Stephanie Piper

Eight days after Newtown, he told us that it would actually be a good thing to go to heaven. He had not been told of the event.

Maybe we’ll skip the tree this year. We won’t be home for Christmas, so really, what’s the point?

When this column appears, my favorite month will be history. Pumpkins will vanish from front porches, and store windows will start to sprout the first plastic Santas and evergreen garlands. The light will shift from muted gold to the pallid ...

Two college students are talking outside my window. They are discussing their futures. “I’ll be an old man before that happens,“ says one. “I’ll be, like, 30.” His friend considers this. “Oh, you mean really old,” he says.

The general consensus is that the snake has gone.

Here’s what I learned on my summer vacation: There is no more potent antidote to bleak introspection than a 2-year-old girl in monkey pajamas.

In the past seven weeks, many people have told me many things about grief.

My share of my father’s ashes doesn’t take up much room. Only a lifetime.

I came as a corporate wife, dragging my heels, nurturing a secret hope that this would be a short stop on the way to another big city like the ones I’d left behind. Knoxville was still basking in the glow ...

I’m over multi-tasking. I realize that it’s a highly prized skill here in the second decade of the 21st century, right up there with extreme couponing and ice-road trucking. But for me, the thrill is gone.