially when I was grappling with another HOA debacle on my own—the destruction of my AC condenser during an unscheduled tree trimming. RealManage, my HOA’s inept management company, never responded, even to emergency calls. There were so many frustrations that day, but I saw a glimmer of hope.

For more, here is my Mother Musing essay. It was a gift. Thank you, Andrea.

I was honored to help Andrea launch her “living legacy” section, which gives voice to the memories of artists who left us too soon. She was inspired to create the site after he adult son, Ethan, died suddenly. He left behind an eclectic portfolio of creative work, from writing to music to art, much like my Elliot. She envisioned a space where the art and timeless expressions of beloved artists who have crossed would live on for generations. There are so many intertwining layers that surprise and comfort me in this beautiful project. It feels divinely orchestrated.

“Falling together in time” is how Carl Jung describes these acausal connections between two low-probability events, but it’s our job to allow them to emerge, to engage in the process. We must remain open, curious, present, and awake, intentionally cultivating more awe than animosity. Call them coincidences or random static on an undefinable frequency, but to those who grieve, these magical moments are not accidents. They are tiny apertures in the suffocating melee of loss—brief transmissions from another dimension, maybe, but they remind our healing hearts that endings are not as absolute as they seem.

Still, at this messy, commercialized-joy time or year, I send peace to all those who have experienced devastating loss. Though the world feels increasingly heavy with destruction, violence, and darkness, I hope we can find ways to carry the “pain” in one hand and the “joy’ in the other, quoting my soul sister Sue. She lost her adult son, Keith, seven years ago, too, and possesses a resilient spirit that buoys me. Our friendship is another remarkable example of the universe at work.

All we can do is to pay ferocious attention to forge a new kind of relationship with those we have lost, mindful that in The Twilight Zone of grief, synchronicity is not proof of life after death; it is proof of the bonds that transcend it. In this holiday season, let’s embrace a place of peace, presence, and possibility—where those whom we love dwell with us always.

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Six years ago, I found a Safe Place for Bereaved Parents retreat, offered by FaithandGrief.org, the grief support organization I have been involved with since my mother died in 2012. Though I was barely functioning in 2019, a year after my son Elliot’s motorcycle death, I was desperate. I needed a ray of light. I needed something. Part of the appeal of this retreat was its location at Mo-Ranch, my once-happy place, a secluded oasis nestled in the lap of the lush Texas Hill Country on the Guadalupe River.

When I think about my experience back then, I can remember very little. Still in fresh grief, the trauma and fog absorbed so many specific memories; however, I do recall a general sense of peace, well-being, and belonging there. I felt supported, seen, and connected to members of a club no one wants to join. Grief is ruthlessly isolating, but serenity is equally elusive. Indeed, Mo-Ranch is a sacred sanctuary, a thin place—where the thin veil between Earth and Heaven almost evaporates.

This year, I was honored to co-facilitate with veteran retreat leaders, Mike and Laurie Shaw. I played a hybrid role, presenting and also serving as an example of living with child loss, six years out. I was relieved to see the grounds at Mo were returning to their pre-flood beauty. Tragically, we were convening just steps away from the site of this year’s deadly floods. I felt for the families who lost so much so suddenly.

Still, Mo is deeply embedded in my heart. It’s where Elliot, Ian (when amenable), and I attended summer family camps with First Presbyterian Church of Dallas for nearly a decade. I often say Mo is part of my tiny family’s spiritual DNA, and my dear friend Carol was a core member of that posse. As a loving and entertaining “Auntie Carol” for my boys, she rallied our Mo caravan every summer and never forgot the “water noodles” for the river. I can’t believe she left us last year. The world is not the same without her, but I know she and Elliot are cooking up some heavenly mischief.

So, returning to Mo is an emotional expedition regardless of the agenda. I will always be a different person compared to the one I was before Elliot died, yet I am finding I am better able to function most days—until the mousetrap snap of a memory hijacks me. In a way, these snatches of memory are a gift. They define a new kind of relationship with Elliot and all those I have lost. Thankfully, the discomfort has lessened, but it’s never gone, much like the arm I broke last year. It has technically healed, according to the surgeon, but the pain still shoots through the bone like a fracture when I move in specific ways, and the range of motion is limited. They say it will never be the same. A freakishly apt metaphor, I’d say.

The gravity of the collective this year continues to weigh on me, days later. So many broken hearts, devastated parents treading water in the untenable space between disbelief and acceptance, between yesterday and forever. It had been just three months for two shattered sets of parents. My heart crumbled. They were still in complete shock, barely able to put one foot in front of the other, and asking, ‘Why?’

My topic was infinitely appropriate—the importance of cultivating self-compassion. I referenced my friend and mentor, Pastor Fran Shelton, on self-compassion. In her book The Spirituality of Grief, she recommends adopting “The Platinum Rule.” A step above the Golden Rule, which we would never dismiss, is the “Platinum” version, which says “do unto yourself first so that you can do unto others.” That is, “love yourself as God loves you,” so critical to remember in grief. Be gentle with yourself. In Hebrew, the word for compassion is rachamim, rooted in rechem, meaning womb. How appropriate. Compassion is not pity. It is an active, womb-like expression that contains and nurtures. It’s about protecting, sheltering, being kind, and, where warranted, forgiving.

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We all had different griefs because we were all different people. We came from diverse walks of life, environments, and circumstances—from small towns, suburbs, and cities—but we shared one gutting reality. We all lost a child too soon, grappling with the anguish that will never leave us. Sometimes, sitting in silence was the most profound activity. We just knew. Together. We recognized intuitively the chasm of darkness inside all of us, sharing the pain of so much love with nowhere to go.

