The Greatest Show on Earth

Start by remembering that high school is a circus. The show begins a few minutes before the bell rings, when you notice the car with the TOONCES license plate, as the kids begin to trickle out – stiffly in JROTC uniforms or jauntily in whatever footwear is a la mode.

How to Get Unstuck

This is a piece I wrote for a fundraising event for Little Orange Fish, a local mental health nonprofit. The theme of the event was Feelings Are Real. I wrote this to convey the experience of trying to help someone with OCD, where the feelings are real, but the stimulus is all in your mind.

Emma was born at just under 6 pounds. “A wee girl,” the midwife said, placing her in my arms. The mystery of her smallness had overshadowed my pregnancy. By the time she was four, we had a clinical diagnosis and, at 17, thanks to a gene study at HudsonAlpha, an explanation. The study also confirmed something that we already knew about my husband’s heart.

The Magic of Monday Pants

In the last year that I went to work, on almost every Monday, I wore the same item of clothing — a pair of red, Royal Stewart tartan trousers that I bought in London. I was not there for vacation, but to attend a memorial service for my husband. 

How to Make the Turn

I lost my husband one morning in Costco as we were about to check out. I texted him, then called, then saw him looking for me. We had one of those, “I see you now; you’re walking toward me” conversations. I lost him again that evening when he had the stroke. And again, five weeks later, when his organs checked out one by one and he drifted away from us.

13 Ways to Be One

Shadow selfie taken the morning after Jim’s memorial in NYC

We never saw 13 as an unlucky number. It was the date of our relationship anniversary. In his poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens writes, “I was of three minds / Like a tree.” I have never liked singular or static interpretations of people or events. Grief shatters you. These are 13 ways of looking at the experience of widowhood, as I try to reassemble myself.

The Other Side

I’ve changed the name of this blog from What Would the Wertis Say? to The Other Side.

Illustration from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.

The Wertis was the nickname for one of the cats Jim and I had after college. We had developed his personality (snobbish, neurotic, urbane, high maintenance, needy) and over the years this name became a term of endearment as well as a reproach. But so much has changed in 10 years and so, too, here.

Ghost train

There was a time when my mother-in-law, a psychiatrist, assumed that I was afraid to fly because I kept coming to Chicago by train.

In college or graduate school, my time was cheap and the train was romantic. One could get a little cabin and drink whiskey and have thoughts while listening to “A Love Supreme” and watching the fields, the specter of nuclear power cooling towers, silvery in the moonlight.

Predictive Epitaph

Here lies Rebecca. She was really good with the dogs.

Here lies Jim. He did not want to speak to me about the memorial service.

It’s very much like using a Ouija Board. You have three choices for each word so you can steer the boat all the while waiting for some truth to materialize.

Here lies Rebecca. She has to be a better person.

How to find your feet

The first weeks of reentering life after all the time in the hospital were like my own rehab. Even though I had ideas as to who we were as a family we were really just like Wile E Coyote running through the air before he realized there was no longer a road beneath him. We thought we were still us but we actually have no idea who we are.

Welcome to the Widowhood

The Scottish Widows ads baffled us. It was 1995, which in the UK of yore was still like the ’80s, pre-New Labor, with post-war vestiges and the occasional luxury of a deep bath. And there was a lot we didn’t understand. Scotland, north of us, would be colder and more damp. Being a widow there might be more sad, especially if you could not afford to heat your castle.