Toni Lepeska
When a Parent Dies
Would someone please tell church leaders not to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to every woman as she arrives for worship service? Please tell them they need a new script for the grieving. My mother is dead, and I am not a mother. And I am not alone in feeling left out by that welcome at …
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 …
With the sanctuary lights up and the pastor in the pulpit, they stand. They tower above me like a forest. A forest of women. I am small. An unimportant insect. Applause breaks out. It isn’t for me. It has never been for me. This is perhaps the most difficult moment of Mother’s Day. It is …
I discovered the homemade Mother’s Day card inside a box of her things and read what I’d written at the bottom as a young teenager. “If I didn’t have you what could I do?” Indeed, I told myself, sitting in her house among her things, This is the question I’ve lived with since she died. …
