From Beyond the Grave
The ancients mourned in ways we simply cannot imagine. Their dead passed out of life leaving little to nothing behind. Grieving people make jewelry out of hair or ashes and…
Essays
Don’t be a TOOL
“TOOL is just Radiohead for Juggalos.” This is, to date, still the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to my face about my tastes. But it wasn’t the first…
Murder-Suicide Blues
Of all the people I might have predicted would go out in a murder-suicide, my husband’s grandparents who were a happily married LDS couple in their nineties with (not exaggerating)…
Death of the Druid
Niagara Falls is still a perfect place to commune with nature. Yes, it’s kitschy. Yes, everything smells wet. Yes, it’s overrun with tourists (I was there during a national cheer…
Death Husband Club
I got married when I was young and stupid, and ended up divorced. Tale as old as time. Before that, I got married when I was younger and even more…
Why Funerals Make Us Horny
It’s not easy to talk about. It might seem ghoulish or macabre. It might even make you feel like you’re disrespecting the dead. But it’s not just you. A lot…
Prayers in the NICU – Thoughts on Child Mortality & Parenthood
It’s 2003 and there’s a baby in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, at Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. He is very small and there are sensors attached to his…
The Ghost in My Fifth Grade Class
Juan Carlos was always sick, but we didn’t know what that meant. He had a special breathing treatment machine in the school nurse’s office. It wasn’t like the inhalers some…
Never Leaving Las Vegas
When my grandmother died, she loved three things: scotch, soap operas, and gambling. It’s hard to write a eulogy for someone nobody really liked, and embarrassing to describe someone’s life…
Put On Your Black Lips and Dance the Blues
There are two kinds of black lipsticks in the world. There’s the kind you buy because it’s Halloween and you’re going as Wednesday Addams, and then there’s the kind you…