However, I am grateful that this year, I was better able to hold the sweet and the bitter together. The pain was not quite as sharp. Lighting a candle for Elliot in the elegantly rustic chapel on our last day, I felt his presence practicing his saxophone incessantly in the echoing acoustics. “It sounds like the bathroom,” he’d say, and I chuckled, remembering. And I smiled as I shared the story of Elliot’s insistence that the stained-glass window of St. Francis Xavier in the back of the chapel looked “just like Christopher Walken.” And it did. Quintessential Elliot. He was with me.

Over the three days, swaddled in November’s rare 80-degree warmth, our tears welled as our hearts swelled on the edge of our new normal. Together, we all prayed, laughed, and hugged in a sacred space where grief took center stage, but that was OK. I was overwhelmed and sometimes flooded by the depth of emotion and the vulnerability of our mourning at Mo. Mike, who lost his son two decades ago and has facilitated the retreat for six years, reminded us, “In the journey of grief, we have a choice—to embrace faith and community. They are all we have. We cannot do this alone.”

Profound truth.

This is what we discovered in this gorgeous, poignant, agonizing place—together. We will learn to carry the joy of their lives along with the agony of their losses. And we will embrace what Laurie calls the “sweet torture” of their memories and the precious glimpses of their eternal grace.

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It finally stopped.

The blizzard of cottony white seed pods harboring their sticky goo—a ceaseless stream of puffy parachutes packed with life going on. The constant shower of fluff fell from the clear blue sky like winter’s perpetual snowstorm, but it was June in Dallas, Texas, and this was summer’s unfurling blanket.

From a mighty cottonwood.

Venerable and enormous, yet fragile and overgrown from years of neglect, she stood in quiet reserve most of the year, looming over my modest mid-century condo until she exploded like an overstuffed down comforter for about six weeks each summer. As one of the most substantial trees I have ever seen, much less cohabitated with, she was about eight stories tall and five feet in diameter, rooted just a couple of feet from my front porch.

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I have lived here for almost three years, and this was the densest cascade yet. The festoon of fuzzy flotsam found its way into every orifice—exposed and not. Every door, window, vent, nostril, ear canal, lip, eyelid, and yes, there, too. Whenever I stepped outside, my eyes teared up as the mischievous micro-stems caught in my throat with each new breath. It was like inhaling cigarette smoke that was actually Elmer’s glue. You couldn’t wave it away. You couldn’t sweep it away because the power puffs morphed and spontaneously combusted when touched. They adhered instantly to anything and formed patches of pasty oatmeal pancakes on every surface, like my deck, fence, and air conditioning units. Last year, after spending $750 on new capacitors, I purchased fancy mesh covers from Amazon.com to prevent the fervent penetration.

The tailored covers reminded me of something June Cleaver might have used to cover her toaster. It was just hard to imagine how an air conditioner can function in the Texas heat while wearing a jacket. Every morning and evening during these six weeks, I went out and brushed off the fluff that collected on all sides of the covers. This was a task I never imagined would be part of my life. To use another mixed mid-century metaphor, I felt like Lucy Ricardo trapped in the Twilight Zone. It’s the lesser of two evils, I suppose, especially since the only semi-attractive plant in my HOA-maintained yard was a ragged rose bush that pierced my leg through my clothes every time I leaned in to perform my de-fluffing tasks. The irony was hard to ignore.

I wondered why I was the only one in my community engulfed in this insistent cloud of ostensibly insubstantial froth.

“Location. Location. Location,” they said. “On the corner,” they said. And luck, of course.

“You are a product of your choices,” they also say. But also, sometimes, things just don’t work out well. Some things actually suck. That is how it is. Or maybe it’s my mischievous mother trying to insert herself through the sprinkles of uncomfortable presence. She loved the word fluffy.

Sadly, this towering wooden matriarch in her seventies had far exceeded her lifespan as a cottonwood, barely hanging on in this urban location. My HOA had cut down many of our ailing trees but had avoided the three largest and most dangerous ones due to the expense. Now, that makes sense. Two of those were closest to me and had been aptly named “Thelma and Louise” by the community. But they should be Thelma and Larry, as mine was female, and the one down the sidewalk was male. I’m not surprised my overwhelmed nervous system recognized Thelma’s deeply embedded trauma at first sight.

What attracted me to this location now repulsed me. A familiar refrain. It’s so bitterly sweet, as I adore trees. In fact, like Mary Oliver, I think trees have “saved me, and daily.” I wish I did not feel so frustrated about Thelma. It’s not her fault. Since losing my son Elliot and the rest of my immediate family, except my dear Ian, nature has been my most potent tonic. My reliable refuge.

“In the untainted forest, cottonwoods can live for 150 years or so,” said burly Rick, the handsome and tanned arborist from Southern Botanical, as he assessed Thelma. I called him for a professional consultation out of desperation after my alleged HOA management company ignored my requests. Another tree in my yard had been so mangled in a terrible storm that the precarious limbs were continuing to crack and tumble whenever the wind gusted above 40 mph. I needed lots of tree therapy.

“This should come down immediately,” dashing arborist-Rick said with certainty. “These trees have been neglected for decades. Look how the ends of their branches are dry and brittle, weighed down by overgrowth, and the trunk is infested with fungus and rot.”

He also confirmed that the volume of white tufts was likely related to distress.

“There is an injection we can administer at the roots that will significantly reduce the volume and duration of the fluff release,” he said.

I submitted this data to the HOA board, but the hostile, self-righteous president scolded me for consulting an outside vendor like he was a high school principal—even though I was just gathering information because the HOA had not responded to my requests.

