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The Third Full Moon Has Passed: The Buck Moon

The third full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1. I wasn't sure when I began marking time by the full moons that it would feel cathartic, but it has. I don't look forward to these full moons. In fact, as they approach, I find myself becoming more anxious and emotional. But having something that encourages me to move through my grief, both physically and symbolically, has helped. Instead of letting another month simply disappear into paperwork, probate, and the endless work of clearing out a house, the full moon gives me a reason to pause, go somewhere, and remember Dad in a way that feels intentional. This month's moon was the Buck Moon, and after the heaviness of the last few months, I wanted to do something fun that reminded me of him.

Dad and I both had fond memories of our family vacations from when I was growing up, and some of my favorite childhood memories are of riding bikes together while we were on vacation. I hadn't ridden a bike in more than twenty years, so deciding to join the Full Moon Bike Ride in Cape Charles seemed wonderfully symbolic, completely ridiculous, and scary. If something is scary, you should probably do it, right? 

I rented bikes from Make Fast Cycles, and I ended up changing the reservation several times after it became clear that Babushka wasn't going to be able to ride with me. JD could not have been more patient. He rewrote the rental agreement, changed the drop-off location, and walked me through everything without ever making me feel like I was creating extra work for him. Acts of kindness like this will stay with me, especially during seasons when even small accommodations can make an overwhelming day feel manageable. By the start, community riders had gathered for a fun evening ride dressed in colorful clothes, flashing lights, and even a tutu. My ride approach was much more serious. First, I didn’t want to fall because now falling means bruises that won’t heal for months and possibly a broken bone or two. Second, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I’m not sure why I even care about that. And lastly, I didn’t want to weep. It would not only make riding a bike hard, but I didn’t want to change anyone’s mood.  My tears are emotional releases, not that I am simply sad. It’s complicated and I need to cry sometimes.

My bike was an e-bike, another first for me. I was so intimidated by the idea that I barely used any of its electric features. I spent most of the evening gripping the handlebars far tighter than necessary, convinced that one wrong button would send me flying down the streets of Cape Charles. It wasn't until nearly the end of the five-mile ride that I finally gathered enough courage to try the pedal assist. After all that worrying, I discovered it simply made the ride easier. I could have laughed at myself because it felt like a lesson I probably should have already known. Sometimes we carry more than we need because we're afraid of the very thing designed to help us.

The ride began at the LOVE sign on Bay Avenue, where families, friends, and cyclists gathered as the Buck Moon rose over Cape Charles. There was something comforting about moving together beneath the moonlight. I kept thinking about riding bikes with Dad when I was a little girl and how naturally those memories returned the moment I started pedaling. 

I was so focused on staying upright that I hardly noticed anything around me at first. Then, as we turned onto one of the roads, someone called out, "Hey, check out the moon!" I looked up and there it was, hanging low over Cape Charles. It was enormous and absolutely stunning. At that point, the ride got a bit easier (emotionally! I had forgotten that my butt would hurt from the bike seat.) 

After the ride, Babushka and I walked out onto the pier together. It was a breezy Eastern Shore nights where the wind keeps you cool, and the sound of the waves crashing against the large rocks below was oddly comforting. There were many families our fishing together. We stood there for a while, watching the Buck Moon over the water before heading back.

We stayed at Fisherman at Cape Charles Tiny Livin', and I cannot say enough good things about Eric and Sylvia Hawkins. We arrived early enough to meet Eric while Sylvia was outside painting a beautiful grapevine mural that she continued working on throughout the day. Their tiny home community reflects exactly who they are. They spent years living the tiny lifestyle themselves before creating these restored homes, and every detail shows the care they have put into the property. There are games scattered throughout the grounds, including darts and bean bag toss, what everyone now calls cornhole, and a huge cauldron-shaped fire pit that immediately caught our attention. By the end of our short stay, it felt as though we had been welcomed by friends rather than simply checking into a place to spend the night.

