Each year on this day, August 13th, I honor all those who lost their lives in the Wisconsin River. I also honor their beloveds. Those left to make sense of life after death. In doing so I honor myself, my sons, and our large extended family. Yet I do so with heaviness. Ever wondering if this practice of mine is helpful. To me. To anyone.
This year, I scramble to find those who have died in the past year. The list seems small and nameless.
In March, a woman.
June 29th, a 63-year-old man.
Not listing their names seems like an added cruelty layered onto to unexpected death, shock, grief, sorrow. This year leading me to a realization. Of why I do this painful pattern each year, now numbering eight. Yes, to be truthful about the dangers of that river. Yes, to find a sense of community in common experience. Yet also as a pleading prayer to have just five more minutes with the husband/partner/friend/lover/co-parent I lost without warning. Just five minutes to say, “I love you!”
And “Any last words of wisdom as I live on without you?”
And then, “Goodbye!”
My list each year, what cannot ever find full closure. Just a holding while living.
Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez 
My heart goes out to you and your family! I told Steven I loved him
thousands of times! Thinking of you!!
Hi Jennifer, You have been on my mind and in prayers this week. And I always appreciate reading your words as they are coincide with when I am online — or going through past emails. I was recently asked to share something I am most proud of. Besides my children… I said Spark Story Bible. You are one of the people on the team who made it happen! I am now semi-retired. A Reading Corps tutor during the school year for K-G3 kids. I LOVE it! And I just finished external editing of the last and final issue of now discontinued, Spark Family. If you find yourself in the Cities with desire to share a meal/walk, it would be a blessing to reconnect. I remember past dinner/lunch conversations fondly. Peace be with you,