“We will never pay an outside vendor you choose,” he barked in an instant message. “We gave you an answer about your tree. You just didn’t like it. We don’t have a ‘save any tree at any cost’ policy here. That’s it.”

Grrr. It’s a rock and hard place. Customer service is clearly not the priority here.

The HOA is legally responsible for the maintenance of the common area and “walls-out” of every unit, for which we pay healthy monthly dues. I’m so frustrated, and I detest wasting my precious energy on these petty conflicts. I own a home but have no authority over how it is maintained. I so want to cultivate a content life. Not even a fabulous one, content will do. No more HOAs to start. I am getting an Airstream next time.

I always look for the lesson, and I think this one is as old as time: You can’t go home again, especially when your only notion of home is traumatic and unresponsive. That’s what feels familiar, sometimes unconsciously. I grew up just a couple of blocks from this location on the edge of an affluent neighborhood in Dallas, but my parents were not. My dad was an aerospace test engineer for a government contractor, and my mom was a marginally successful artist and teacher. She called our neighborhood “the other side of the tracks.” I suppose everything is relative.

They had purchased the ordinary two-story, three-bedroom red-brick home in the last century when the middle class still existed. The house had never been updated, except for the silver duct tape my dad applied everywhere as his preferred method of repair. After my parents died, it was sold as a shell—totally gutted and redone. Apropos of everything.

In moving to this condo community, which is on the edge of the edge of Highland Park, I may have been trying to find my sense of place again, but my place has always felt tenuous. My only family now was my son Ian, and he was in Austin. It’s painful and embarrassing to be looking for your place in your sixties. Believe me, I’ve read so many epiphany-producing books, like It Did Not Start with You by Mark Wolynn, about the impact of ancestral wounds. I’ve pursued nearly every flavor of therapeutic intervention.

As Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, “There is no place like home.” But Dorothy was pretty traumatized, too—orphaned, tormented by a mean lady on a bike, and living with her cranky Auntie Em on a desolate farm, surrounded by slightly creepy adult male farmhands. Maybe there is no place like home, but there is no home like this place either. I guess I need to release the yearning of hiraeth, that longing for a home and past that never was. This flying flotsam is a powerful reminder. I don’t want to fight these inane battles or myself anymore.

Let it go. Release it. Let it. Live.

Notice the divine glimpses of Elliot—his frequent e-scribbles across the sky. Focus on ways to carry the pain and the joy of loss together. Recognize the memories as floating tufts of white cotton but live in the now. Good and bad, let them drift in and out of my mind without getting stuck. Align with the organic rhythm of the universe. Continue writing through the fog—not by retracing every step but by embracing every moment.

And like another Elliot—T.S. Eliot— wrote, maybe this is the most meaningful lesson of seeing the place for the first time.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets, 1943

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I have not been on an Artist Date since about 1995 when I dove into Julia Cameron’s transformative self-help book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Creativity. It was “a spiritual journey of creative recovery” to help self-defeating artists get out of their own way and build the self-confidence to create. It was very “how-to” with lots of self-assessment exercises and a daily journaling practice called Morning Pages. I loved it. That’s not unusual. I tend to embrace fancy, new concepts like Velcro, but the execution often gets stuck. In this case, some things just take time, as I am finally scratching my writing itch after 30 years of telling other people’s stories.

So, here I am, taking an online “summer school” writing workshop with one of my favorite writers of all time, Anne Lamott. She was one of my first memoir-writing idols. Her rapier wit and articulate heart have helped me laugh through life’s most torrential tears. My late friend Carol Crittenden, who died suddenly about a year ago, shared my love for Anne Lamott. We devoured every book she wrote, plus we saw her speak at Arts & Letters Live in Dallas. We even shook her hand. Carol and Anne have been prominent threads in my life’s well-worn ruana.

Speaking of accessories, back to my artist date. As part of our homework, we were instructed to take ourselves to a place outside of our regular routines. For some reason, I thought of NorthPark Mall in Dallas. I suspect it was a wink from my mom with endorsements from Carol and Elliot.

Present and Past

I walked in the Neiman-Marcus side door at 2:30 pm on a Friday.

The NorthPark lot was packed. Where did all these people come from? As my ex-husband, Max, used to opine, “Don’t these people have homes?” Or jobs? The world is such a befuddling place. We have “summer Fridays” at my current employer, a healthcare software firm, which means we can leave at noon if “all our work is done.” Still, I had a pinch of that “naughty-girl/playing hooky” feeling. When will I ever shed that?

I had not been here in years to shop. Maybe for a film or restaurant visit here and there. But it had been a major destination in my formative years. When I recalled Ray Nasher’s spectacular world-renowned art collection housed there, it seemed like the perfect choice. However, I knew the place’s vibe had shifted dramatically over the past six decades, evolving from Woolworth’s and Penney’s to Gucci and Prada. The brand pedigree far exceeded mine.

As one of the first enclosed, climate-controlled shopping centers in the nation, NorthPark Mall opened in August 1965 in a then-adolescent Dallas, where the trappings of success were essential. I had arrived four years earlier, also in August. From day one, it was one of my dazzling artist-mother’s favorite destinations.

She elevated shopping to an art, and NorthPark was her retail Metropolitan Museum. I remember shopping all day at stores like Young Ages, Casual Corner, and Lord & Taylor, lunching on broth, popovers, and strawberry butter at Neiman’s Mermaid Café. Saturday shopping was my mom’s favorite recreational activity and one of the only times she spent alone with my sister and me. That might be why NorthPark holds the same kind of nostalgia others feel about home.

