The conversational tone of this dances through the dark of it. Those “anyway”s— the way they thread these funeral beads of dead humans, selves, names, furry animals, and those empathy dead-end cul de sacs that the speaker has to turn around in while trying to go to a funeral and just exist. It makes me think how funerals are really for the living- the dying is already done. It makes me think of all the new starts in a life after so many kinds of funerals. I can’t wait to come back and sit with this. And that sounds like my kind of date. 💜 thanks so much for this.
as always emily, your read opened up doorways i didn't even know were there in my own words. thank you for empathy dead-end cul de sacs. you are welcome to come back to these words anytime, always <3
I lost my mom and my only sister within a year of each other, and I am still trying to learn how to grieve. Thank you for these beautiful words, for the normalcy within the chaos, for the memory of who we are to everyone and who they are to us. I remember trying to decide what to wear to my mom's funeral, and I ended up picking something that was so strangely not representative of me. I'm still trying to figure out why. XO
Katrina, losing your mom and sister in the same year sounds brutal. You don't say when it was, but in my experience (my mom died 46 years ago) the grief levels out so it doesn't feel present every minute, but when it gets triggered, it's even more powerful.
My mom passed in 2021 and my sister in 2022, so it’s still pretty fresh. In that same time frame, I lost an uncle and a cousin and my job. And that was all a couple of years after my divorce. I think I’m still trying to get my sea legs back. The grief still comes in waves, and I’m doing my best to ride them. <3
that is a lot of waves for any person to ride. i will light a candle for you, and for your loved ones who are no longer with us.
there was a period in the last few years i was describing to my mom how i felt like i was caught in the break, where every time i'd get my legs under me another wave would come and knock me back under. something about water feels so true to that experience, the disorientation, not quite knowing where the sky is, not quite knowing if you'll be able to breathe.
anyway, i'm glad you're here and grateful and have so appreciated the glimpses of beauty and art you've been able to share with the world through it all
Sending So, So much love to you.♥️ I have had many close losses in succession recently, with more on the way, sooner than later to be sure. I offer you solidarity & witness in what often feels like chaos to me too. Billie’s words were a such a beautiful comfort to such tender places.
katrina <3 thank you for this. we only exist within the context of our relationships and who we are to the people we love, loss and grief are so deeply destabilizing because of that. maybe some day i will read the poem that comes from those funeral clothes, in the meantime sending you so so much love
Billie, I first want to say I am sorry for the loss of your Uncle. Death has been circling me like a cyclone for 4 years now. So I also want to Thank you for this tender piece. Your writing is so deeply human & takes my breath away for the way you just tell ‘the thing’ honest & true; no matter how sucky, hard, cruel, agonizing, or beautiful.
Your specific rendering of precise details places us right there with you as you are trying on your aunt’s fur, (the one with the “sharp tongue & strong hands”) noticing her wrist, or watching your step-brother, who “stood like a rock in the church doorway.”
You make us feel the weight of all the ‘not fitting,’ the trying, ‘the unmitigated disasters’ (though they were not lacking in care to be sure)…
And THIS:
“I am mothering someone else’s toddler—
because she couldn’t and i thought
maybe i could—and he is a deep well
of need—like her and me and all of us.”
This Most pulled my guts out & made me look at them…especially the “and I thought maybe I could” part. Thank you for this. Thank you.
colleen! thank you for this close and thoughtful read. and for your kind words. i am sorry for the circling cyclone and hope maybe this space, these words, trying to share the things are they are might offer some connection, some thing outside (or inside) of all that chaos to reach for. so glad you are here.
Oh, me too- So so Glad & Grateful to be here.♥️ And for your words. Your words, & the words of others are little worlds for me to enter into, feel a part of, be held in, grow from. And so much more.
As I’m reading your mom’s post for today I am struck by her offering of “aboutness” for your piece. And of course I saw this- but what I realize today is how what we see, or see most clearly; what jumps out at us is so often a reflection of our own stories- a mirror held up.
The way I pull out what I see as the weight ‘not fitting,’ the trying, the caring (& yet still- ‘unmitigated disaster’). I see today how I chiseled & plastered this together to make a sculpture that reflected me. And most especially that of mothering a child full of need- with emphasis on “thinking” I could.
Anyway, just acknowledging my imposing my own meaning making on your creation here. Which, having been in the WITD space a while now I realize is not unique to me. Our … ‘goal/hope’ (I don’t want to say ‘job’ tho some might) is to have a reader “Feel” something. They will do so if we have as writers, but this doesn’t mean it will be what we felt precisely, for they will draw from their own well.
Anyway- Thank You. Your piece, you, your Mom, this space here, make me feel And are growing me- this working together that my “thinking” brain & my “feeling” brain are getting to do, while not intended to be therapy, are indeed therapeutic in the truest sense.
