Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
I found a parking lot and no trespassing signs on the 8-foot-tall chain link fence. Their home was gone. I clutched the wire, pressed my face against it, and hung there like a forlorn child. A piece of my parents I wanted to touch was out of reach. Actually, …
As green leaves transform into shades of yellow, orange, red and rust, I realize grief is a seasonal creature, and I’m faced again with its shifting nature. Winter arrives with the cold hand of death. It takes our parent, our husband, our child, and the landscape of our lives feels barren without them. …
Have you ever felt like a social misfit? The feeling was never greater for me than at the mega church I attended in junior high school. But I’d put that out of my mind until this past weekend. I dressed for comfort and convenience, not for style and statement. I wore my hair straight and …
I dreamed I was a child again, playing with my toys. I feel like a child a lot when I grieve. I even cry out for my “mommy” and “daddy” like a girl who has tripped and bruised her knee. But in my dream my parents were alive, and I was playing with the toys …
Do you dream about your parents? Do your loved ones seem alive again in your sleep? I love dreaming about my parents, but often dreams are uncomfortably instructive rather than happy. Such was the case in 2015. That spring, I was focused on devising a way to articulate for my first book what the cleaning …
Fidel Castro died, and I wanted to tell my mother. You know, she’s dead, too, and whether the Castro news is important to her now, I don’t know. But it would have been important if she’d been alive because she saw his tanks roll into Cuba and destroy her island fantasy. Single, childless and 30-years-old, …
