Tuesday, April 25, 2017

New Essay on "Widow Confidential"

I’m very pleased to have a personal essay posted on a new site, Widow Confidential, designed to help widows navigate the journey of grieving after losing their spouse. My piece is about figuring out where to bury my husband after he died young and unexpectedly. (Which reminds me: do your loved ones know your after-life wishes…and are they written down?)

Here’s the opening:

My first husband died of a heart attack when he was 37. With an unexpected death, often no plans are in place: no will, no list of songs for the funeral, no cemetery plots pre-purchased. Making arrangements is not scrambling for paperwork tucked in the back of the drawer with the bank statements. There are loose ends and hard decisions to resolve during this time of emotional crisis.          All I had to go on was remembered casual conversation about after-death options we’d had during ten years of marriage….




(People sometimes ask me if I left things out of THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST. I didn't necessarily leave this out--but I decided I couldn't write about this incident fictionally, so I guess that's a different form of "leaving out.")

Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.