Yes, there was a time when I loved getting lost in a day of shopping, but it doesn’t hold the same appeal today. Maybe it’s my age, COVID, the proliferation of online options, or anxiety associated with grief, but I have lost my shopping muscle memory. This is a way I have radically changed since Elliot’s death in August 2018.

I was a new version of myself.

I continued to occupy a kind of liminal space between the before and the after. The in-between. It’s hard to believe that I was the same girl who bounced from Titche’s (which became Joske’s, then Dillard’s), to JCPenney’s, to the Melody Shop, to Spencer Gifts, and then to Orange Julius for a frothy citrus whip.

Getting Acquainted

I wandered past the sparsely filled designer racks and checked a price tag on a sleeveless purple floral shift dress – $1,525. Yowzah! I kept walking. Riding the escalator down, the flashes of memory were almost blinding as I descended into a sea of glass cases filled with precisely placed shiny objects. From tiny handbags to jewel-encrusted necklaces, it all felt like an anachronism—a vestige of another time and era— complete with salespeople wearing their bemused ennui like designer masks, as they scanned the meandering crowds for signs of interest.

Alas, the Elizabeth Arden makeup counter was long gone, replaced with elite brands and concoctions I didn’t even recognize. That was always the first stop, where my mom would banter with Mercedes, her favorite “clerk,” as she called her back then. Mercedes had jet-black hair swooped up in a tall French twist, red-orange lips, and hammered-silver earrings that dangled from her lobes like Christmas tree ornaments. This was my mom’s Saturday ritual.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Cushing (that was her painting name), I have your lipsticks ready,” Mercedes said. “And I would love to come to one of your art classes sometime.”

“Absolutely, would love to have you. How about the Tuesday afternoon class?” my mom offered. Melissa and I sprayed each other with cologne.

“I will see if I can get off. Thank you,” she said, packaging up three “Fuchsia Shock” lipsticks my mother purchased.

Eventually, my mom met her husband, Spider, who offered to teach her Spanish. They all had dinner and drinks often, sometimes with my father, but he preferred to work on his projects in the garage.

Though I set out on my date for the Nasher art collection, the memories were overwhelming me, ambushing my attention with every step. I was ripe for them though, as since Elliot died, I have been a spiritual antenna, poised to receive every sign, synchronicity, and wink.

I felt like I existed in a different dimension or on some parallel plane.

The Main Event

Just then, I turned, and Roy Lichtenstein’s Two Cups snagged my eye, nestling in the large urn of perfectly pruned greenery. The bright, hyper-cartoon-style highlighted the often-subtle role of negative space in a not-so-subtle way. It was all about the presence of the absent. How profound and appropriate.

Plus, on some level, Lichtenstein’s whimsical work was a metaphor for the whole mall. It was the juxtaposition of the crowded river of humans flowing past the all-but-empty luxury stores. Couture, too haute to touch. An interesting paradox. Strange to see the chicly clad salespeople wandering around aimlessly in their carefully curated containers, many just checking their phones. Ah, the brave new world.

I thought of all the stories that the pristine cream brick walls and the perfectly manicured planters could tell. Then, I arrived at the iconic center fountain next to Dillard’s, but much to my chagrin, found only a tattered handmade sign that read, “Closed for Repair.” The faded, blue-tiled basin was dusty and dry. No sparkling multicolored lights shimmered under the translucent surface. No towers of wet, white astonishment rose and fell like dancing pylons that would rival the Bellagio.

Moving on around the corner, my senses shifted to wafting scents and aromas—like pungent sachets strung on the necklace of time. I sniffed, savored, and sneezed on the sensory journey. Fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies; earthy waves of patchouli tinged with vanilla; a cloying floral haze of rose and gardenia; something like tuna salad and dill pickles; woodsy, tobacco-laced leather, the kind you have to be slightly wicked to wear; the ripe, not-so-appealing odor of worn, wet socks after a soccer game, and at the end, the appetizing cloud of garlic at Eataly. I had never been, but I decided to investigate the bustling Euro-marketplace.

I sipped a cold, fresh lemonade as more pre-Prada memories streamed back, like the sewing classes I took in 1974 at the Singer sewing machine store, complete with a fashion show in the middle of the mall. I clearly remember walking the runway Emade of folding tables in my sleeveless red shirtdress with fake gold buttons. My mother never sewed a stitch, but she was happy I did. She said with a chuckle, “If I learn how to sew, someone might expect me to do it.” She said the same thing about typing.

Now and Next

After the next turn, I came to a looming red steel sculpture in one of the larger spaces at the new end of the mall. I could almost see Elliot in his pressed purple shirt playing Feliz Navidad with his Booker T. Washington High School combo. There was a pianist in space that day, and his rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon filled me to overflowing. The grief moment seized me like a tidal wave, and I could not contain the tears. Pain and joy together. I sat quietly and let them flow. Though my artistic path has been circuitous, I had given birth to two brilliant artists, “Leonardo da Vincis.” Ian’s work was alive and evolving in computer gaming and visual art, and Elliot’s would live on in the gorgeous memories and scattered glimpses we will continue to cherish.

I’d never experienced NorthPark like this. I thought of how different shopping was with my boys, too—in and out, like surgical strikes, and no interest in wandering or meandering. H&M and J. Crew on sale. That was it. They embraced their dad’s name for NorthPark: “Kraphtron,” NorthPark spelled backwards. He was not a fan.

I had come full circle.

