Morning Pages 9/11/25

I have entered a new and unexpected season on the celeryforone journey. Two weeks ago, as I worked from my sofa, I received an unexpected and devastating call from my 18-year-old daughter. When her dad did not report to work as usual, she drove home to check on him. When she entered his bedroom, she found him collapsed and already dead on the bathroom floor.

The contours of our lives have changed since then. We feel the heaviness of this sudden loss deeply. The shape of my mothering a new young adult has changed. I am watching, listening, and discerning what needs I can meet. I give myself bonus points if I can do it before she even asks.

I am confronting the reasons we divorced and how I am thrust back into those rhythms I removed myself from eleven years ago. I am washing their laundry. Folding his underwear. Organizing his clothes closet, so it won’t overwhelm our daughter when it’s time for her to sell the house and part with his clothes. I have cleaned out his garage to make it easier for my daughter. I have put meals in the freezer and cleaned out the fridge. I have taken trash bags and excess cardboard home when his curbside pick-up containers are full. I feel anger rise up. I feel exhaustion settle in my bones. I also feel joy accompany my remarkable child as she navigates a living nightmare. I marvel at her sound judgment and decision making as her heart is squeezed in the vice grip of grief. She is crying and laughing. She revels in the stories she’s never heard about her dad. She lit up when she saw our wedding portraits, and saw her young parents before her time. She is moving through difficult moments with strength of character and self-advocacy.

I spot my own journey in her steps. I see where I role modeled grace under pressure over the years when I wasn’t sure she was paying attention. I also see where she is exemplifying how to hold one’s own in the face of conflict and unfairness. I am learning from her too.

Before our divorce, she and I spent a lot of uninterrupted time together. We learned how to be content with each other’s company. Her teen years brought some heart-breaking distance, but not strife, so now when we need each other most, we can step right back into the loving, playful, joyful mother-daughter rhythm we developed years ago. I feel the paradoxes of life with intensity right now. Exhaustion paired with energy. Heaviness linked with lightness. A sense that nothing will be the same and how some things never change.

She returned to work today. We clasped hands and I prayed over her. This is awful, and yet, there is beauty in this pain, and I will keep my eyes open for all of it.