Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
No two people could be as different as my brother and me, but even if siblings share a lot of similarities, the death of their parents and dividing of an estate can be a wedge between them. I’ve heard numerous stories about money and possessions segregating families into warring factions. Accusations fly like nuclear missiles, …
What is the single biggest component of finding healing within grief, besides expressing it? Embracing the new. Inviting what’s next into our lives. Believing we can love and laugh again. Today is the first day of spring. I hadn’t noticed until I received a life-changing phone text this afternoon, and then I realized the irony. …
What does an unfinished life look like? One way is a half-empty container of Coke. That’s the first encounter I had with an unfinished life. My father had been dead only a few hours. I walked into the kitchen and there was the rest of his Coca-Cola in a sippy cup. It wasn’t the last …
I didn’t expect to take eight years cleaning out my parents’ home. But here I am. I also didn’t expect to feel walls of resistance erect inside of me, blocking my ability – or rather, my willingness – to throw away, give away or pack up their stuff. Propriety dictated I go over to their …
I call July “death month.” My parents died three years apart, both in July. I’ve been through lots of Julys now, and I’ve noticed three ways I’ve responded. I think they can help you, too.
I’ve got a special relationship with stuff, but a professional organizer who visited our church this week challenged my attachment, not only to my belongings but to things I inherited from my parents. Kathy Armstrong lets go of things. I latch onto them with unmatched ferocity. I didn’t recognize the extent of my attachment until …
If you’re wondering what to do with eyeglasses your loved one left behind, I’ve got an option for you. I found a home for my parents’ eyewear, but first I had to tackle the hesitancy of letting go. I’d been collecting the pairs of prescription eyeglasses for years as I found them scattered about my …
Grief is such a common experience, and yet so individual and personal, that we’re bound to step on each other’s toes from time to time when trying to define it, express it and get through it. I thought about this after the Twitter chatter on the deaths of actress Carrie Fisher and, one day later, …
The late afternoon sun beamed down on us through the clouds of the incoming front as my husband bent down on his knee and asked me to marry him. I giggled. “Of course,” I said. That happened eight years ago today on the roof of the historic Memphis Peabody Hotel. What’s a happy …
