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Love in Pieces
 
 A Memoir Excerpt 
By Hyla Molander
 
 DROP DEAD LIFE / HYLA MOLANDER © 2010
Love in Pieces
By Hyla Molander
Excerpt from Forthcoming Drop Dead Life: A Pregnant Widow‟s 
Heartfelt and often Comic Memoir about Death, Birth, and Rebirth 
I gave Troy the burgundy velvet bag that 
contained Erik‟s ashes. “Do you
mind holding them? I
may need to run down to the beach for some solitude.”“I‟ll put them in my backpack.” Troy rested the gray sack by his feet and slid the ashes in. He
started to
zip up the pack, but paused. “Jeanette, I might be able to fit yours in, too.”
My mother-in-
law, Jeanette, hugged her pine box closer to her chest. “No, I want to hold him.Hayden‟s fine right here.” Jeanette had held on to her husband‟s ashe
s for 17 years already.
 When we talked about scattering Erik ashes, she had said, “We‟ll scatter them together. It‟s neverfelt right to do it before, but now it feels right. Erik can be with his daddy. They can finally be together.”
 And now, her eyes were glossy with the tears she had been unwilling to release for decades.I thought of my pain
—
the pain from losing Erik 
—
and knew it could not compare to hers. Two
 
 DROP DEAD LIFE / HYLA MOLANDER © 2010
husbands and her youngest son, all dead. If a heart is broken into pieces, how could she have anything left? Jeanette had never been to therapy, never gone to spousal loss support, had never been willing totalk about her losses. Maybe she thought some things were inexpressible. I imagined all of that grief stuck in her body, crawling through her limbs like a rattlesnake, and I wanted to reach inside of her and pull it out.I looked at her and vowed, to myself, that I would deal with my pain. I would take hold of my sadness, wrestle it if I had to, letting its wild head hiss at me, so that I could come out on the other sidemore capable of being an example for my baby girls.I did not want to be broken into pieces. I wanted to be broken open. I wanted to find love again.
“It‟s a two mile hike, you know,” I said to Jeanett 
e.
“Don‟t you worry about me, sweetheart. I‟ll be fine.” She nodded down at Hayden‟s box. “It‟s not like he weighs very much.”
 We all began to walk.
 Jen said, “I brought hot tea for afterward. Gonna be even colder by the water.”“That was thoughtful of 
 
 you,” I said, but I didn‟t really care about hot tea. I didn‟t care about anything other than making sense out of things. But, how would I make sense out of Erik‟s death? Out of 
the fact that I was here to scatter his ashes?
How? Why? 
The pressure in my chest was unbearable
—
a grief-filled hammer repeatedly pounding against my ribcage.
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