Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
By Toni Lepeska The coronavirus pandemic has elicited a new catch phrase – “stay safe.” I hear it on the telephone with doctor’s offices and in text messages from friends. It has replaced “take care,” “see you later,” and “be careful.” How essential is safety? Where can we find it when our world has been …
The loss of a loved one is difficult enough but what often follows are impossible questions, bitter anger and self-accusatory thoughts that nag us with what ifs and should-have-dones. What lifts us out of the quicksand of such a situation and puts us on the path of healing? What puts lingering questions to rest and …
Grief forces us to start over. It forces a huge start over. And then there are the smaller start overs in life. That’s where I am today. It’s scary. It’s uncertain. Starting over also is full of possibilities. Full of new opportunities. Full of growth. I invite you to come with me. For the past …
I thought I needed to get around people. What I needed was to be alone. I’m a loner of sorts. A homebody. An introvert. I was raised by a woman who left the house only two or three times a year. When the stay-at-home orders came down amid COVID-19 fears, I thought “I’ve got this.” …
We hear the phrase slip out of the lips of well-meaning friends at funerals – and we hear it now that a pandemic seeds fear and anxiety into our hearts and lives. But what does “God is in control” really mean? First, what it does not mean? It does not mean God sets out to …
The coronavirus is messing with the ways we grieve and mourn. All over the news and all over the country, we’re hearing about social distancing – and funeral services aren’t excluded despite their cultural and emotional importance. In America, funeral directors are staggering events like visitations or wakes to minimize the number of people in …
Daddy was my first Valentine. Superman was my second. I cleaned out my parents’ house after their deaths and found a baseball card-type picture of Superman. I’d scrawled inside a cartoon bubble “I love you.” I spent the next four decades looking for a real, huggable Superman. For a man to sweep me up and …
Are you in the winter of the soul, a season of darkness and barrenness? Maybe you wonder if there could ever be a spring again. January is cold, even here in the South. The trees are bare. The ground is hard. The grass is pale. Life is asleep. Sometimes my inner life looks like the …
Are you an adult orphan? I’d never heard of the term until I became one – and felt like one. I read it in a book somewhere. I then realized others had felt the same way as me. I identified with the term though my mother was still living. Why? Because with my father’s death, …
