Grief can best be described as an unpredictable weather condition. For anyone who’s visited the Caribbean, it’s like one of those storms that comes out of nowhere. Imagine lying out on the beach, letting the sun rays penetrate your melanin with a cocktail in one hand, eyes closed, and head tilted toward the sun. Then you open your eyes and see the storm clouds. Before you can collect your vacation read and beach bag, there’s a downpour. There’s no way to escape it, you’re in the storm. While you don’t know when it will end, it’s a common enough occurrence that you know it will pass. This scenario encapsulates my relationship with grief. I often don’t know when it’s coming. I’m suddenly hit with a wave of emotion – sometimes, it knocks me down, but I always get back up.
First Person (Page 2)
“Your loss was different,” my 97-year-old aunt Adair said. “You still had a lot of life ahead together when you lost Richard. Herb was 96 when he died.”
I felt a swell of emotion in response. The casual way she said it made the comment hit home like the obvious fact it was, one that hadn’t quite registered with me before so clearly.
Following the death of her husband of 26 years in May of 2017, Marianne Simon began Poetic Plantings Publishing as a “the first step in the journey of all that I am still becoming.” They call it that – “the year of firsts.” The implication is that it will be a painful year of all the landmarks you will survive without your…
Grief is a journey, and each person’s journey is unique. Michael F. DuBois had a close relationship with his mother, and when she died when he was 22 he found that he was lost in his grief, seemingly unable to move on. That led him to produce this film, an exploration of his mother’s life and the impact it had on the…
I wrote this short poem about a month after my brother died:
My grief is like an ocean swell
rolling toward shore.
It rises but never breaks.
It came to me while sitting quietly during a yoga class, breathing deeply. There were swells of grief but no tears. The stillness helped me put words to my feelings. I had cried when he died, but then it subsided. Too quiet. Where was my grief?
I periodically dream that my husband returns from the dead. That is not an unusual experience in grief. Our loved ones are embedded in our souls and psyches and our dreams reflect many aspects of our grief journey: our wish to see them, our struggle to accept their loss, our fears and worries about the future, to name a few. They may also present us with existential questions about death. In my case, accepting death has been particularly difficult. My husband disappeared at sea nearly six years ago. Neither he nor his boat were ever found. Despite knowing consciously that he will never come back, in my subconscious his return is totally plausible. Sometimes we seek answers in our dreams: Is he OK? Does he know I love him? Can he please give me guidance from beyond? And, my question, what happened? My dreams often reflect the challenge of not knowing how he died. I keep hoping he’ll tell me in my dreams.
I was in the doldrums, sorting through a drawer, mourning my husband as the date of our anniversary approached. That old Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler,” was playing in the background. I stopped what I was doing hoping for some comfort in the simplistic lyrics. I was drawn to a deck of cards in the back of the drawer, feeling compelled to spread them all out and see if I could find something to lift my spirits.
There is so much to discover in an ordinary card deck. The four suits alone give us a look at basic aspects of life that are impacted when there is a death of a loved one.
After the death of my husband, Don, I found myself adrift in my spiritual life. My religious beliefs from childhood offered some comfort but I wanted more. I wanted to forge a relationship with my husband that was eternal. I was drawn to those friends who told me of messages they were receiving from their deceased beloved ones.
Losing a parent can be one of the most traumatic events that an adult will go through. It can also present a rare opportunity for potent changes in life. When we lose a parent one of the ways we heal is by finding benefits and gifts that come out of a traumatic loss and the healing process. Often, this requires that we…
After someone we love has died, life continues to move forward. And as odd as it seems sometimes, both our grief and our love come along as we move forward. Sometimes you might think — I need life to pause, even for a little while, so I can make sense of my loss and gather my thoughts and feelings. But it doesn’t. Life keeps moving forward.
If you’re grieving, you probably know that it’s not easy to go on when you’re feeling the pain of loss and the absence of your loved one. Yet, that is the challenge of grieving: To heal as you go forward. At the same time, it is our task to find ways to carry the love for our loved ones and their story with us.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are quickly approaching. Summer weddings, babies being born, birthdays, anniversaries… they’re all beautiful events and yet they can feel conflicted and painful for you who are grieving. So, what do you do? How do you negotiate the holidays and milestones? Do you ignore them, or do you find ways to have your deceased loved one be present, remembered, and honored? It softens the edges of pain to have their spirit and memories present, almost like they are still here.
The following story was written by a widower whose beloved wife died nine years ago. It beautifully illustrates how he and his adult children are moving forward with Life while finding ways to honor her, love her and share an important story of her life.