Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

 The other day I didn't feel grief. It was so strange. It wasn't all day-- it was just for a few minutes, but it happened. I felt, for a moment, whole.  It has been five and half years since Matt's suicide. That's how long it has taken for time to soften this grief. So yes, it's true that time heals all wounds. But, hah. Think of geologic time, pals.  I am happy-- I have amazing things in my life. Cool smart talented kids, kind and loving friends-- I have plenty of rice and plenty of books and plenty of herbs and plenty of beet greens and a rattly old piano that's only missing one string but it's in the lowest octave so it's not too much of a nuisance.  I am happy and I have been breathing grief-oxygen for five years. I am happy and I have been wearing grief skin. The other day, I was briefly free and clear of it. The sun shone through the clouds and I looked around at my life with pleased surprise. Oh! I'm okay! Wow!  Today the normal pain of grief ...

Betty Jo Page Davis, born August 4, 1931, died at home peacefully and surrounded with love on October 23, 2021, at the respectable age of 90. She was a rosy-cheeked farm girl from Pleasant Grove, Utah, who could milk cows and drive trucks and bake the world’s best orange rolls. She was also a polyglot globe-trotting adventurer who could fly an airplane, ride a motorcycle, tame wild horses, and domesticate sullen teenagers. She could wail on the saxophone, hold forth on the viola, and astonish on the piano. She composed poems as gifts and odes as offerings, and the most anticipated moment at every family event was Grandma Betty Jo shyly standing up to read a hilarious and touching original poem scribbled in shorthand on a receipt or the inside of an envelope. Her fanclub is worldwide. Today, people from Maine to Oregon to Hawaii to Germany are mourning her passing, remembering the infinite ways she delighted in the world. She is survived by her sister Margene Page Edwards, who was her f...

There's a particular sensation of falling in love with a work of fiction. It's giddy. It hurts. I remember being a little kid in my attic room, reading as far as Frodo poisoned and lifeless in Shelob's lair, and crying myself to sleep. It wasn't until the next day that I realized, with Sam, that Frodo was still alive.  I wandered through my day at Piney Branch Elementary in a haze, just wanting to go back to my characters-- to Middle Earth, to Earthsea, to the Magic Kingdom (for Sale--SOLD!). My mom and I read The Lymond Chronicles together-- and we'd steal the books and get ahead of each other, and yell and weep about Lymond's self-sacrifice and brilliance, and Philippa's goodness and bravery. That world of 16th century high romance adventure overlay the dull and growing pain of real life. And we finished the last book together right before my mom died.  I reread them all again, in a fugue of escapism, love, and grief.  Harry Potter was the next thing to sn...

You just got the call. You just left the hospital. You just heard. The worst thing. The most impossible, unbelievable, dreadful thing. The thing that only happens in movies, or to other people. Today. You will never forget today. It is the day that cracks your world into before today and after. Nobody needs to tell you. You know this. You know it cellularly. The world is atomically remade. Like a terrible chain reaction, flicking over every nano piece of reality. A tessellation of shock. Nothing is the same as it was, just seconds ago. It could still be a mistake. Just two breaths away, it could be different. Your mind clings to this hope. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe the doctor is mistaken, the car was stolen, the dental records were mismatched. Maybe the police were at the wrong house. Maybe the detective got the lines crossed. Maybe it's a miscommunication. Any second, a call could come-- so sorry, we've got the wrong person! Everything's fine! Only min...

The other night I got a text at 2:30 am. "Jeff just passed away." I couldn't believe it. I still can't. My friend Bridget -- the one who carried me through the worst work of dismantling our lives in Kauai, who has been there for me for nearly a decade of raising babies, nursing, potty training, parenting, homeschooling, working-- her husband Jeff died suddenly of the flu. He was a beautiful man. A hard and lean Portuguese Hawaiian Paniolo-- soft spoken, bright eyes, long white ponytail. Thick pidgin, soft voice, gentle with all the babies, gathering the children into his lap. How can he be gone? He wouldn't show up to a party, but he'd show up to build you a fence or move your house or brand your cattle. He'd work harder and longer than anybody. Life is a little surreal-- the last time I saw him was when he and Bridget had packed up my container with our whole battered dusty lives inside after my own crusty Hawaiian cowboy died, leaving his stunned and b...

Sunday, September 8, 2013 I first heard of Claudia Brown when I was about 8 weeks pregnant and nauseated by the smell of oxygen. I had already had one extremely disappointing visit with an Ob-Gyn out in Waimea (grimy carpets, dead-eyed nurses, and a dismissive and distractingly attractive male gynecologist). I was taking my toddler for a walk along our little gravel road to see the horses (don’t breathe: horse-sweat, hay, grass, animal hair, poop) and feed them papayas (don’t breathe: too pungent, too fleshy, with an overripe kerosene off-gas). We ran into our neighbor and her leaping and spinning three year old, who was tanned to mahogany and naked except for a tutu.   The little girl pointed at her mom’s watermelon-sized belly. “HIS NAME IS POPCORN!” We chatted about birth and doctors and midwives, I told her how much I had loved the midwife-run birth center on the Big Island and how unimpressive my visit to the Ob-Gyn had been. She said, “Oh, you’ll love Claudia,” and dash...