There's a room in my mind, behind a strong, locked door. A room full of memories and loss. A room made for grieving. A room I'm not ready to enter. Not just yet.But that door, it beckons me. Irresistibly. Everyday thoughts, images and sounds bring me rushing towards it, and in an instant I'm standing before that door, hand gripping the doorknob, turning...and suddenly I realize, with a rush of fear, that this is the door I cannot open. The door I will not open. The door behind which the demons lurk. Every time my children do something remarkable, horrible... More »

I've spent a lot of time lately looking at pictures, old and new, mostly of my Mom at various stages of her life: in childhood, as a young adult, as a young mother, and throughout the years of my own and my sisters' childhoods and coming of age, until the photographic record chronicles my mother's three daughters as we ourselves became mothers, and she a grandmother - a time too short; too soon over.As I look through the photos, I pause often. I pause to smile, to weep, to remember.I pause to talk to her again. To tell her I... More »