After checking in and before the moonlit ride, I had made an appointment at Moonrise Jewelry. We actually arrived almost an hour early because, as usual, I was worried about getting there on time. They were incredibly accommodating and invited us right in rather than making us wait. I had been thinking about this bracelet for days and knew exactly what I wanted. I designed a permanent bracelet around the twelve full moons that will mark this first year after Dad's death. The bracelet begins with three tiny sequin links that reminded me of miniature moons, representing the Flower Moon, the Strawberry Moon, and now the Buck Moon. A single black crystal separates those first three months from the nine moons still ahead. The remaining nine moons are attached to what had once been Babushka's anklet chain, allowing something she once wore to become part of something entirely new.

There was enough of the anklet remaining that we made matching bracelets to represent what has become our shared journey over these past three months. I truly cannot imagine navigating Dad's illness, his passing, the memorial and now the overwhelming task of clearing the house without the Miller family. Every donation run, every trip to the dump, every unexpected crisis has somehow become a little more manageable because they were there....

Since the Strawberry Moon, my days have been spent sorting through a lifetime. Babushka has made trip after trip to churches and charities so that nothing useful is wasted, while I have become a regular customer at the county dump. Just as we began making progress, a hickory tree fell onto the house. Tony came to the rescue with one of Dad's old chainsaws, cutting the tree apart piece by piece. The limbs are still waiting to be hauled away, which may explain the recurring dreams I've been having about baby copperheads hiding in the garage. They feel symbolic of everything that still lurks beneath the surface, but they're also strangely literal. Probate still hangs over me, there is still so much work to do, and my academic life is about to begin again just as this season of caretaking begins to wind down.

Summer break has not really been a break. It has been a season of burial, probate, sorting, cleaning, paperwork, and trying to honor Dad while preparing for life to keep moving. Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Virginia Writers Club Symposium at Randolph-Macon College. On Tuesday, Haunted Virginia Colleges and Universities is officially released, and that evening I'll be collaborating with the Haunts of Richmond on their Creepy Tales on Campus tour. It all feels wonderfully exciting and completely overwhelming at the same time.

One moment before the end of the Strawberry Moon will stay with me forever. At six o'clock on the morning of July 29, I received the notice that Baby Joseph Pajka's gravestone had finally been installed.

Not once did we visit Dad’s father’s grave without Dad telling me about Baby Joseph and stopping to pray for him. Dad was just a little boy when his baby brother died in their home. He was there in the kitchen with their mother when it happened. Their father was already sick with tuberculosis and would die only two years later. There simply wasn't money for a gravestone, and Baby Joseph rested in an unmarked grave for seventy-nine years. His grave is unmarked no longer. Before what would have been Joseph's eightieth birthday, before the Strawberry Moon had passed, that small promise had finally been kept.

The Buck Moon is named for the time of year when young bucks begin growing new antlers. They are not fully formed yet. They are still covered in velvet, still growing into what they will become. I find comfort in that image because grief isn't something we finish. It changes us slowly, month by month, moon by moon. Three full moons have now passed, and while I still find myself crying without warning and missing Dad every single day, I can also see that something is quietly growing alongside the grief. It isn't replacing it. It never will. But perhaps, like those new antlers, it is teaching me that healing and remembering can exist together.

Higher Education Haunts [Style Weekly]

The second full moon has passed: Last night was the Strawberry Moon

The second full moon since Dad passed arrived with heat, the kind of June heat that slows your walk and reminds you humidity makes it hard to breathe. We’re in a drought here in Virginia. We’re in voluntary water restrictions so it makes it hard for me not to tell the young girl at bookstore cafe to not let the water just run for nearly 3 minutes. I don’t want to be that kind of person who fusses but this heat has been testing me. Why when I give you $20.40 for an $8.38 charge, do you not know how to return correct change. $12.10 is not the correct change. When I return the dime, you say “Well, I guess I’m keeping a dime.” So, I say, “No, put it in the till. I’m assuming you don’t have pennies.” Confusion on your face. I think “get off my lawn kids, I don’t always want to pay with a credit card.”

I walked the labyrinth Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg in the middle of the day, when it was hottest. There were no trees to shade me. The sun pressed down and I tried to focus on it, the way it burned my skin, but in a good way. Something grounding. Something real.

