Dear Reader, There's a Still Suburb of Friendship, Community, and Poetry & Praising a Note

By Prageeta Sharma


I'm drawn back to the past in this blog because I just came back from Massachusetts, where I was visiting my family in Framingham. I traveled with Dale's sister Jody Sherrard. It felt good to bring Jody with me because the last time she saw my father and brother was during hospice; we've discussed on the phone over the last several months how we wanted to welcome new experiences together, forging a new kind of assembled family. I think it's what Dale would have wanted.

Reader, I recommend, if it's possible, getting close to your late spouse's sister or brother because you get to see what is familial and what is unique about your spouse through their sibling; and the time spent together, with a kind of consciousness to it, has the potential of feeling enjoyable and reassuring—a way to ease you both through grief and adjust to how you construct yourselves and integrate as you heal together. I sound so self-helpy in this blog. Oh well. These blogs are getting harder to write and I am trying forcefully to hold breezy and hard feelings together. So they become reports—scattered, raw feelings documented with lightness mediating some of it.

Read the full essay on the Poetry Foundation website.

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