Indeed, there was so much magnificent art, but it was the metaphorical “negative space” that made all the impact—noticing what was uniquely mine to see, experience, and feel between the lines. This date was less about art and more about the mosaic of memories that defined my muse. It was a date I didn’t expect, in a place I had known for years, but that day, came to “know for the very first time.”

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets, 1943

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Shannon, a bright young woman at work, lost her father in a tragic diving accident several months ago. He appeared fit, and his mastery of the reefs was legend, adding to the shock of her unexpected loss. Since his death, we have quietly supported each other in our grief as we navigate our oddly avoidant work culture that is bereft of emotional intelligence and interpersonal glue. I am still incredulous about a recent interaction Shannon had in the elevator with one of our C-level executives:

“Shannon, you seem off,” the self-possessed C-suiter observed as the double doors glided shut. “You're not your usual sunny self.”

“Well, um ... uh, my father died suddenly last month,” she replied.

“Oh, cheer up,” he quipped. “Don’t you know that the longer you grieve, the longer it will take for your father to get to heaven.”

She was stunned and distressed. She felt the breath leave her body. “Well, it’s been hard,” she said, tears welling. Then, the doors opened, and she dashed toward the building entrance in the cold marble lobby.

His words were disturbing on so many levels. He had managed to minimize her feelings, demonstrate empathic failure, make an inappropriate assumption about her spiritual beliefs, and say something insensitive about her father—all in one sentence. And he was a top-level manager talking to a subordinate.

“I am speechless, and I ache for you, Shannon,” I said as I hugged her. “I can’t believe he said those words. I am here for you.”

In that moment, I felt compelled to gather my thoughts on how to support the grievers we encounter every day. There are so many shattered hearts to comfort in these endlessly chaotic times, particularly in my home state of Texas, with the continuing aftermath of such overwhelming floods in the Hill Country. We must be intentional with gentle care. The weight of this tragic loss is beyond all comprehension. My heart is still breaking, and I pray our gift from the Elliot Everett Wright Tsundoku Fund will join others in supporting those struggling through this catastrophic event. Our family’s most personal glimpse of Guadalupe grace is Mo-Ranch, a sacred place in the lap of the Hill Country, where Elliot, Ian, and I spent more than a decade of summers with our First Presbyterian Church family. As I wrote to a friend, the ravaged river road that washed away in the raging deluge was like a vein to my heart.

What an enormous loss. So many children gone, and so many parents heartbroken. When you lose a child, there are no words that can help. Period. It’s an agony that exceeds the capacity of language. You are a raw nerve that winces with the everyday pain of just being in the world, knowing the gaping hole in your soul will never be filled. This aggressive truth accompanies you everywhere, no matter what, sometimes like a small pouch attached to a cross-body strap and other times, like an unwieldy 250-pound metal trunk without wheels or a handle.

Almost seven years since my Elliot’s unexplained motorcycle accident in Dallas, grief does not define me, but the out-of-order loss does. The threads of his absence, like the contrails I see him scribble across the sky, are sewn into the fabric of my being. As the years pass, I am gradually allowing myself to notice occasional glistening threads of grace peeking out of my messy weave. They sustain me. They hold me. Together. And whenever possible, they include Elliot’s brother, Ian.

Still, I’m uncomfortable when people glide and skim over the razor-sharp edges of everything that matters, minimizing the awkward and gut-wrenching moments in favor of the illusion of ease. It’s called “dishonest harmony.” Like an acid eating away at the foundation of our relationships and emotional health, it can occur with casual acquaintances and those closest to us. It’s one of Western culture’s favorite survival mechanisms.

Though 24/7 empathy might be a high bar for anyone, we can make the effort. You never know where the landmines are hiding. For instance, a new coworker might innocently ask, “How many children do you have?” Over time, I have become more accustomed to this question, but it still cinches my chest, flooding my brain with what to say, how to say it, or whether to say it at all. It’s like having two or three people arguing inside my head:

Oh, no, Elaine, don’t bring the mood down; you don’t have the energy to get into this right now.

Oh, just say: Two boys, one in Austin and one in Heaven.

Go ahead and tell them. They’ll get it. I hope. If not, I can keep things moving.

I don’t feel emotionally safe with this person. I will decide when the time is right … later.

All of these thoughts bounce across my head like a carousel of reels on my Facebook feed. No option is ideal. Nothing feels right, but I have to choose. Something.

Mostly, I have found that my relationships with other bereaved mothers are my refuge. Though we are members of a club no one wants to join, the connection brings unspoken comfort like no other, a profound understanding of how everything has changed. Like Leonard Cohen said, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Our stories are as healing as they are crushing, but sharing them keeps us functioning on our worst days.

Finding the words may seem difficult in our grief-averse, get-over-it culture, as evidenced in my cringy office. We don’t practice social dialogue around death, so it feels uncomfortable and cumbersome. We continue to default to the perfunctory I’m so sorry for your loss. Why are you apologizing for my loss? Plus, I think “sorry” feels flimsy. It’s a word you say when you accidentally buy the wrong kind of ice cream, but it’s better than a disturbing cliché or aphorism. So here goes. This list is by no means comprehensive, and it’s full of contractions, but then, so is grief. It’s the ultimate amalgam of life and death. Let’s start at the top:

1. Nothing

Say nothing at all. This might seem counterintuitive, but just be. It’s about being present, in the moment, now. That’s all. In the now, there’s no regret in the past and no fear about the future. It’s a hug or just sitting on the couch and watching The British Baking Show in silence. I think this is the ultimate comfort in grief, like the ancient mourning practice of sitting shiva in Judaism. You don’t have to offer cookies or tea or say a word. Be there. Present. Allow the pain to live and breathe without fixing, evangelizing, entertaining, cajoling, or minimizing. The divine is in the spaces between sentences.

