遺物整理：逝者已矣，但愛無歸期

How do we talk about the loss of a thing for which there is no word? The lack of a word implies that it was never anything. It was never real. But here I am in my kitchen and the height of a child is marked on the doorframe. Here I am in my living room and I am still finding Nerf darts behind the couch. There it is, evidence of my love. My pain. I

When another friend had a miscarriage, we brought her a basketful of treasures, including some Japanese paper for writing goodbyes, some rose oil and beeswax candles for a ritual bath, and wildflower seeds to plant in memory of the life that briefly visited her. These small but symbolic items invited her to befriend her loss, to be in conversation

I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families. How many are thinking of them as they bring their trays back from the different stalls. If they’re eating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food. Which ones weren’t able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years? Which ones are like me, missing the people who are

“To remember somebody means to put them back together and to hold them within ourselves. As everybody knows—or will come to know—people who you can’t live without die, and you keep living. But once they’re dead, they can be with us all the time.”

I told her about an essay by the poet Donald Hall, who, in his eighties and anticipating his own death, felt a resurgence of grief for his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, who had died many years earlier. Hall’s grief was compounded by the realization that his wife would not be there to comfort him at the end of his life as he had been able to comf