Connie Schultz: In a Season of Grief, I Turned to Home Improvement

[demmiblue]

On the first evening of July, I learned that my only brother had killed himself. Three weeks later I turned the age my mother was when she died. She has been gone for 20 years, and I have dreaded this benchmark for every one of them.

This is not an essay about that grief or even that anxiety.

This is a story about what came next.

I spent the summer alternating between mourning and guilt, framed by surges of disbelief. This is common after the suicide of a loved one, I have learned. Twice, 20 years apart, we had intervened in time to rescue our brother. The third time, we were too late. What could I have done differently? How had I missed this? Would I ever be able to think of him without feeling the weight of how he died?

Then the leaves started to change. On the first evening in September, I said to my husband over dinner, “We need to come home to signs of hope.” Sherrod is a U.S. senator in the Trump era. He did not need to be convinced. He had no idea what I had in mind, but he was heartened, I later found out, to see his wife smiling again for the first time in weeks.

https://www.glamour.com/story/in-a-season-of-grief-i-turned-to-home-improvement

What a thoughtful and wonderful read. Connie and Sherrod are such good people.

[Botany]

1. "We need to come home to signs of hope."

[lark]

2. Love her and her husband so much.

[malaise]

3. That was so lovely

Thank you. We either try to recover or we too die literally or figuratively.
When dad died mom and three of my siblings went to an all day function for him, but I refused to attend as political protest. I tore down the house from start to finish and cleaned it - cooked dinner and laid the table with a fancy table cloth and all the silver and chinaware that was usually stored away.
When they returned that evening, my siblings were both impressed and delighted, but mom wanted to know why I took out her special occasion stuff. I told her that dad's death was more than a special occasion. I went on and told her she'd better start using it before we removed it for ourselves. Before she migrated to big sister in Denmark she shared it up with all of us.

[Ohiogal]

4. They are Ohio's treasures.

Love them both

[Cracklin Charlie]

5. Too much cuteness.

Blessings to their family.
Walter included.