LJ Herman is a former editor at Love What Matters and lives in Colorado. LJ is a concert, ticket and technology enthusiast. He has seen the Dave Mathews Band over one hundred times and counting.
‘Dad needs you! There’s water everywhere!’ I run downstairs, my husband is on his knees under the sink, water gushing all over everything! ‘Where’s the valve to shut it off?’ ‘We need the ‘special key!’
“I run outside, half naked, looking around in the moonlight for this shut-off valve… I throw on some clothes and grab my phone to Google. ‘You had time to put on skinny jeans?!?’”
‘I’m busy right now,’ he said. I describe my 11-year-old as a slug of a boy. He was playing on the laptop, wearing sweatpants, on the sofa, feet on the coffee table.’: Father realizes he’s never been ‘prouder’ of his son
“‘No, you’re not,’ I said. There was a fight, moaning, excuses… the usual. He looked at me with flat eyes, his hood up, shoulders slumped, and said, ‘Why do we have to do this?’ The next day, my wife sent me this picture.”
‘My husband looked at me with tears in his eyes. ‘You have no idea what it’s like watching you slowly die and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ To the outside world, no one knew what was happening to us.’
“After all the years he fought for our country and for his wife, he deserved more than being stuck with a sick wife in a drug coma stuck on the couch. Never in a million years would I have anticipated what would come next.”
‘I see a news report about a child who was abandoned in a parking lot after a woman fled on foot. I immediately recognized the photo of ‘Baby Jenkins.’ It was Tyler.’
“My cousin had actually given Tyler away to this other woman, because she could not handle taking care of a newborn. I was shocked and obviously did not understand the gravity of the situation. I called 911.”
‘While waiting to board our plane, my daughter was being her inquisitive self, meeting and saying ‘Hi’ to everyone she could, until she walked up on this man.’
“This wasn’t a short, little exchange.”
‘He’s really smart.’ I nodded in my awkward parent small talk sort of way. ‘No, I mean REALLY smart,’ she insisted, staring at me with urgency, or something I couldn’t identify.’: Dad recounts son’s autism diagnosis
“Something about his behavior didn’t feel right, but it was hard to explain. Soon, every time we received a well-intended compliment about his intelligence, it felt like a knife was being twisted further into my stomach.”
‘I was frozen in a restaurant with rain dripping off me, staring at my dead mom. ‘It’s okay,’ I told them, but was it?’
“What do I do, I wondered? I inhaled deeply, trying to see if she still smelled of flowers and herbs de Provence and soap like I remembered. I was contemplating reaching out to touch the back of her down coat, when she suddenly turned around and we were face to face.”
‘Being 40 is too old for babies. My time is running out. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had this dream. It is so vivid and so real. I want to be a mother and in my dream I am.’
“In a previous life, with a previous partner, in a different country and a different decade, I was pregnant. I was pregnant for 10 weeks. But it was 10 weeks of feeling pregnant, of feeling hopeful, feeling excited, but also feeling cautious. And I was right to be cautious. I was given a due date, which we never got to.”
‘I heard ‘save me,’ and then the doorbell rang. I was scared it was someone at the door in trouble. I looked out the window. It was dark, but I could see a shadow.’: Mom recalls hilarious story due to sleep deprivation
“I told him, ‘You need to get up. Someone is at the door and they’re yelling ‘save me.’ His eyes widened and he looked at me like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Someone is trying to break in!!’”
‘Miranda had not answered her phone or texts in 24 hours. Her door was unlocked, her TV was blaring, and I felt this horrible spirit in her apartment.’: Mom loses ‘baby girl’ killed by fentanyl overdose
“She died alone is what we are supposed to think. She did this to herself. We are not to blame. After 3 months we finally have a reason for her death.”