2. I am here. I am with you.

Saying I am here gives voice to the above. This response ranks high on the list. Grief guru David Kessler says, “Grief must be witnessed to be healed.” This is profound witnessing. Let the grief be. Breathe or sob. I am here. I see you. I hear you. I am here for you. I am here anytime, day or night. I am here when you need to talk or when you don’t want to talk. NO judgement. NO recommendations. This, too, is the power of presence.

3. I want to hear all about Elliot when you are ready. Tell me his stories.

Casual acquaintances frequently shy away from saying Elliot’s name, as do some who have known me my entire life. And sometimes they visibly recoil when I do. Even some close friends don’t mention Elliot because they don’t want to upset me. I am telling you right now that the result is quite the opposite. You cannot upset me. That train has left the station. I love it when someone asks me to share a favorite Elliot memory or offers to recount one of theirs. As a bereaved mother, this reminds me that there is still so much more to discover and learn about life, even in death. These golden nuggets of memory somehow propel me forward. He doesn’t feel as gone—just here in a different way. For a brief moment, the air I breathe is less bitter than sweet.

4. I will never comprehend your pain.

Every grief is different, as unique as every relationship and every loss. Though we may share commonalities in our stories, the essential pain and all its tangled tendrils are our own. Offering acknowledgement of this can be very comforting and healing, like a specially compounded ointment. I can’t possibly begin to know your pain or how you go on. I have no idea what you are going through, but I am here for you in any way I can be. I suppose this is a riff on I am here, verbalizing a layer of compassion.

5. I have no words.

That lets you off the hook to just love. Just acknowledge what is true. You don’t have to fix me or my sadness. You can’t, but your willingness to share it and help me carry for a few minutes means more than you know. Holding space for how I am is the greatest gift, and something like this is never wrong: This sucks, but I’ve got you. A part of me always lives in the nadir of sorrow. Being seen and remembering Elliot are the only salves. He will always live in my heart and in the hearts of all those who adored him, the agony and the joy at the same time, all at once.

I am not suggesting you memorize a script. Far from it, I would like to see us cultivate a greater ease and openness with loss and grief, allowing space for its enormity to expand. My best advice is to show up with an open heart. Recognizing each other’s pain makes this walk together a little bit easier.

We are here on the earth to be in relationship, to be better at being alive in the hardest of times. Megan Devine, another one of my grief gurus, says, “Acknowledgement makes things better even when they cannot be made right. It’s a radical act to allow others pain and sit beside them with it.”

In the end, the only language of grief is love.

And the language of love is presence.

________________________________

VISIT: Faith & Grief to learn about workplace workshops to help normalize the grief journey, such as “Life Skills: How to Manage Grief.”

GIVE: The Elliot Everett Wright Tsundoku Fund

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There is nothing predictable about grief.

It’s a circuitous, often harrowing route, but there are sometimes surprising supernatural winks that can rescue you in a micro-moment. In this increasingly precarious and disturbing world, these glimpses are even more potent than ever.

Yesterday, as I was pouring my morning cup of Peet’s Major Dickason’s coffee, often the best reason to get out of bed in the morning, I glanced at the side of my refrigerator. I scanned the various magnets from Cape Cod to VCA Animal Hospital, a messy mosaic of the life and times as a mom and her “beamish boys.” Bittersweet and beautiful. A large four-leaf clover magnet caught my eye, with its vibrant shades of forest and lime greens, orange, and yellow.

In that instant, I was transported back there, plopped in that horrible day following Elliot’s death almost seven years ago. Suddenly, I was alone in the living room of my old Lake Highlands townhouse, encased in the opaque fog of devastating grief. I was peeling the colorful magnet off the back of Elliot’s work laptop that was inside the backpack he was carrying when he separated from his motorcycle and landed on the hostile ground 40 feet below. Though I still don’t know exactly what happened on that sunny August Sunday, several bike experts have conjectured that the weight of the computer on his back probably contributed to the dynamics of the fall.

“We’ll come to your home to collect his computer this afternoon,” said the Chief Technical Officer at Global Payments, his employer, when she phoned earlier that day. There was a kind yet contained urgency in her voice.

“We are so sorry for your loss,” she added. “I’m not sure what we will do without Elliot.” I felt like I was caught in some contorted spy-thriller version of my life, a parallel dimension where nothing made sense.

Yet I knew I wanted to keep the magnet because it was a piece of Elliot. And Ian might want it. There were other stickers I could not remove. I guess it’s a common practice among cool cyber-geek types to decorate their devices in this way.

“Don’t worry,” she said when she arrived with a large prayer lily cradled in her right arm. “The operating system is all we need. We can return the top if you’d like.”

The dense web of tiny fractures across the black screen reminded me of his fatal impact. It repelled me. However, the colorful magnet was different. It’s his spirit and has adorned three refrigerators since, but in all that time, I never knew what it meant—a Japanese logo, a computer game icon, or some obscure anime symbol?

I never thought much about it, really—until today, now, at 7:05 am on a Friday, almost seven years later. Why was today the day? His brother Ian never mentioned it either, or if he had, I didn’t remember.

I decided to do a Google image search. Elliot, aren’t you impressed with my technical savvy? I chuckled . . . Wow, I discovered it’s an official Japanese badge that alerts other drivers that there is “an elderly driver” at the wheel, 70 or older, who might have slower reaction times. It’s called a Koreisha Mark and is mandatory for drivers 75 and over in Japan, a place and culture he adored with every cell of his being. Kind of like “baby onboard” in the U.S.

