Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
I wait in line at the post office until James calls me forward. He offers a restrained greeting despite our connection. He knows who I am, but he’s in work mode. All business. I step up to the clerk’s counter that he’s stooped over. We make eye contact as his gnarled but muscular hands await …
I’ve really just been clinging to God lately. I’ve been really aware of my weaknesses. It’s an uncomfortable admission and an uncomfortable experience. We want to be strong. But we’re not. Illness does a great job at making a person humble. I don’t know about you, but half the time I walk around thinking, “I’ve …
I’m accustomed to feeling all sorts of colliding emotions with grief – anger, depression and even regret, but shame was a new one on me. I didn’t even know what to call it when I experienced it. Do you ever feel shame within the context of your loss? My dictionary defines shame as “a painful …
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 …
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 survived the yard sale without any major kick from grief to my insides. I’m not sure whether to celebrate that fact or bemoan it. The absence of grief is in itself a grief. I snapped a photo of my father’s fire engine red tool box at the feet of the buyer. I took other …
I squealed and talked into the camera. A selfie video. I was going to take the calculated risk of being drowned in an endless ocean to do what my father had done. To follow his footsteps. Are you afraid? I am sometimes. I was afraid after my father died. I was afraid of a life …
Where do daddies keep their daughter’s handmade birthday cards? Or brochures of sports games they attended together at her college? May I suggest they keep them in their filing cabinets. That’s where I found the ones my father kept. He stashed old utility receipts there, too, and appliance manuals and sermon notes and photo copies …
Writing is a pretty isolating endeavor, but I’ve learned that while I sit in in front of a computer all by myself, I do not write alone. And so I want to thank you, my readers. In the past two weeks, the number of followers to this blog has doubled. Others are readers but are …
