Cabin Fever

marriage after loss

In the San Juans

A Note to My Readers on Helping Los Angeles

I married a former Angeleno and my in-laws were from Pasadena. Our late daughter Bailey was a junior member of The Magic Castle. Los Angeles became our second home and many of our friends lost their homes. Going forward, I’m donating and matching all voluntary pledge income from my Butterfly Effect series to the Wildfire Recovery Fund. If you pledge at the annual amount ($60,00) and want a butterfly just reply to this email with your address. Here’s a heartwrenching account on

Small Talk

featuring our friend Lee Ann Daly whose family is among the devastated.

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Last September I gave my husband a sixtieth birthday gift designed for us both. I planned a five-day retreat at the beginning of this year at a thumbnail-sized resort in rural Colorado where we stayed in a snug cabin with no cell service and spotty Wifi. The below-zero temperatures kept the guest numbers low, and we had the place almost to ourselves. Bliss. We explored the surrounding wilderness on backcountry skis, ate indulgently, talked, read, hiked, and played games. And for the first time after a long hiatus, Daniel picked up a pool cue in the lodge and indulged in game after game. It’s a game he excels at then taught our kids to excel at and spent long hours with them competing and talking smack at our pool table. It has been months since I heard the pleasant clack of pool balls jostled by a cue, the thunk on felt. While away we also talked about how to shape and shift our lives after losing Bailey, because you assess your days—every single one of them—very differently after losing a child. There is a wedge in your timeline. Before|After.

Time away turned out to be a strategic move. When you’re mourning, each day at some point holds emotional drudgery, so we have to build in as much light as we can. Cherishing our oldest daughter. Staying creative. Returning to some sort of society. Traveling to see friends. Exploring the outdoors. And perhaps most vitally, seeing each other. We know never to take each other for granted again. Ok, so that still might happen. Like the way I know that Daniel will always reload the dishwasher when I cut corners or how he is our travel shaman, expertly shifting around travel miles to keep us on the move.

I married late and racked up plenty of dating bloopers along the way. As I dated my way towards Daniel I assigned myself a few filters. No Deadheads. Too many tales about that Dead show of a lifetime that you “shoulda’ been there for dude” along with the tie-dye and inside stoner jokes. I avoided sports fanatics after one date decided to dazzle me with his knowledge of baseball statistics. There was a long night with an older “gentleman of Harvard” who wore his alma mater like heavy cologne. He opened the evening by announcing that he made an exception in asking me for drinks since I wasn’t gilded with an Ivy League degree but did come highly recommended by friends of my parents. He then showcased his intellectual superiority with an impressive mansplaining monologue, After a couple of cocktails, he wanted me to learn the words to 10,000 Men of Harvard at his place. Fair Harvard did not hold sway with me that night. No Harvard graduates, please.

But then Daniel came along and swept me off my feet. He was the kindest soul I had ever met and I was forced to relinquish my prejudices. He’s a sports fanatic who rarely missed a Dead show and has an astonishing amount of Grateful Dead paraphernalia. And he’s a man of Harvard whose college friends now feel like family. Falling in love and marrying him seemed a foregone conclusion, and I assumed our life together would slot neatly into place. And for a while it did. Making assumptions is easy, but relationships, regardless of chemistry, need tending because, eventually, rough weather comes.

Hours before Bailey’s death was confirmed I knew she was gone. I am still not ready to write about that bottomless pit of a day, but I can share this. As we were anticipating the worst from two thousand miles away, Daniel and I made a pact— we wouldn’t turn on each other regardless of what we learned, that despite being starved for oxygen, despite being clobbered by shock and anguish and fear and grief we wouldn’t cast blame or play “coulda woulda shoulda” on some endless spin cycle. We knew that statistically losing a child sends many marriages to their demise and that our rock-solid marriage could be thrust into peril.

But we kept our promise. We engaged an excellent grief counselor and showed up for one another. We respected our different approaches to mourning. I sealed myself in from the world frightened that the constant reminder of everyone going about their business would melt me to nothingness like a snowman in a cartoon. Daniel listened to live music with our friends as long as the venue was anonymous. And in so doing he found our music-loving Bailey again and again in the solace of chord, key, and lyrics. We’ve figured out that it is critical to mourn individually and as a unit. Because we both were the co-creators of this electricity, this union of DNA, this amazing human—and we have to acknowledge and celebrate this collaboration and what it meant and means to us together all the while allowing the other to experience their own individual, highly personal grief.

Taking a break in a balmy one-degree

I’ve often been baffled when people claim they don’t change. That’s like saying that rivers don’t carve rocks and rocks don’t become riverbeds. People are shaped by determination, geography, and circumstance. Daniel and I have seen each other change swiftly and irrevocably — we both have new edges while we have left other parts of ourselves behind. Watching and honoring that evolution in one another has pulled us closer. And because we did get married in a fever at high altitude —here’s a a classic. And here’s to us both for not letting the fire go out.