I’ve never been good at meditation or yoga. Once, during a class, I fell asleep and woke up to someone snoring. That someone was me. So, when Leigh encouraged me to try the Calm app, Be present. Be in the moment, I tried. My mind is usually racing.



As I followed the winding path, I kept thinking about how much life has happened since the Blue Moon, the first full moon after Dad passed. Probate. Estate paperwork. Three trips to the dump. More than forty-five bags of trash and donations from the family home. Learning to hook up, tow, and even backup a trailer into a driveway, something I didn’t think I would need to know. But fortunately, Babushka’s husband and I go way back and he taught me in the same way that Dad would have—calmly coaching me and letting me take risks. Grief, it turns out, comes with paperwork, muscle aches, and dump runs because my family home is in the country where there has never been anything like trash pick-up.

After the labyrinth, I headed to the recreation center before my friend and her mother, who is 88, arrived. I set up a comfy chair for her and held two yoga mat spaces for us. The guide for the evening handed us a page explaining the symbolism of the Strawberry Moon: “The Strawberry Moon is a time to notice what has grown. We spend so much time looking ahead that we often forget to notice how far we’ve come. Like strawberries, growth doesn’t happen overnight. It ripens quietly through ordinary days.” Quiet growth in ordinary days. That phrase stayed with me.

The reflection questions asked: What has quietly grown in me during this season of life? What am I ready to release? What promise will I make to myself before the next full moon? I stared at the last question for a while before writing: I promise to keep making promises to myself. I promise to keep looking for joy and connection. Yes, I will clear the house. Yes, I will bury Dad. By the next full moon, my journey through mourning will continue. Those promises felt both impossibly large and surprisingly ordinary.



The Lambert ladies and I settled into the Strawberry Moon sound bath. The room filled with singing bowls and vibrations that made the room feel fuller. After, we gabbed in the way Southern ladies do. Leigh is one of my oldest close friends. There’s a lot of history there and I love that we can live our lives and then come back together like it’s the early 2000s living in Charlottesville. When I drove home along Route 60 right as it intersected with Rout 249, the road I grew up on, I caught my first glimpse of the full moon hanging low above the road. Once I was near my current home, I managed a quick photograph while stopped at the light before turning onto my own road. It felt like the perfect ending to a day built around paying attention.



The guide reminded us that the Strawberry Moon celebrates what has grown. I realized I haven’t cried every day in quite some time. I’ve learned things Dad always knew how to do. I’ve made decisions I didn’t want to make. I’ve designed his gravestone. I’ve begun making sure forgotten family members are remembered. I’ve carried on.

Growth doesn’t always look like cheery happiness. Sometimes it looks like competence born from necessity. Sometimes it is simply showing up. Sometimes it looks like learning to back up a trailer. Thanks, Tony!

Yesterday the daylilies were blooming. I suspect they always will remind me of the Flower Moon, the moon that watched over Dad’s final day. That connection hasn’t faded simply because another moon has passed. It has deepened.

The Victorians understood that mourning changed with time. They marked it in stages. I will be measuring mine by moonlight. The Blue Moon taught me that grief had begun. The Strawberry Moon reminded me that life continues to grow alongside it.

Next comes the Buck Moon, a moon named for antlers growing stronger almost imperceptibly each day. Perhaps that is what grief is asking of me now. I am simply supposed to keep growing.

Fall Book Fair at Blend Coffee Bar- September 12, 2026 (12-5pm)

 

The Probate Inventory: A Poem

 The Probate Inventory: A Poem

 

The court will ask for values:

of the house,

of the property,

of the old junkers rusting in the woods,

of the contents of every room.

What are they worth? Please itemize the value

Sifting through the forbidden folder of paperwork

That little Me was told not to touch.

  

What is the market value

Of my father’s pocket calendars,

one for every year since 1979.

Those tiny squares he recorded our lives:

what we had for dinner,

when we were sick,

the milestones,

the ordinary days. 

 

What is the market value for

A house crowded with things,

saved by parents of the Silent Generation

who never threw away anything still worth keeping?