This is so beautiful and heartbreaking Billie. Thank you for sending it to us today. The photo of you in Marshalls is a perfect accompaniment. And Z personifies the sentiment in the first funeral, "can I just get out of here?" I just finished The Part that Burns and was wondering who Lillian was. Now I know! Glad you reclaimed/renamed yourself.
thank you christine <3 and oh yes!! that's me :) hahaha. a little easter egg for everyone who reads that book to try and figure out who i became. or already was. as i told my mom when i was choosing to shift names, i loved and will always love the name lillian so so much, but like the little critters in the ocean i needed a new shape to fit in to keep becoming
How refreshing that you talk about the things that matter on your dates rather than skirting around humanity. Perhaps if we all learn to do that we will get closer to mending the wounds our culture carries.
This is an excellent essay and poem Billie. Excellent is a lame word because it’s all encompassing but I say excellent and mean haunting and beautiful and reaching and soul stitching.
This poem took me to so many places, thank you. I remember parenting my friends (not well) and parenting my children, adopted and otherwise. I always felt inept and confident at once. I loved your line about z’s needs… like all of us. Yes, that is truth. Great piece!
thank you for reading & for these words joanell!! i totally get feeling oddly confident and inept all at once. but tend to believe that trying anyway is all we can ever really do. xo
Funeral clothes are so hard, aren't they? You capture so well how there is so much expectation of all kinds, clashing with a desire for some kind of comfort, and that there's nothing like death to make you think about how you want to live. My husband, step-daughter, and I unexpectedly needed funeral clothes last week while visiting his family across the country. We had not packed for a funeral. She thought she needed something very specific, and I found myself saying, "I'm wearing something that maybe isn't what I'd normally think is appropriate, but it's not inappropriate, either." And we all decided that was good enough. That, plus your writing here, has me thinking this little lightbulb moment might shed a good light on all kinds of things.
"fragments, thought of and forgotten and distracted. And at the core of it mothering so many ways." i love that you noticed this because i wrote it in real time on my notes app with Z on the floor between getting snacks and playing Thomas the train, so it was not super intentional but deeply true.
love you lots, lindsey. was just remembering doing cartwheels on the beach with you the other day while cartwheeling with Z. <3
I am a mirror to your writing practice - Wyatt is crawling now so I’m typically adding a few lines here and there while he’s exploring dog hair or that one random blueberry under the oven. And I totally haven’t tried to do a cartwheel after labor - End of year goals. 🙌🏼 such great memories.
so much meaty life in these words. the Marshall’s changing room, trying to make funeral clothes work, parenting, sitting on the grass on a date, the little thread of gender. thank you for sharing this, Billie. ❤️
The timing of this post is perfect, Billie. I was a youth pastor about a decade ago. One of my closest kids, now a man in his twenties, died last week from lung cancer. He was diagnosed recently, started chemo and the treatment killed him. All very suddenly, all shocking to those close to him, including me. Your poem reminded me how giving time and space to grief is not something I do well. I get caught up with the other complexities of life like going to Marshall's. But your observation is right on, his energy continues to ripple. I'm talking to people I haven't kept in touch with for years and reconnections are being made because of his energy. You wrote a beautiful poem, Billie and I'm going to sit with it for a while. Thank you.
thank you for sharing this. and for your attention & your words. grief is strange because it is mostly forced to exist right next to and inside of everything else we have to do all the time. but the energy keeps rippling, keeps shifting & changing us and everyone in ways we'll never fully know. i'll light a candle for your friend & all those who loved him.
In the really big universe sized picture of things, I believe we are all connected. Coincidences appear to us as coincidences because of the limitations of our human condition, but deep down I wonder about coincidences--do they exist or does everything have a purpose?
I love how you are able to make a sad poem so beautiful and full of life. The details! The title! The wall of windows and the yellow couch. My stepbrother...stood like a rock in the church doorway. ...and he is a deep well of need... So rich. You make it look so easy. xoxo
The conversational tone of this dances through the dark of it. Those “anyway”s— the way they thread these funeral beads of dead humans, selves, names, furry animals, and those empathy dead-end cul de sacs that the speaker has to turn around in while trying to go to a funeral and just exist. It makes me think how funerals are really for the living- the dying is already done. It makes me think of all the new starts in a life after so many kinds of funerals. I can’t wait to come back and sit with this. And that sounds like my kind of date. 💜 thanks so much for this.
as always emily, your read opened up doorways i didn't even know were there in my own words. thank you for empathy dead-end cul de sacs. you are welcome to come back to these words anytime, always <3
I lost my mom and my only sister within a year of each other, and I am still trying to learn how to grieve. Thank you for these beautiful words, for the normalcy within the chaos, for the memory of who we are to everyone and who they are to us. I remember trying to decide what to wear to my mom's funeral, and I ended up picking something that was so strangely not representative of me. I'm still trying to figure out why. XO
Katrina, losing your mom and sister in the same year sounds brutal. You don't say when it was, but in my experience (my mom died 46 years ago) the grief levels out so it doesn't feel present every minute, but when it gets triggered, it's even more powerful.
