Category: Recovery

The text message hit like cannon fire from close range. I crumbled to the ground, holding my stomach. It was an early morning winter in the kitchen of our Brooklyn apartment. My wife and two kids came running. “What’s wrong?” “What happened?” “What’s wrong?”

What happened? What was wrong? Mike O’Shea was going to die. And I’d be introduced to a grief that would cripple me for many years.

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I like to think that Mike and I had been friends since before we were born. Not in some other life, but in the wombs of our mothers who were neighbors in a small New Jersey town, and both expecting in the summer of 1968. Our mothers had not been close prior to pregnancy — of different generations and ethnic backgrounds — but they bonded over pregnancy and both gave birth to boys in the first week of July. Continue reading Losing My Best Friend: A Pain Without Name

Sprinting down a crowded New York street is inherently cinematic. More than once, I’ve imagined myself on the big screen while running to catch a bus. Secretly, I love the hustle. Moving faster than those around me, looking harried and focused, is a way of silently communicating what I’d never say aloud: Look at me! I’m going places! Watch me pass you by!

October 2013, approximately four years ago: I’m clomping down Sixth Avenue, weaving through the Midtown after-work crowd, my water bottle and empty Tupperware clanging together in my canvas tote. I’m en route to a mediocre Chinese restaurant to talk about death with a bunch of strangers, and I’m running late, as usual. But running late to a Death Café feels like a hackneyed metaphor, a body in motion a painfully prescient reminder of the end destination. Continue reading The Grief Competition: My Time at the Death Cafe

When my sons were little, I would tell them, “You are my left arm and you are my right arm.” Then with one on each side of me, either walking holding hands or snuggling on the couch, I felt whole. Now, as I literally face an empty nest — as I right now stare at the walls and empty chairs of a nearly empty house — I’m enraged at how quaint and inadequate the term is. Empty Nest. It’s more like no arms syndrome. It’s as if the two things that kept me afloat and alive in this cold world are gone. It’s a deep, physical loss. I feel broken, not whole.

When I was thirty-five I thought, this would be the time to have a third child. My sons were seven and five. We were out to dinner, a favorite restaurant, and I looked at my oldest boy, a very precocious, verbal and sensitive child, who I had somewhat of an intense relationship with: we are very alike. I asked him, “If I had another child, I’d pay less attention to you and that might be a good thing, right?” He looked straight into my eyes and gently answered, “You don’t pay too much attention to me. I like how much attention you pay to me.” And that was that. Two sons. My left arm and right arm. I didn’t need a third arm. Continue reading The Grief of an Empty Nest: No Arms Syndrome

The title of this article is a lie. I don’t actually know how to survive. I don’t even know if I have.

As of this writing, my mom died less than three months ago. I found out she was sick on the first of April; she got her cancer diagnosis twenty days later. She lived for five weeks after that.

At one point — after diagnosis but before death — I sat in the bathtub after a long day keeping vigil by my mom’s bedside, noticing the chipped remnants of pink nail polish on my toes. When I had put that polish on, I didn’t even know she was sick. Continue reading How to Survive When A Loved One Dies

Note: If you are in a life threatening situation call +1 (800) 273-8255 or use these resources to get immediate help.

Day 1

I was 24 when Adam died. We were both 24. I had a missed call at 3am on my phone from my old roommate in Albuquerque, Eric. My boyfriend Chris dropped me off at my apartment early in the morning so I could get ready for work and I listened to the voicemail as I walked in my front door. Eric sounded distraught. “Call me back,” was all he said. So I called him back, even though it was 5am where he was.

“Our friend, Adam,” he said, choking through tears, “he’s gone. He killed himself.” Continue reading A Decade of Grieving