Among the clutter,

There will be baby pictures,

forgotten notes,

pieces of lives hidden among the excess.

 

And what is the property worth?

The dogwood I climbed

Now tangled in leaves of three leave them be.

The iris and daffodils Dad rescued

still bloom where he planted them.

Those iris bulbs were Jack & Mary’s.

And now I’m thinking of their dog Krisco.

  

The old Metros may be worth scrap metal.

Dad kept them as reminders 

of his son’s journeys.

He loved the Vibe

a gift from his daughter.

He saved things

because the stories attached to them.

 

This afternoon,

While going through papers,

I found the scent of home.

Dust.

Ink.

Aging paper.

My mother was there.

My father was there.

  

Tomorrow I will file the inventory,

listing every asset of the estate.

But the inheritance that matters most

will never appear in probate:

a father’s handwriting,

a mother’s photographs,

and the unmistakable smell

of being loved.

New book HAUNTED COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES OF VIRGINIA

I'll be at the RPL Main Library Lobby on Saturday, August 8, 2026, from 1–4:00pm, signing and selling my new books 👻 🪦 Haunted Haunted Colleges and Universities of Virginia (released August 4, 2026!)🪦

Richmond Public Library proudly supports local authors!

Hope to see you there!

One full moon has passed

A writing retreat and a painting: there will be signs

When I arrived at the retreat yesterday, I was not exactly impressed by the décor simply because it isn’t my own aesthetic, and the focus of the retreat is on my research about witchlore in Virginia. And, since Dad died, I have been extra fussy with the Catholic Church because it is made up of people and people really get to me sometimes. So, noticing the painting upon arrival, I registered it as a religious scene but I didn’t stop to process any of it and how it is strange hanging in a writing retreat in the South, depicting a Catholic Mass because growing up there were maybe three Catholics in our school and my best friend and I were two of them.

 I’m writing this during my lunch break, which strikes me as funny since this week I’m at a writer’s retreat. I have a detailed itinerary, and so far, I’ve stuck to the plan, meeting all of my writing goals this morning. Today is my first full day here. Yesterday was filled with travel and research before arriving practically exhausted. I’m not going into detail where I’m staying because I’m still here for the rest of the week and as a woman traveling solo, I’ve known from an early age not to share my travels until I return. This was true even before the days of social media and blogging but I digress.

After my morning writing, I sat down to eat lunch and I glanced up at the painting after trying to clear a phone alert on my iPhone. If I ever miss a call or text, it’s because I cannot stand to have the alert remain. It will eat away at me until I remove the alert. While I was trying to do that with a call, I started clearing old messages and then I saw that I had deleted a bunch of nonsense connected to medical blah blah for Dad. Then, I saw his messages. I willed myself not to click on any of them or hear his voice because I didn’t want to sit here and cry. I set down the phone determined to be quiet when I noticed the palms in the painting. This piece depicts Palm Sunday. The piece is by Alexandre Grégoire (1922 –2001), a Haitian painter “who typically depicted scenes of Vodou, daily life, and historical events in the naïve style.” (Thanks Wikipedia)

There will be signs, he said.

Palm Sunday was at rehab. A volunteer came around handing out palms. Dad set his by him on the bed and we started talking about how Palm Sundays were always my favorite memories of Mass because we got to go outside. As we were chatting, I folded the palm into a cross thanks to a YouTube video. Dad kept that palm-folded cross like it was a prized possession. He moved with it to assisted living and then to the hospital and then to hospice with that palm. He said that he would put it behind the cross when he got settled.

For his visitation, I accepted the crucifix that was placed above his pine coffin. It is gold and completely from one of those funeral outlet shops but I knew that I would put the palm behind that cross and place it somewhere in my house. It’s still sitting, the cross and the folded palm, at home in a box. I cannot even sort through the hospital belongings, how in the world will I ever sort through his house, his garage, his cars, his…

But the little glimpse of this sign reminds me that Dad is close wherever I am and I don’t have to hear his voice or touch something that he touched to know that he is here with me.