My mom passed in 2021 and my sister in 2022, so it’s still pretty fresh. In that same time frame, I lost an uncle and a cousin and my job. And that was all a couple of years after my divorce. I think I’m still trying to get my sea legs back. The grief still comes in waves, and I’m doing my best to ride them. <3
that is a lot of waves for any person to ride. i will light a candle for you, and for your loved ones who are no longer with us.
there was a period in the last few years i was describing to my mom how i felt like i was caught in the break, where every time i'd get my legs under me another wave would come and knock me back under. something about water feels so true to that experience, the disorientation, not quite knowing where the sky is, not quite knowing if you'll be able to breathe.
anyway, i'm glad you're here and grateful and have so appreciated the glimpses of beauty and art you've been able to share with the world through it all
Sending So, So much love to you.♥️ I have had many close losses in succession recently, with more on the way, sooner than later to be sure. I offer you solidarity & witness in what often feels like chaos to me too. Billie’s words were a such a beautiful comfort to such tender places.
katrina <3 thank you for this. we only exist within the context of our relationships and who we are to the people we love, loss and grief are so deeply destabilizing because of that. maybe some day i will read the poem that comes from those funeral clothes, in the meantime sending you so so much love
Billie, I first want to say I am sorry for the loss of your Uncle. Death has been circling me like a cyclone for 4 years now. So I also want to Thank you for this tender piece. Your writing is so deeply human & takes my breath away for the way you just tell ‘the thing’ honest & true; no matter how sucky, hard, cruel, agonizing, or beautiful.
Your specific rendering of precise details places us right there with you as you are trying on your aunt’s fur, (the one with the “sharp tongue & strong hands”) noticing her wrist, or watching your step-brother, who “stood like a rock in the church doorway.”
You make us feel the weight of all the ‘not fitting,’ the trying, ‘the unmitigated disasters’ (though they were not lacking in care to be sure)…
And THIS:
“I am mothering someone else’s toddler—
because she couldn’t and i thought
maybe i could—and he is a deep well
of need—like her and me and all of us.”
This Most pulled my guts out & made me look at them…especially the “and I thought maybe I could” part. Thank you for this. Thank you.
colleen! thank you for this close and thoughtful read. and for your kind words. i am sorry for the circling cyclone and hope maybe this space, these words, trying to share the things are they are might offer some connection, some thing outside (or inside) of all that chaos to reach for. so glad you are here.
Oh, me too- So so Glad & Grateful to be here.♥️ And for your words. Your words, & the words of others are little worlds for me to enter into, feel a part of, be held in, grow from. And so much more.
As I’m reading your mom’s post for today I am struck by her offering of “aboutness” for your piece. And of course I saw this- but what I realize today is how what we see, or see most clearly; what jumps out at us is so often a reflection of our own stories- a mirror held up.
The way I pull out what I see as the weight ‘not fitting,’ the trying, the caring (& yet still- ‘unmitigated disaster’). I see today how I chiseled & plastered this together to make a sculpture that reflected me. And most especially that of mothering a child full of need- with emphasis on “thinking” I could.
Anyway, just acknowledging my imposing my own meaning making on your creation here. Which, having been in the WITD space a while now I realize is not unique to me. Our … ‘goal/hope’ (I don’t want to say ‘job’ tho some might) is to have a reader “Feel” something. They will do so if we have as writers, but this doesn’t mean it will be what we felt precisely, for they will draw from their own well.
Anyway- Thank You. Your piece, you, your Mom, this space here, make me feel And are growing me- this working together that my “thinking” brain & my “feeling” brain are getting to do, while not intended to be therapy, are indeed therapeutic in the truest sense.
This is so beautiful and heartbreaking Billie. Thank you for sending it to us today. The photo of you in Marshalls is a perfect accompaniment. And Z personifies the sentiment in the first funeral, "can I just get out of here?" I just finished The Part that Burns and was wondering who Lillian was. Now I know! Glad you reclaimed/renamed yourself.
thank you christine <3 and oh yes!! that's me :) hahaha. a little easter egg for everyone who reads that book to try and figure out who i became. or already was. as i told my mom when i was choosing to shift names, i loved and will always love the name lillian so so much, but like the little critters in the ocean i needed a new shape to fit in to keep becoming
1) sending you so much love
2) I hope to read everything you write. 🩵
How refreshing that you talk about the things that matter on your dates rather than skirting around humanity. Perhaps if we all learn to do that we will get closer to mending the wounds our culture carries.
