Susan McCorkindale

It was Wednesday of Holy Week at about four-thirty in the morning, and I was where I always am at four-thirty in the morning: at my desk trying to crack myself up. I subscribe to the Mel Brooks school of humor which says, "If you laugh, they're going to laugh"...

Rumor has it that other people talk about the actual deaths of their spouses. And I mean specifics about the day, the night, the morning the person died. The sticky, sweet smell in the room, the way the light from the baby monitor glowed red and relentless on a table...

Every morning I wake up around four or five, haul my butt out of bed and make coffee. Then I pop this little, "All Natural!" purple pill that makes my brain buzz and my stomach forget the house has a kitchen (not to mention a pantry stocked with enough junk...

I can't remember the exact date I took my wedding rings off, which bothers me because I remember in minute detail the exact date (time, place, what I was wearing -- white comes to mind) when I put them on, but I know it was sometime late last summer when...

My younger son, Cuyler, is leaning in the doorway watching me make my bed. For a second I consider turning on the mom charm and saying, "Don't just stand there young man. Get in here and help me!" but the fact is, I don't need help making half a bed....

"They look awesome, Sue," said my friend Marc when I stepped out of the dressing room of the Levis store in Soho in a pair of Demi Curve, dark rinse, straight leg jeans. I glanced in the mirror. They looked ok. I squatted down. No plumber's crack, and they didn't...

My son was away at school four days when the phone call came. It was his counselor, and she wanted me to know that he wanted to go home. Me too, I thought, flashing on my mom's house and her full fridge and how I can put on ten pounds...

A few weeks ago, I woke up at three in the morning and scared myself silly. Not because of the time; I have the internal clock of a rooster, so I'm used to getting up in the wee dark hours. What I'm unused to is turning on a light. Don't...

We had a couple of hours to kill before the Giants game one Sunday, so I took the boys to look at houses. Not because we have to move, we don't. Our five hundred acre farm is owned by family, so we can stay as long as we like or...

It rained buckets the day of my husband's memorial service. I'm talking the kind of teeming, driving rain that whisks animals, neglected toys, and lawn furniture away, the kind of rain that soaks you to the skin, corkscrews a pin straight, pricey blow-dry, and sucks your Michael Kors pumps straight...

According to the experts, and by that I mean the expert, renowned psychiatrist and author Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Five months into the grieving process myself, and five months into helping my two sons get through it too, I...

My twelve year-old son, Cuyler, and I are standing in the wine aisle in the Food Lion in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It's eight o'clock Sunday morning, and he's in a bathing suit, flip flops, a tee shirt that reads: "New Jersey. Only the Strong Survive," and a New York...