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Death of a Loved One: ‘Getting Over It’ Not an Option

Posted on October 8, 2013 - by Michael Nunley

Recently, I was honored to be asked to sing at a balloon release for The Compassionate Friends in Frankfort, Kentucky. We have a lovely little memory garden in a park near my home. Surrounding a central bronze statue of children at play is a circle paved with bricks. Those bricks are inscribed with the names of loved ones who have moved into the next life. One of them has my sister Cyndy’s name on it. Outside that circle are benches and rocks large enough to sit quietly listening to the sound of the nearby stream. Each year, new bricks are […]

Something’s Not Right: Remembering a Husband Near the End

Posted on October 7, 2013 - by Diane Dettmann

During our twenty-eight years of marriage, whether we drove to a northern Minnesota resort for a weekend, canoed on a Boundary Water lake or flew to a faraway city, my husband John and I, enjoyed sharing time together. In 1999, when we flew to Carmel, California, where we spent our honeymoon in 1972, I never imagined less than a year later, John would be gone. While enjoying one of our favorite beaches along the central coast, I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t or didn’t want to see it. As I caught my breath after a jog […]

A Husband’s Voice Lives On

Posted on October 5, 2013 - by Kim Meredith

“Help me die!” Not a sound came out of his mouth, but I could magically decipher the startling message by reading his lips, the only body parts, along with his eyelids, that he could still move. My husband of fifteen years, David, lay motionless on white pristine sheets on a hospital bed that rocked back and forth while tangled tubes transferred nutrients and complicated machines whirled, forcing air into his dormant lungs to keep him alive. Two weeks prior, he was in a one car accident on his way home from a haircut and now, my partner was a quadriplegic. […]

Proactive Steps After a Loss

Posted on October 5, 2013 - by Harriet Hodgson

Grief is exhausting. You may be tired of feeling helpless and hopeless, yet don’t know what to do. Hope eluded me after my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law died within nine months. But I found hope again and it came from caring for my twin grandkids and from the proactive steps I took. Here are my suggestions for finding the happiness you seek. Choose happiness. Again and again, I told myself, “I’m worthy of happiness.” Saying this sentence helped me to believe it. I also believed in myself and the coping skills I honed over the years. You are […]

Sixteen Years After the Death of a Son

Posted on October 3, 2013 - by Linda Triplett

I am approaching the anniversary of my son’s death. It will 16 years since we heard the news from the county chaplain on duty that night that it was indeed our son, Adam, and his flight student, Jason, who had landed the plane on a city street and died in the fiery aftermath. Sixteen years since we had to plan a funeral, watched his body be laid to rest at the cemetery, and live in a grief so heavy that I thought it would cause my heart to stop with the weight of it all. A few months after his […]

Ten Things a Dying Loved One Might Want You to Know

Posted on October 1, 2013 - by Kevin Quiles

1) You don’t have to be a hero. Let’s face it! As caregivers, we wish to help. Unfortunately, the line between being altruistic and becoming a rescuer is thin. 2) Keep your anxiety to yourself! We often talk about how patients/loved ones displace their emotions onto us. Well…caregivers do the same. How do we know when we have dumped our anxiety onto another? When he or she says what we want them to say. 3) Live! I can’t tell you how many times hospice patients told me how they would take life lighter if they could do it all over again. […]

Coming Full Circle: A Letter from Daughter to a Mother Who Died Young

Posted on September 30, 2013 - by Laurel D. Rund

Ina, my mother, died 13 months after I was born. For most of my life, I felt like a “motherless child.” She became a ghost-like fantasy to me, which is probably why I liked fairytales so much as a kid. Maybe I was wishing for a happy ending. My father remarried when I was four (not a fairytale ending by any means) and the stories and pictures of my mother were buried in the vault of the past. Because Ina did not have an extended family, she got lost in the ether. It felt to me that the only evidence […]

Proactive Steps Help You to be Happy Again

Posted on September 27, 2013 - by Harriet Hodgson

Grief is exhausting. You may be tired of feeling helpless and hopeless, yet don’t know what to do. Hope eluded me after my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law died within nine months. Hope seemed to have disappeared, but I found it again in caring for my twin grandkids and taking proactive steps. Here are my suggestions for feeling happy again. Choose happiness. Again and again, I told myself, “I’m worthy of happiness.” Saying this sentence helped me to believe it. I also believed in myself and the coping skills I had honed over the years. You are also worthy of happiness […]

When the Mirror Breaks

Posted on September 25, 2013 - by Daisy Massey

“Siblings are the only relatives, and perhaps the only people you’ll ever know, who are with you through the entire arc of your life…Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.” – writer Jeffrey Kluger observed to Salon in 2011, the year his book “The Sibling Effect” was published. My brother Andy was more than a sibling, he was my twin. We weren’t really twins, we were just close in age and physically favored each other including, despite the 2.5 year age difference, […]

Condolence Letter on the Death of a Pet

Posted on September 24, 2013 - by Janet Gallin

I have watched people go through loss of a loved pet and can see how hard it is to say goodbye to those four-legged members of our families. Having seen friends through this heartbreak of having had to say goodbye to the very family member who loved constantly and without question, kept their children safe, guarded them from danger and brought joy into the home, I realized how important it is to send a love letter of condolence to families who are suffering this particular grief. Rosie’s death was a wrenching change, an agonizing absence and called for a memorial […]