Other Losses

Playing With Ashes

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

It’s been a tender week. This week marks the first anniversary of the death of my dear friend, E, who left the earth plane suddenly and unexpectedly, just two weeks after her 61st birthday. I made it to the North Carolina hospital on Easter Sunday and had the profound honor of witnessing her transition on Monday. E was semi-conscious; she had been intubated and medicated. I felt she was already circling the other realms. When I reached the side of her bed and placed my hand on her arm, she opened her eyes and looked directly at me, acknowledging my […]

Your Grief

Vehicles of Healing

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Vehicles help us move. They help get us from one place to another. Sometimes the vehicle of choice is our car. Other times it may be a rental car, a bus, a cab, a boat, a bicycle, a hot air balloon, a plane, or even a skateboard. There are many different vehicles to help move us through our grief. The possibilities are endless. Most if not all of us will need to utilize more than one vehicle on our grief journey. The vehicle is just a tool and we have to use the tools that will work for us. Some […]

Death of a Child, Your Grief

30 Ways to be Your Own Best Friend

Sunday, February 26, 2012

For many years, I was anything but my own best friend. I neglected, badgered, criticized and overindulged myself. It was much easier to be nicer and kinder to my friends than it was to myself. Maturity and the experience of devastating loss, has taught me much. I now know that in grief or in fact, anytime in life, I am the only one who can look after me. Me, myself and I. Many times, I didn’t think I had time for me. I thought my needs weren’t as important as others in my life. I was too busy giving out […]

Death of a Child, Your Grief

Getting the Routines Back in Your Life

Saturday, February 25, 2012

February, with Valentine’s Day, is a great time to take a survey of where I stand on my love meter. Am I on the high or low side this year? In order to do that I have to take myself back to what I call Ground Zero. For me,Ground Zero was in April 1983 when my 17 year-old son Scott was killed in an automobile accident. That boy was the love of my life. At the time of his death I wondered if I would ever be happy again. As with my love meter your love meter may have been […]

Death of a Child

Birthdays and Becoming a ‘Grand Family’

Yesterday was my grandchildren’s birthday. The twins (one boy, one girl) turned 20, a surprise to me and to them. When my grandchildren moved in with us, they were 15 ½ years old. Now they are college sophomores, young adults pursuing their education and their dreams. Where did the time go? What did I learn in the last five years? I learned that two kids and two grandparents can come together to form a grand family. It’s a miracle. Before their parents died, the twins used to come to dinner with their mother every Sunday. Though they didn’t know us […]

Open to Hope

Daughter’s Cats Help Dad Keep Connection

Thursday, February 23, 2012

My daughter Jeannine died on March 1,2003, at the age of 18 due to cancer. One of the things that I struggled with during my early grief was regret and guilt over the fact that I was too wrapped up with work and finishing graduate school to see what was happening to her sooner. Of course, given the fact that the type of cancer she had was incurable did nothing to lessen my regret or guilt. I was her father and one of my jobs was to protect her from harm. That was the one task that God gave me […]

Open to Hope

Thanksgiving Eve ‘Miracle’ Service

Monday, February 20, 2012

The death of my son Adam in 1997 was (and still is) the most difficult thing I have ever had to face in my life.  Adam died in August of 1997 in a firey airplane accident in New Richmond, WI.  Little did I know, or could have imagined, that God would prepare my heart and mind nearly a year before the tragic event at a Thanksgiving Eve worship service in 1996.  The event I describe below (which I refer to as a ‘miracle’) happened exactly as described in this post and to this day I am still learning from the power and […]

Your Grief

Build a Grief Toolbox

Sunday, February 19, 2012

There is value in writing things down, especially when you’re struggling with the symptoms of grief.  I decided to make a list of the all the things we’d done that had seemed to help us, with the intention of sharing them with others.  I call these things “tools.”  ü  Anti-depressants – Talk with your physician about taking something to get you over the hump.  There is no shame in it, so don’t suffer needlessly.  You’re going to hurt no matter what you do, but these at least enable you to function. ü  Cry – You don’t always have to be […]

Special Topics

Grieving Men, Raising Boys

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Last night I sat in a room filled with grieving men Some missing a parent or sibling but most a spouse For once not a minority sandwiched within a group of women, but a part of a group connected to one another by gender, death, and heartache. This morning as I looked into the eyes of my 14-month-old grandson I couldn’t help but think of those men who once were little boys and who still carry many of their little boy hurts in their grown-up hearts and adult sized bodies. The pain I heard and felt in that room last […]

Open to Hope

Remembering ‘The Last Lecture’ co-author Jeff Zaslow

Friday, February 17, 2012

“Best selling author, Jeffrey Zaslow, who wrote best-sellers such as The Last Lecture about a professor dying of pancreatic cancer and a recent book on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery was killed February 10th in a car accident. Mr. Zaslow, 53, is survived by his wife and three daughters.” Soon after our daughter Erin was born in 1998, my wife, Patricia Brennan Zuba, left her media relations position with United Charities and launched Bish Communications, her Oak Park-based public relations firm,. To serve her clients well, Trici inhaled all things Chicago-media. Jeff Zaslow was Chicago media. Together, Trici and I […]