MEANINGMAKER

grief

  • time goes by

    This picture was taken the day my mom turned 75. That was seven and a half years ago now. Four years ago this afternoon, we sat together – my mom and dad and sister and I – in a puke-coloured… Continue reading

  • on longing

    A couple of weeks ago, Richard Gere spent a day just up the street from my City Hall office filming scenes for his new movie called ‘Longing.” It’s an English remake of a critically-acclaimed Israeli film that premiered at the… Continue reading

  • thanksgiving

    It’s overcast at the cottage this morning. It was a spur of the moment decision to come up here late yesterday. One minute we were sitting on the bed folding laundry talking about this year’s brilliant fall colours. Twenty minutes… Continue reading

  • the world still to come

    TRIGGER WARNING: Overdose, Death A friend of my son’s passed away unexpectedly on the weekend from a drug overdose. The cause of his accidental death is not being said in hushed tones, the way it once would have been. It… Continue reading

  • about mothers

    This is the thing about mothers…. Even as a small child some of us will understand that our mothers have secrets. Longings and hidden sadnesses. Silent sorrows and quiet pains. Some of those things will only ever be told to… Continue reading

  • a brilliant wreckage

    I left a brilliant wreckage. A white-hot, smoking tangle of family and love and hopes and forevers, the shatter of which was so great — at least in my mind — that after the words were out, there was no… Continue reading

  • the weight of the world is love

    It’s lunchtime and I closed my office door. I feel sad today. Nothing happened to me. I’m blessed in an embarrassment of ways. And yet, some days just seem to sit on top of me like a stone. The world… Continue reading

  • i’m still here

    She kneels down next to me and presses her palm to the side of my face.The softness of her.Her hands always so warm.She leans close.We stay that way for a minute or two.I’m still here, she says.All you have to… Continue reading

  • the blue house

    A poem I haven’t thought of in some time has been hanging around me the past few days. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s a message. It turned up for me again this week as I was doing some research.… Continue reading

  • lessons from a gravedigger

    I stood at the upstairs bedroom window for a few minutes this morning, watching as a man chipped away at the cold, hard ground, squaring up the sides of a new grave in the cemetery that butts up against our… Continue reading