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Playing Hide-and-Seek with Grief

Posted on June 25, 2011 - by Deb Kosmer

Probably all of us are familiar with the childhood game of hide and seek. Some of us have not only played this game ourselves as children but have gone onto play it with our own children and even grandchildren. Today, as I thought about my own grief and yours, I was reminded of this game and how many of us still play this in our adult life. When our grief becomes bigger than life and bigger than we can manage, very often, what we do is try to hide from it. We do this in many ways: eating when we […]

Twin who Died in the Womb Became Guardian Angel

Posted on June 24, 2011 - by Laura Davis

Last fall, I gave my writing students a very powerful exercise taken from the work of Deena Metzger. The basic premise was to choose a traumatic incident from our past—one that changed the course of our lives for the worse—a moment when we felt betrayed or abandoned or alone, a moment when an essential part of ourselves went underground. We began by writing the story of that event. The next week, we rewrote it—this time creating a fictional version of the same event in which we inserted a new character—a character who not really there at the time. An ally. […]

Love of Family, Friends Fill Vacuum Left by Loss

Posted on June 23, 2011 - by Linda Duncum

“Emptiness now fills the spirit of my inner being, The drum beat that has given me life now echoes off of the hollowed walls that once was my heart. My eyes now fill with dust, dried from the many tears that I have dropped upon this earth, only to have been made worse by the dust of the many friends and family who have left this world before me. A question now fills my broken heart: Was I able to help them keep their unknown promise?” (Our Sacred Journeys) Over the many years of my life, I have been exposed […]

Hospice Comforted During the Worst of Times

Posted on June 21, 2011 - by Diana Doyle

We’ve just bought a brand spanking new bedroom setting. Its towering wooden bed head makes me feel so tiny…but like a Princess! Anyway, yesterday, while clearing the space for our new bed, I found hidden under the old bed, a book. A very very special book. I held it in my hands like a newborn…..and I considered not opening it because what’s on the pages makes me cry. But I had to as the written memories inside are a treasure trove for my soul. The book is from Hospice, from the saintly staff that cared for Savannah in her final months. […]

Not Everyone Benefits from Graveside Visits

Posted on June 20, 2011 - by Harriet Hodgson

Many years ago, when I was in first grade, my parents and I visited an inner city grave. It was my brother’s grave, a brother I never knew because he was a premature twin and died two days after he was born. The other twin survived and I grew up with a brother. While we were walking in the cemetery, I saw two people, obviously mother and daughter, approach a new site. The mother looked at the grave stone and burst into tears. Her crying became wailing and her wailing became keening. Young as I was, I recognized the […]

‘New Person’ Must Emerge from Loss

Posted on June 17, 2011 - by Deb Kosmer

Most of us have had the experience of buying new clothes that didn’t quite feel right. Perhaps they were a little too tight or too big or the brand-new material was scratchy, not soft like our older things that have had several washings. We may decide not to wear them at all, or we may decide to wear them awhile until we are comfortable in them. This can be a frustrating experience. When we are grieving, most of us feel like we aren’t living in our body anymore. We may look in the mirror and see our old reflection staring […]

After Mother-Loss, Daughter Struggles with Guilt about Father

Posted on June 16, 2011 - by Lauren Muscarella

“I told him he had to get out. It would have been selfish of me to let him stay there,” my friend Claire said about her youngest son, A.J. Claire lost her husband almost a decade ago, after which her 26-year-old son moved home. A.J. promised his father he would take care of his mother, but Claire did not feel that included cohabitation. Her word choice stunned me. As the child of a widowed parent, I sometimes forget the hierarchical positioning of my own family patriarch. I spent a considerable amount of time feeling guilty about being in Washington, D.C. […]

How to Support a Grieving Dad

Posted on June 15, 2011 - by Kelly Farley

I often hear from grieving dads who tell me they feel alone in their grief after the death of their child. It amazes me that after going through something as profound as the death of a child, that these men feel so alone and isolated. As much as it amazes me, I can relate because I too felt alone after the death of my two children. I felt so alone that I would go online and search for other grieving dads. However, I didn’t find what I was looking for or needed at that point in my grief. I didn’t […]

Father’s Day Brings Fond Memories of ‘Grandpop’

Posted on June 14, 2011 - by Mary Jane Hurley Brant

My Grandpop was a legend in my small hometown mostly because of his many “unusual hobbies” – like counting how many flies he could swat on a front porch glider on any given August day. As scores of commuters rushed by our house, they regularly shouted, “Hello, Pop, how many flies today?” Grandpop, pushing 90 by then, responded with enormous numbers. He was never without his gray wool cardigan, a felt hat that he tipped for the ladies and a smile for those friendly passersby. Of course, that was outside, for strangers. Inside, he predictably fought my mother about taking […]

Father’s Day After the Death of a Brother

Posted on June 13, 2011 - by Brenda Marshall

“You know that story, Finding Nemo?” my 4-year-old nephew asked. “That’s a story with a happy ending because he gets to find his daddy.” It was six days since my brother, my nephew’s father, had died and oh, how my heart broke hearing this simple observation. This will be our 5th Father’s Day without my brother. On the first one, we planted a tree in his memory. My nephew, then 5, held up the card he’d made for his dad, said a few words and then hung it on a branch. It gently fluttered in the wind as we snacked […]