This is an excellent essay and poem Billie. Excellent is a lame word because it’s all encompassing but I say excellent and mean haunting and beautiful and reaching and soul stitching.
Thank you. Be well.
oh thank you donna! i love talking about the things that matter (especially with people i don't know particularly well). wishing you well too <3
“something cracked inside of me while
some stranger was telling me something
and all i could think of was my dad as a boy”
This poem took me to so many places, thank you. I remember parenting my friends (not well) and parenting my children, adopted and otherwise. I always felt inept and confident at once. I loved your line about z’s needs… like all of us. Yes, that is truth. Great piece!
thank you for reading & for these words joanell!! i totally get feeling oddly confident and inept all at once. but tend to believe that trying anyway is all we can ever really do. xo
Funeral clothes are so hard, aren't they? You capture so well how there is so much expectation of all kinds, clashing with a desire for some kind of comfort, and that there's nothing like death to make you think about how you want to live. My husband, step-daughter, and I unexpectedly needed funeral clothes last week while visiting his family across the country. We had not packed for a funeral. She thought she needed something very specific, and I found myself saying, "I'm wearing something that maybe isn't what I'd normally think is appropriate, but it's not inappropriate, either." And we all decided that was good enough. That, plus your writing here, has me thinking this little lightbulb moment might shed a good light on all kinds of things.
"We had not packed for a funeral" is a great line that tells a whole story in and of itself. thank you for reading & for sharing rita <3
Thank you for this Billie, I’m so sorry for these losses and the date sounds super meaningful and strange and lovely…
I love this line - all i could think of was my dad as a boy
And I love the fur scene and the wrists. And maybe most I like the - and and, and then anyways lines.
… as if it’s all being sorted and remembered in tiny fragments, thought of and forgotten and distracted. And at the core of it mothering so many ways.
"fragments, thought of and forgotten and distracted. And at the core of it mothering so many ways." i love that you noticed this because i wrote it in real time on my notes app with Z on the floor between getting snacks and playing Thomas the train, so it was not super intentional but deeply true.
love you lots, lindsey. was just remembering doing cartwheels on the beach with you the other day while cartwheeling with Z. <3
Haha so many distractions! I see you.
I am a mirror to your writing practice - Wyatt is crawling now so I’m typically adding a few lines here and there while he’s exploring dog hair or that one random blueberry under the oven. And I totally haven’t tried to do a cartwheel after labor - End of year goals. 🙌🏼 such great memories.
I hope you bought that outfit. You are beautiful in it.
To imagine our energy ripples is so lovely, but not quite enough.
You are right there with your tender sensitive self.
This poem is hypnotic for me.
ha! i did buy that outfit. well, i actually bought different pants but then i went back the next day to exchange them for these pants.
thanks for reading, and for these words. i'm glad mine reached & hit on something for you.
so much meaty life in these words. the Marshall’s changing room, trying to make funeral clothes work, parenting, sitting on the grass on a date, the little thread of gender. thank you for sharing this, Billie. ❤️
thank you for reading, lindsay. xo
Perfect
The timing of this post is perfect, Billie. I was a youth pastor about a decade ago. One of my closest kids, now a man in his twenties, died last week from lung cancer. He was diagnosed recently, started chemo and the treatment killed him. All very suddenly, all shocking to those close to him, including me. Your poem reminded me how giving time and space to grief is not something I do well. I get caught up with the other complexities of life like going to Marshall's. But your observation is right on, his energy continues to ripple. I'm talking to people I haven't kept in touch with for years and reconnections are being made because of his energy. You wrote a beautiful poem, Billie and I'm going to sit with it for a while. Thank you.
thank you for sharing this. and for your attention & your words. grief is strange because it is mostly forced to exist right next to and inside of everything else we have to do all the time. but the energy keeps rippling, keeps shifting & changing us and everyone in ways we'll never fully know. i'll light a candle for your friend & all those who loved him.
Thank you so much, Billie for your loving kindness 🙏
I wrote a hermit crab last night in which Marshalls appears. Coincidence?
LOVE
(geeking out on synchronicities like this is one of my favorite things)
In the really big universe sized picture of things, I believe we are all connected. Coincidences appear to us as coincidences because of the limitations of our human condition, but deep down I wonder about coincidences--do they exist or does everything have a purpose?
I just love this piece. So well written and impactful.
thank you so much for reading!! & for these kind words toni <3
I love how you are able to make a sad poem so beautiful and full of life. The details! The title! The wall of windows and the yellow couch. My stepbrother...stood like a rock in the church doorway. ...and he is a deep well of need... So rich. You make it look so easy. xoxo
vanessa! <3 thank you for reading, and for these kind words! it is such a gift to have this community to share with