Tasbeeh last wrote The Names They Gave Me, which is one of Nicole's favourite pieces.
I.
We don’t have much time to grieve before the guests come pouring in through our door. The news travels fast to all our kith and kin scattered across continents. Facebook statuses and tweets dispatched, emails sent to all appropriate community listservs. Instagram photos treated with a somber filter. Tiny digital memorials erected across the
As I walked into the ballroom of the DoubleTree Hotel in Somerset, NJ, I thought to myself, Is this all there is? Surely this dimly lit room, with its tacky maroon-and-cream geometric-print carpeting and a paltry expanse of parquet flooring for a stage could not have been the competition sphere that my classmates had talked up for months. Surely these three disinterested-looking middle-aged men and women sitting in front of that parquet floor could not…
A few months ago, I kissed my grandfather’s rough-shaven face, told him I loved him, and walked out of his hospital room. I knew I probably wouldn’t see him again, even though the doctor said he might have a few more months to live. My husband and I live with our two small children in central Virginia, and my grandparents live in southern Ohio, about seven hours across the mountains. I saw him a few hours…
I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth? - Louise Gluck, excerpt from Persephone, the Wanderer Spring 2014 The thing about spring is it always comes quick and unexpected. It rolls in thick and heavy like northwestern fog. All of a sudden it is everywhere. Two weeks ago it was winter and bleak. It will still…
Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at advice@the-toast.net at any time. Previous installments can be found here. My dear friend's sister just passed away, suddenly, in her early twenties. They have asked people to keep in touch, but I am wondering what to keep in touch with (i.e., pictures of cats, asking how they are doing, invitations to social stuff?). We are close but…
Previously by Rachel Brownson: Sunday at the Children's Hospital. My grandparents’ living room was almost too warm after the cutting December wind outside, and the Christmas tree blinked pink and gold, ringed with piles of boxes. My cousins and their parents could be heard laughing and bickering in the den downstairs, and as we shed our chilly coats and exchanged the usual hugs, I looked around for my uncle Dave, wondering which version of…
i. In the summer of 2000 John Dobson was well into his eighties when I met him at Stellafane, the world’s longest-running amateur telescope-makers’ convention. He was the closest thing the community had to a celebrity, surrounded constantly by admirers thanking him for his contributions to the field, including his design for a cheap but sturdy mount and his tireless work traveling the globe as an educator. My uncle, a telescope-maker and the reason we…
When I was two my father committed suicide. This is why patriarchal religion was never going to work out, I once joked to my mother, because my family is incapable of telling the truth plainly.
On a Saturday morning in September, 2010, my younger brother Austin took out a handgun I hadn't known he owned, told his wife to call the police, and gave her a special password with which to identify him. "They're coming for me," he said, "but I'll keep you safe." At least, that's the story his wife told us at the time. From there, details get a bit hazy, but the facts are these: my brother…
People say really dumb things about death. A friend of mine once suggested that because my father was difficult, she wasn’t sure I’d be upset about him dying. A friend of my sister’s said she assumed we’d be relieved when our dad died because he was so strict. About six months after my father’s death, a third friend casually asked me over lunch, “Do you ever miss your dad?” as if I probably didn’t. I…
“And if it’s one thing I hate more than prophecy, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.” --Bill Maher
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Sorting Through: The End
There’s more than one way for the world to end. Isn’t that a line from a movie? Some back-alley herald? It must be. It has to be. Or, at least, it should be.
As We Know It
Wikipedia’s incomplete “List of Dates Predicted for Apocalyptic events”…
Welcome to XZV Morning News. I'm your host, Kathy Carson. Our top story today involves a fire on Clark Street - the first fire in the area since Elena's father died. The fire decimated three buildings. Local residents say that the bar, Roadhouse 66, will be sorely missed. When asked for a comment, Elena said that she could remember fires in Chicago before her father died, and that she would discuss them with
Laura Jayne Martin's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
The purpose of a party is to have fun together. What better time to have fun than after you’ve endured an inconceivable loss, the rayless depths from which you feel you may never fully ascend? A successful party takes planning and skill. Whether it’s a game party in a home, a birthday party, a dinner party, or just a
Laura Passin's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
There is a difference between normal memory and traumatic memory. Trauma sears images and sensations into your brain: they are as vivid a year later as 10 minutes later, involuntary so. But normal memory is reconstructed each time you access it: soon it is not the memory you recall, but the story of the memory, and then the story of the
