Loss

Some of the ways we can navigate through life’s inevitable sadnesses.

Four (Same-Sex, Half-Jewish) Weddings and a Funeral
Winter 2009-2010
by Susan Goldberg
The author’s unconventional wedding plans get less conventional as she lets her mother, fighting breast cancer, take over the planning.

Feminist Funerals
Summer 2009
by Amy Stone
Understanding the existential power of these ultimate rituals, visionary women are now taking control, engaging with traditional practices while creating new ways to mark this final lifecycle event. Baby namings for girls, egalitarian weddings and divorces — these you know. But what makes a good funeral? And why does it matter how you memorialize a woman? Rabbis, funeral directors and feminist icons weigh in on how to revise this ceremonial passage.

My Mother’s Secret Drawer (Coming soon!)
Spring 1994
by Gloria Goldreich
After the funeral, Mama’s four daughters meet to open her secret drawer, excavating layers of her life: Mama’s first public library cards, letters home from camp, maps to family gravesites. One daughter takes home Mama’s white silk scarf—she’ll never wear it, but she’ll sniff it now and then, searching out the mother scent.

Over My Dead Body… 
1980
by Sibyl Cohen
How the funeral prayer diminishes women.