Firsts After the Lasts

This was a week of firsts — the kind I've come to know by heart this season. Working through every first after what I hadn't known would be lasts. The knife I reached for was packed. So I reached for my own, the one I had before him. What you put in the ground is never what comes back up.

How Thin the Line Is

Tomorrow, Joshua would have turned 47. He died on St. Patrick's Day, 2023 — suddenly, unexpectedly, the way death sometimes comes. I'm catching up with him now, and I've been thinking about how thin the line is. How suddenly a photo becomes a memorial. How the living keep aging while the dead stay still.