Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
How do we survive grief? A major component is embracing new things. New routines. New relationships. But we stubbornly resist. We want things the way they’ve always been. Must we discard the old to make way for the new? Sometimes perhaps, but not always. Healing is at its best in the memories that contain both …
I received a message from my parents on their phone the other day. Dad has been dead for more than a decade, and the eighth anniversary of Mom’s death is in July. But I got a message. I’m not talking about a message from beyond. I do not believe we should seek to communicate with …
He called me “doll.” He took me to see the Empire State Building when I was 16. He introduced me to art at the Peabody Museum at Yale. Years later, lying in a hospital bed at a rehab hospital, he told me I was like a daughter to him. But I was his niece. He …
My mother lived a reclusive life, beginning about the time I turned 8. She left the house two or three times a year. Dad did the shopping. But when I got older, Mom ventured out every spring for our sale. It’s the one thing we did together. After she got sick and then after she …
I’m blessed with a lot of space, but many others struggle with finding a space for the things they inherit. Useful things aren’t the challenge. Grandmother’s casserole dish? To the kitchen it goes. But what about the things you aren’t going to use? Things that perhaps aren’t at the top of the sentimental list, but …
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 …
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 …
My first Valentine was my daddy. If you had a good father, you know the tremendous stabilizing influence they provide. While other valentines came and went, my daddy remained. Do we mourn mothers more than fathers? Perhaps it seems so. An emotional umbilical cord links us to them. And yet, when we lose a father, …
I struggled receiving comfort in the idea that my mother was in heaven, even though I believed in the afterlife. And while I am delighted she isn’t suffering anymore, the whole thing for me was she was gone from my side. I believed she gained so much. But I had lost so much. Seven years …