Still, I was befuddled. Strange that I had viewed this daily for almost seven years and never questioned it. El, is this a wink, a mischievous nudge? Elderly driver? I don’t get it. He was far from that, but he had (or has) a penchant for irony, a wicked wit. He was decades away from this designation in his living chronology— literally, anyway.

Perhaps, he was helping me understand the murky circumstances of his accident.

Was it a delayed or panicked reaction to that sharp 90-degree turn, exacerbated by road conditions you had never encountered? Were you avoiding another vehicle or reacting abruptly to the unfamiliar camber? Your reactions were not sharp enough?

These were all plausible explanations.

Through my exhaustive research, I discovered that motorcycles are pretty much always teetering on the edge of disaster. The physics of not leaning or leaning too much into a turn, the nuances of counter-steering just so, or the disasters that can happen with over-correcting at the wrong speed due to the centrifugal force... It's horrifying, not to mention the unfathomable vulnerability of navigating one to three-ton vehicles travelling 70+ miles per hour around you on the same road. Too much.

But, thank you for this micro-glimpse, El. This is a new kind of conversation.

Maybe it took seven years to be ready to digest the truth of the random horribleness of this loss that my aching heart will never fully accept. The grief never goes away.

It just morphs and changes on this mysterious journey that feels increasingly like the real-life manifestation of the Twilight Zone that you, Ian, and I used to devour and inhabit together.

That’s where I live every day, in this “middle ground between light and shadow,” where all these surprising synchronicities and glimpses of grace are defining my new dimension of normal and a new kind of relationship with my Mr. E.

Love you always and forever.

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In 2016 and 2017, I wrote posts about Trump on my blog. Amazing how they are still relevant. Here is a update:

Appalled and afraid.

These words describe my current state. I keep trying to come to terms with the abhorrent behavior of our 45^th (and 47^th) president. Violence is escalating at an alarming rate as polarization fueled by toxic hate continues to widen the abyss between our hearts and minds. Though I work daily to find a place of personal peace and serenity, the fear still creeps in. I know it’s all part of “divine order,” but I am struggling to discern any order at all. What could be the silver lining here? What is the gift in this, as great spiritual teachers might ask?

I think it’s about all of us. My core question is this: Why can’t we step up and raise concerns about the president’s mental fitness for the office he holds? Why can’t we question a disturbing, unhealthy pattern of adolescent behavior and hair-trigger anger that he could endanger so many lives as the leader of the free world?

Admittedly, this is not easy terrain to navigate, but mental illness is not an insult or affectation. It’s a disease of the brain. If you have a stroke, like President Eisenhower suffered in 1957, someone hopefully will say, “Hey, something is not right with you. Are you OK? Let’s get some medical attention now.” But with mental health issues, it’s much murkier. There is so much stigma involved, so we don’t speak up. Our elected officials don’t get involved. The condition may not be as immediately life-threatening as a stroke, but it can certainly result in tragic consequences, especially if you are president of the United States.

The narcissist bond

I have been entangled with a series of narcissists in my complicated life, in love and work. So, I have the T-shirt, but it’s a toxic dance of intertwined wounds. My unmet emotional needs were fertile fodder for many a manipulative NARC. Healing is a process, indeed.

Narcissists seduce, ingratiate, self-aggrandize, manipulate, project, denigrate, and exploit because they are desperate to neutralize their own profound inner shame. They have a limited capacity to access their authentic selves. Individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are perpetually looking for external affirmation of an idealized, flamboyant, yet fragile, sense of self. Et tu, Mr. President?

The stigma of “crazy”

We are so uncomfortable discussing diseases of the brain. Feeling uneasy or conflicted, our default is “crazy,” “nuts,” or now―“cra-cra.” This language minimizes the severity of a potentially dangerous condition—dangerous to the patient and to all those they encounter. Such verbiage leaves no room for medically necessary intervention, much less recovery (if insurance will even cover it, that is). In a world where “the overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics . . . and the suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the same period,” we cannot continue to trivialize, mock, or ignore signs of mental illness.

It’s an inside job.

If we elected a man suffering from a malignant personality disorder or an untreated mental illness, we must face the music. He is our mirror. It is time to take responsibility for ourselves and heal our wounds, as individuals and as a country with a complex and challenging past. It’s time to choose authenticity, conscious communication, interconnection, mindfulness, and well-being.

And Trump’s coterie of codependent enablers (flying monkeys) only exacerbates the problem—the Republican party, tech bros with agendas, Project 2025, and the shadowy cabal of ultra-wealthy oligarchs.

The 25^th Amendment offers some remedies, but the act of defining “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” instantly becomes political and complicated in the realm of behavior. In addition, the psychiatric profession is still hamstrung by the 1973 Goldwater Rule―enacted after Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee in the 1964 election, was declared psychologically unfit for the presidency by psychiatrists surveyed in Fact magazine.

Goldwater won a defamation suit against Fact, and the resulting rule still prevents psychiatrists from voicing a caveat publicly without conducting an examination. Unfortunately, this further perpetuates stigma, as well, muffling open discussion of mental illness concerns under a cloak of disgrace. There is probably a middle ground we can explore somehow.

So, from a big-picture, quantum perspective, Trump is here to open our eyes (that have been “wide shut”). Narcissism expert Melanie Tonia Evans counsels that at first, narcissists appear to be the savior of our wounds, but they are the deliverer of them. Maybe it’s time to end the silence, as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is doing in our schools nationwide―empowering our voices to tackle cultural taboos that keep mental illness under the radar and under-treated. We are only as sick as our secrets, as they say, and questioning the mental health of the president in a constructive, supportive way might help lift the veil.

