Browsing Tag

death

Writing

When Death Happens, Nature Welcomes You.

Since my grandmother’s death, I’ve found myself wanting to immerse myself in nature for many reasons.

First, I want to escape my daily routine — to get out of my head, which has become a very manic place— and second, because I want to be surrounded by life. To hear the conversations amongst birds and prairies dogs. To watch the deer, and the bighorn sheep, and the elk scavenge for food, mate or relish the sun. To see the leaves turn from a morbid brown to a thunderous green. To watch the Western flowers burst from beds of dirt and parched grass.

This want has brought me all over the valleys and peaks of Colorado as of late, with trips to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Flatirons of Boulder, the mesas of Golden and the red rocks of Colorado Springs.

Leading up to now, my view had mostly been of hospital walls. My grandmother — my dear, beautiful second mother — had been ailing back home in Upstate New York, and I wanted to see her as much as I could. A broken hip in August (more…)

Film, Hipstercrite Life

Remembering the Past In Order to Truly Appreciate the Present

I wrote this last month while visiting home. It was a difficult one to write. Did a lot of reflecting…

As the plane descended over the familiar lush landscape that is my hometown, several emotions reacquainted themselves with me. Feelings of joy, sadness, fear and optimism alternated dance steps in my brain.

“Where has all the time gone?”
“What will the future hold?”
“What happened to all the people I loved who have passed?”
“How can I keep moving forward?”

These are questions I don’t ask myself anymore. They’re only questions raised when provoked by the sight of my past, which is something that happens irregularly since I moved away from my home and family eight years ago.

In our attempt to live a fulfilling adult life, it’s often easy to get caught up in the minutia and forget what you’re thinking, feeling. To forget where you came from.

This last trip home wouldn’t let me walk past the flowers without perking my senses.

I was picked up by my beautiful and cheerful (more…)

Hipstercrite Life

Everything Dies, Baby, That’s a Fact.

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Maybe it was the lyric or the couple of glasses of whiskey I drank earlier in the evening that kept pushing me deeper and deeper into the car seat. Hitting the back button on the stereo, I turned and gazed out into the blurry night every time Springsteen sang those words. I closed my eyes and felt the warm rush of tears as I thought about where his spirit was now that his body is gone.

What happens to us when we die?” I blurted to my boyfriend as he drove us home from the memorial service. I was a child again, hoping that someone could give me a direct answer on this thing that looms over all of us.

He began answering matter-of-factly, the sort of answer one without a religious upbringing gives. Like me.

But I don’t want to believe that I’m not sure what to believe.

We sat two rows behind her. The widow of the young man who died so sadly. The sight of her petite shoulders occasionally (more…)