More Than Four Sides

Category: Parents

  • It is easier as the years go by, but I still miss him…

    It is easier as the years go by, but I still miss him…

    Today was my father’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death in the Hebrew calendar. He died 42 years ago, accidentally, at the age of 44. Two more years and he will be dead as long as he was alive. That will be a strange milestone… Every year, near the end of December, I get email…

  • Refugees and immigrants

    During my run this morning, I listened to Reveal – The Smuggler.  It was a fascinating story about a french reporter, Raphael Krafft, who gave assistance to two Sudanese refugees and helped them cross into France.  The story is harrowing, and at times heartbreaking, and, as often happens to me when I’m hearing stories of people…

  • Gone, 34 years…

    I’ve been absent from this virtual space for awhile.  My last post was in October and it was prompted by the book club I belong to (From Left To Write).  And, prior to that, I was posting from Sierra Leone. This month, January, is the month that my father died, 34 years ago.  My daughter was…

  • The Black Lagoon

    What a great image – the Black Lagoon. Maybe something like this image?  It communicates darkness, the foreboding, the potential danger.  It also signals the idea of Isolation, which the agoraphobic mother in the book If I Fall, If I Die suffers from. When I and my sister were growing up, our years followed the…

  • The smell of new linoleum

    I walk into the hospital complex where I work through a new entrance, which opened just a few months ago.  It’s a lovely entrance, with a security desk.  It’s of a grand entrance – a foyer – with a lot of photos of benefactors who funded this new building creating an impressive mural lining a…

  • “The love of a dead person counted, too.”

    What would your answer be if someone said to you, in all earnestness: “I really wanted only to know how you are faring?  Whether you are happy? Whether you are loved.  The rest is immaterial.” What would your answer be? At various times, I can claim to feel loved.  More often, though, I feel unloved.…

  • Dining with the enemy

    There are those times when we have to go out to a meal, usually at a restaurant, or sometimes in the context of a party, when we know that we will have to spend substantial time with people that we would never choose to have as our personal friends.  Examples: evenings out with the spouse’s…

  • The Anarchist Soccer Mom: Thinking the Unthinkable

    The Anarchist Soccer Mom: Thinking the Unthinkable. I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy,…

  • “I’m going to kill myself”

    No, I’m not suicidal. But my mother is. It’s sort of socially acceptable to have your elderly parent call you and complain about chest pain, or back pain, or even severe dementia. But, having a severe mental illness and wanting to end your own life? Not so socially acceptable. My sister and I have been…

  • An intense read

    January First I ended up staying up until past 3am on a weeknight to finish reading this. It hit too close to home on too many levels. My sister and I grew up with a mother who continues to suffer from severe bipolar disorder, which has robbed her of so much in life. Like Janni,…