Four Weekends and a Funeral

by Ellie Palmer

“They don’t tell you…the worry doesn’t go anywhere when they’re gone, you know. I don’t think it’s supposed to. Your children hand it to you when they’re born and you carry it with you until the end.

So many emotions want you to just sit and feel them until they go away. Guilt demands action. You have to atone for it. It tells you exactly what it wants from you. Sadness doesn’t do that. At least it doesn’t for me.”

“Thin Mints in the freezer,” Adam says. Despite his rants on the Girl Scout business model—What kind of company requires adults to engage in financial transactions in Target parking lots with children, Alison?—he keeps a stash ready for me at all times.