When I stopped attending my mother’s beloved Catholic Church, I did it on the sly. I was in my early twenties sitting in a pew just blocks from my first adult apartment, aching to live a purpose-filled life. I remember the priest raising his voice. I remember a fist pounding…

(Previously published on author’s blog) I have been dreaming of boats. White sails looking for a shoreline, nowhere to land. My sleep is precious and petulant again. I’ll sleep ten hours one night, then only two. More than once this week, I’ve bolted upright, disoriented with panic in my own…

My father died in this house. So did my mother. The one I am sitting in now, writing this. My father almost exactly three years ago. For months before his death, I’d been back and forth seamlessly to sit with and mark time. Some of the easiest moments of our…

Friday would have been my father’s 83rd birthday. I wonder when I will stop doing that…counting the years he didn’t live? He died almost exactly a year after being diagnosed with cancer. His death accurately predicted by doctors who know about this sort of this. Last summer my mother died…

Two summers before my dad died I was at the pool with my seven-year-old daughter. We’d paid the small college tuition to join in the hopes that our kids would do swim team thus solving perennial “our kids need more exercise” and “what are they going to do all summer”…

This morning I “ran” the stairs at the National Cathedral (I’m 46 and pretty out of shape. Do we really further need to address the quotes?) If you follow my Instagram (meghan.riordan.jarvis) you know I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Bishop’s Garden since quarantine began. The National…

It’s possible I wasn’t the average new mom. The middle of six children, I’d been a babysitter since age ten (I know, it was the 80's). Also a nanny, camp counselor, pre-school teacher, elementary school teacher, Children’s National Medical Center ER staff, psychotherapist, and holder of two advanced degrees in…

There is a dumpster on the side of my parents’ house filled with fabric. Reams and reams of my mother’s handmade curtains. I put them there. I threw them away. Well, I threw some away. In my third trip across the lawn tossing away the hours of her life, my…

“When does Mike get there?” I stood in my parents’ garden/garbage shed on the phone with my oldest brother. The only spot on the property with cell phone coverage when it rains. “He’s coming back from Paris. I think he’s on a plane, now.” Silence on across the proverbial wire…