My Stay with the Sisters doesn't have a season

I wrote My Stay with the Sisters to explore and express how I felt when my Mom lost her battle against pancreatic cancer in April 2022. In my book, Grief and Gratitude are the titular sisters. Their personifications are inspired in part by Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet from Practical Magic (thank you Alice Hoffman, Stockard Channing, and Dianne Wiest).

Grief and Gratitude are well-meaning. They are well-skilled in mourning. And sometimes they are so ridiculous that you cannot help but laugh when they try to help you. They are the big hug you never knew you needed.

The premise of the poems is that Grief and Gratitude have a house with rooms and spaces that correlate to certain emotions people may feel when they lose loved ones. For me personally, I spent a lot of time in the Rage Room and Kitchen. I hadn't realized how angry I was about losing Mom until I read the Rage Room's poems out loud for the first time. The Kitchen's poems triggered nostalgic, warm memories centered around family holiday meals.

At the end of the book, when it's time for readers to end their stay, Grief and Gratitude offer a goodie bag that includes a key to their house, with an invitation to return. Their house will always be available if and when you need to visit them.

I thought the book would help others find community. It was my hope that readers could see themselves visiting Grief and Gratitude, and they could explore the different rooms that correlated with where they were in their loss journeys.

I also thought My Stay with the Sisters would have its season. I wrote the book, celebrated its pages, connected with readers, raised some money for pancreatic cancer research (because F Cancer), and said goodbye to its poems.

Funny thing is, I keep returning to the book. Especially when Grief shows up in the weirdest places to remind me the pain of profound loss never really goes away.

I had a dream the other night where a house phone rang. When I picked up the phone's handle headset, it was my Mom. She said, "We haven't talked in a while, so I thought we could catch up."

It felt so real that jolted myself awake when I heard her voice. I was so damned angry that I woke up from that dream, full well knowing I couldn't call her. It was a harsh sucker punch to the gut she was still gone. (Apologies to those who had to interact with me that day. I was pretty crabby.)

I know of others who dream and talk with their deceased loved ones regularly. My husband is one of those people. In the time I've been with him, he's lost his mother, his sisters, and his childhood friend who served as our best man at our wedding. He lost his dad well before we started dating. He has shared with me conversations he's had with them during his dream states. I am grateful he finds solace in those moments.

My sister shared that she's been visited by tiny yellow butterflies that have brought her comfort after losing Mom.

It's felt like Mom dreams and visitations have not been the case for me. Since my Mom has passed, I've only had one other dream where she was present and engaging with me, and she was irritated by my driving.

I felt jilted after hearing her voice in that dream. I would have loved to hear what she wanted to say.

This past week, I watched season three of the show The Bear. There's an episode (spoiler warning) where one of the characters, Sugar, goes into labor. She's having a conversation with her mom about what her mom's experiences were when she gave birth to her and her two siblings.

When I tell you that scene hit me like a thunderbolt, whew.

The tears streamed down my face and a profound wave of sadness overcame me. Not only because those are conversations I will never have the opportunity to have with Mom, but also because I didn't have those conversations with her when she was alive. My husband and I made a difficult transition from trying to conceive to being a child free couple. The pain of seeing others proverbially bump into sperm and get pregnant shut the door on on any of those types of conversations for me. I know some information, but I look back and think about what an idiot I was to not have asked her about the entire experience.

Some people have referred to my experiences of hearing her voice in a dream and watching that particular scene in that show as grief bombs.

For me, it was a reminder to dig out the key and pay a visit to the sisters.

I would love to hear from you. If you're so inclined, please share your experiences in the comments.