“It’s like trying to wrestle an ape,” says Evans. “Impossible.” And the real reason we do it is because we are trying to soothe our own unhealed trauma by somehow fixing and placating the narcissist. We are assuaging our own concealed feelings of inadequacy, pain, and unworthiness. His grandiose promises attract us like the circus coming to town―filling the darkness of our hearts momentarily with sparkles of validation, cotton candy, and cheesy spectacle—but when the circus leaves town, it leaves us desolate, depleted, and feeling a little sick.

He tells us just what we want to hear―and then, he turns on a dime and crushes us to the mat. In Trump’s case, he calls someone “an idiot,” the world “a mess,” or mocks a disabled reporter. This pumps up his ego and self-esteem. It becomes a seductive, unending cycle―until we decide the healing must happen inside ourselves. That’s just what we must do as a nation.

I am not sure of the answer, but at least we can start asking the questions about the very real behavioral concerns of this unconsciously virulent and externally triggered man leading America. It’s about his health ― and ours.

_____________

From NAMI: If there is NOT AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER but someone is acting irrationally due to his/her mental state, contact your local mobile crisis team. In the Dallas area, individuals may contact ADAPT Mobile Crisis at 1 (866) 260-8000. If someone is acting irrationally due to their mental state and there IS AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER to themselves or someone else, call 911 or 988, the suicide hotline.

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Writing is such an intimate and simultaneously expansive exercise. It’s as immediate as the moment and as timeless as forever. I recently revisited an essay on grief I wrote about three years ago, three years after my son Elliot died. I was profoundly honored when my dear friend and spiritual guide, Fran Shelton, asked to include it in her wonderful book, The Spirituality of Grief: Ten Practices for Those Left Behind. The version in the book was poignant and universal, but when I revisited the piece, I realized the editors had removed references I made to COVID. What memories that ignited, reminding me of how the confinement and anguish of the pandemic must have intensified what was already overwhelming grief. I’m not sure I realized it at the time, and I don’t think that we as a country have fully processed the massive trauma of that prolonged ordeal. These words still resonate today. The grief will always be part of me, just as Elliot will be, but thankfully, the bitter is now allowing glimpses of sweet. Here is the original essay:

I don't live in the wilderness. The wilderness lives in me.

It's not out there. It's inside me. That's what makes living so hard. The problem is grief is so disorienting and isolating — the disconnection from people, places, and purpose. Grief clouds your mind’s eye and scuttles your sense of possibility. Nothing feels right, and neither do you. So many directions, but no place to go. It’s an unrelenting bewilderment — figuratively and physically, together and apart, curious and terrifying.

How could this possibly have happened?

Historically, ambiguity has never bothered me much, but now, waist-deep in the viscous stew of the post-Elliot present, I’m finding it profoundly difficult to figure out where I am in the wilderness. There is no effective grief nav, and this is no ordinary time. But there is no denying the line in the sand. I call it grief’s fault — the deep crevasse traversing the landscape of my psyche, forever dividing the time before Elliot’s death from the time after, seething with the tension of an impending tectonic rupture. It defines two separate lives, two completely different identities — joined by a precarious fracture. And three years into my “after,” I’m still brittle, directionless, and detached from most everything, except this piercing pain in my shattered heart. At least, the icepick quality has morphed into a constant, dull ache. The anguish of this kind of grief never goes away. It just mutates, kind of like the Coronavirus. But I have to believe both will subside in time.

I exist in some sort of distorted meantime, like the Twilight Zone, between the before and the next, the shadow and the light. So difficult to navigate. Erratic directives from the Centers for Disease Control, my surviving son Ian’s bout with COVID, and the chaos of sequestering, masking, and isolating (particularly in the non-compliant state of Texas) is exhausting.

The other problem is that the edges of my life have shrunk into the circumference of a tiny private island — and not the good kind. Having spun myself into a tight emotional cocoon with the steely threads of grief, anxiety, and CPTSD, I question everything, including my professional choices, yet I made some doozies before Elliot’s death. They say you shouldn’t make any big decisions after a major loss, but does that apply to the rest of your life? And as a single, seasoned, anxious mom, I have to make a living and function. It’s a cruel conundrum.

I recently read somewhere that a consistent physical manifestation of grief across cultures is the expansion of the amygdala, the minuscule part of the brain that regulates emotions. In grief, it can grow and disrupt the frontal cortex, which is responsible for logical decision-making. I figure my amygdala must be the size of a cantaloupe. Though I am fully vaccinated and boosted, I just can’t seem to get beyond the pandemic mindset and the paralyzing, pervasive fear of engaging in the world.

My greatest sense of accomplishment typically comes from completing a trip to Target. At least, I am not washing my cereal boxes anymore. Thriving has become irrelevant. So, how do I make sense of such a predicament in this phase of life and this stage of grief, though I don’t buy into the Kübler-Ross stages concept? How do I find a safe place to hang on when the next seismic shift rattles me to the core? Pastors say, “Be gentle with yourself.” That has always been a challenge for me, but I am noticing that grief is gradually teaching me to take better care of myself through this worst of all possible times. To re-parent Elaine in a way. So, this I know — for Elliot’s death, for Ian’s life, and for my fragile soul, I want to figure out a way to live through this unbearable now.

Flicker

Sitting still in the deep

alone—where I am

Is there a place to be?

If I leave space, there is nothing

real to touch, to know, to attach

to anything

but grasping for fleeting flickers

of the present

tense, shining light on

eternity and

the meaning

I find only in writing

my ache,

pulling the thread through

my heart’s break

To see the truth

of now

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