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Do you want to read stories of others who have been where you are? Are you looking for bereavement help, and advice? Look no further. We offer over 7,000 articles written by our Open to Hope authors.

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Setting the Intention to Live Again

Posted on April 28, 2025 - by Dolores Cruz

Setting the Intention to Live Again That cruel knock on the door was not my first introduction to grief, but it was, by far, the most brutal. My kind, compassionate, and very handsome 24-year-old son, my youngest of four wonderful children, had not come home that night. My mother’s heart was extremely worried. But that loud knock shook me to my core, and something deep inside of me knew what it was. It was 5:30 AM. My daughter, Vanessa, who followed me downstairs to the door, was the only one home as my husband was out of town on business. […]

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How Many Siblings Do You Have?

Posted on April 28, 2025 - by Judy Lipson

How Many Siblings Do You Have? “How many siblings do you have?” It is a dreaded question asked of many a surviving sibling. When I’m asked, my heart thumps out of my chest. I sense the heat rising on my face and struggle to breathe. How do I answer? For me, the answer has changed over time. When asked, decades after I lost my sisters, I still experience the tremor in my body. Regardless of how ready I believe myself to be, the experience leaves me reeling when asked. After my younger sister Jane died in 1981, was I now […]

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Death, Advanced Directives, and Dad Jokes

Posted on April 28, 2025 - by Symon Braun Freck

Death, Advanced Directives, and Dad Jokes It was the best conversation we never wanted to have. I filled out an Advanced Directive with my dad. And it was fun! I had asked family members to fill out Advanced Directives a few times before. I know feelings about your mortality change and, thus, your view of care shifts. And they needed an update. I decided to complete an Advanced Directive, the Five Wishes Document, for myself before asking my dad to complete his. I am not sure that was the right decision. Often, my dad would ask me what I chose […]

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Finding Joy While Grieving: Carrying the Tiger

Posted on April 28, 2025 - by Tony Stewart

Finding Joy While Grieving Recently, a grief counselor told me something disturbing. He had been describing my new memoir, Carrying the Tiger: Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy while Grieving, to one of his support groups. When he reached the point where I began to form a new relationship just a few months after the death of my beloved wife, several of the women stopped listening. “Women grieve, men replace,” one said dismissively, and the others nodded in agreement. They assumed that my actions suggested emotional abandonment, or perhaps a kind of infidelity, both of which they found […]

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New Love and Memories After the Death of My Wife

Posted on April 21, 2025 - by Tony Stewart

New Love After the Death of My Wife Monday, September 27, 2021 We consolidated Lynn’s clothes into a closet and a bureau, unearthed her beautiful scarves and handbags, and put them in a couple of baskets in the living room. We went through her family photos, collected her sketchbooks into one pile, and flipped through years of drawings. The whole process was immensely sad. Every day brought dozens of touchstones of our shared life: photos that I examined, perfumes that I sniffed, and handwritten notes that I read until I couldn’t bear to read further. I was sad from morning […]

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Picking Up the Pieces after the Death of My Wife

Posted on April 21, 2025 - by Tony Stewart

Picking Up the Pieces First comes denial. I tell myself that because Lynn and I got to say all those goodbyes, because she knew how much I loved her, because we had no regrets about our choices, my grief should be shallower or shorter than most. In post after post, I emphasize the positives—as when, just two days after she died, I describe riding around Central Park looking forward to my life ahead. But really, I am in shock, as when your body and mind conspire to shield you from the pain of an accident. For more than six years, […]

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Watching My Wife Die: Carrying the Tiger

Posted on April 21, 2025 - by Tony Stewart

Watching My Wife Die “Sometimes you have to say enough is enough.” It is late afternoon. Lynn and I are in the living room, she in her wheelchair, me in a folding chair in front of her. There is one light on, leaving most of the room in shadow. Dr. Hellman speaks calmly, gently. “If you go back to the hospital now, you will probably never come out,” he says. “The radiation may slow it a little, but there’s just too much cancer. We’re not going to beat it, and the treatments will make you even weaker. If there’s ever […]

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The Shock of Spouse Loss: Carrying the Tiger

Posted on April 21, 2025 - by Tony Stewart

The Shock of Spouse Loss Sunday, September 28, 2014 It’s an unseasonably warm Sunday in late September. I am working at my computer while my wife, Lynn, lies on our bed across the hall, sketching our elderly cat, Jack. She’s spent a lot of time like that these past two months, feeling increasingly crummy for some reason the doctors can’t figure out. It began as chronic indigestion, then acid reflux, and recently bouts of diarrhea. She’s stopped enjoying her meals and is losing a lot of weight. Her doctors have given her every kind of scope and scan they can […]

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Why the Death of a Child is Unique Among Losses

Posted on April 14, 2025 - by Greg Adams

The Death of a Child is Unique When Ruby Cooper was 16 years old, she gave birth to twins, and she told this story as part of The Moth Radio Hour podcast, https://themoth.org/stories/giving-and-receiving. One baby died at birth and the other was a boy later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. In was 1960, and her son’s doctor recommended that Ruby place her son in an institution so that he could be “with his kind.” Ruby responded that she was his mother and thus “his kind,” and she would raise him herself. Overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising a son with special […]

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The Lessons of Grief

Posted on April 7, 2025 - by Linda Henderson

The Lessons of Grief Grief is ugly. It is raw, relentless, and merciless. It does not come gently or leave quietly. Grief stormed into my life like a natural disaster, shattering everything I once knew and leaving me with a version of myself I no longer recognize. It did not ask for permission and knew no boundaries. Grief is powerful and invades my entire body. It gives pain a new definition. Grief makes me cry until I am tearless and gasping to breathe. Until every muscle in my body aches from the sobbing, and I feel hollow. The emptiness it […]

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