Claire Bidwell Smith

It occurred to me the other day that I really haven’t talked much about my second book here. At one point last year I made a conscious decision to remain quiet about it for a while, at least until it had fully taken shape, but that time has already come to fruition and I’ve been Read more…

Welcome to Excerpts from the Ether. Every Saturday I’m going to be excerpting a letter from a reader (with their permission, of course) and featuring them here on my blog. Something that has always stood out to me about grief is how lonely it is. When you’re going through the loss of a loved one, Read more…

I received a long email from a close friend of my mother’s today. She’s just finished reading my book and had a lot to say. The passage that really struck me, and that also made me incredibly sad was this one: The last time I saw your mom was in St. Joseph’s Hospital, right before Read more…

Welcome to Excerpts from the Ether. Every Saturday I’m going to be excerpting a letter from a reader (with their permission, of course) and featuring them here on my blog. Something that has always stood out to me about grief is how lonely it is. When you’re going through the loss of a loved one, Read more…

Dear Mom, Today marks 15 years since you’ve been gone. I’m devastated by that number. I can hardly bear to think about how many millions of times my cells have recycled since I last saw you. Can hardly bear to conceive of all the ways I’ve changed and grown since you knew me, your daughter. Read more…

It’s looking like we are going to put our oldest cat down on Monday morning. She has been sick for a while, but has really taken a turn in the last couple of weeks. I’ve had Lily since the week before my sixteenth birthday, which means that this past May she turned 17 years old. Read more…

A couple of months ago I wrote about my friends Ron and Ken, a couple I had the privilege of meeting just before I moved away from Chicago. Ken died just days after I left and I’ve been following along through email and via Ron’s blog to see how he’s been doing. This week in Read more…

I wrote a letter to my mother last night, something I rarely do. Letters to my mother have always been reserved for once a year on January 24th, the day she died. But last night, late and tipsy after an evening spent with girlfriends, I tapped out a letter to my mother. It wasn’t the Read more…

I’m grieving today. Harder than I have in years. My grief is triplefold, some fresh, some new, some surprising, some not. I can feel it spreading through me and I want to reach inside myself and pull it out, like you would scarves from a drawer. I don’t want it, this grief. It’s too familiar, Read more…

After my father died I found myself living alone in his condominium in Orange County. The days following his death were lonely ones. After having lived with him for so long it felt impossibly strange and disquieting to come home to those rooms by myself. I turned on music and opened the patio doors to Read more…