Birthday. Not Birthday.

I wouldn't want to do the math wrong and make a mistake about how old he'd be today, so I pull up the calculator on my laptop just to make sure. Noah was born on September 23, 1988 so today he would be 28 years old. Without ritual it's hard for me to remember his exact age. When you take away the cake, singing, presents, dinner out and the old Scooby Doo birthday banner; the marking of another...

Member of the Tribe

It was a hotel with one thousand rooms, but even in that expanse, recognizing the bereaved parents was easy. We were the worried-looking people with name badges on blue lanyards and big photo buttons of our kids. Though we didn’t pack them, Mike and I had our big Noah buttons by noon the first day of the conference. A volunteer assembled the buttons onsite with a hand-operated button machine....

Tolerance of Grief

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of Noah's death. I admit, the pain of his loss isn't as acute as it was seven years ago. But still, when I think of him, I can feel the tightness in my throat and my eyes start to burn. And I think about him every single day. That's the reality of this kind of loss. The grief hangs on and on. It's become a part of me. As much as I am a writer, a runner, a...