Abel Keogh

Life Is About Adapting to Change

The one thing that certain in this life, aside death and taxes, is change. Businesses have to change to survive. Markets, attitudes, tastes, and buying habits of customers are constantly in flux. If a business doesn’t adapt to shifting market conditions and offer its customers what they want, it goes out of business. At halftime, football teams must adapt their offence and defense based on what they’ve seen from the opposing team or else they’ll lose the game. Our own lives are constantly in flux. Every day brings changes we have to deal with. Most of the changes we deal […]

When the Memories Come Without Pain

When I look back on our life together, there are many memories that are told and retold, and to me it seems further evidence of healing for myself and my children. The memories are there and fondly told, with a smile and reminiscent grin, without the pain that was once associated thinking of a loved one no longer there.

How Long (According to the Media) Should Grief Last?

Psychologist Bob Baugher studied the way the mainstream media handles loss situations. He found a disturbing pattern of reporting that left the impression that people should “heal” and “recover” from loss — and fast.

Learning to Live Again, One Step at a Time

When I think back to those dark days following the death of my late wife and daughter, I always return to an early January morning a week before my twenty-seventh birthday. In the months following their deaths, it became routine to awaken at 5:00 a.m. and go for a four mile run. It wasn’t easy. I’d awake five minutes before the alarm clock beeped and stare at the dark ceiling and contemplate the two choices I faced every morning: Stay in bed or go running. Staying in bed was the easy option. Under the covers it was warm and a […]

What Should I do?

Mary, Provo, Utah
My son Danny died a year ago of an infection at age three. I am now wondering what to do with all his toys. It is too painful for me to keep them in a room as a memorial for him, yet I know how much he loved them. What should I do?

Bereaved Family’s Grief Gets Complicated

Cindy writes:
I have been listening to your radio show for awhile. I download to iPod and listen in the car. Eight years ago, my 3-year-old son was killed when a truck backed over him while he was walking with his sister and childcare provider to the store. As you can imagine, the pain was […]

Poems: In the Mirror and Two Rivers

Award-winning poet Pamela Papka Sexton touches on the experience of losing her mother (In the Mirror) and her father (Two Rivers). “The mirror doesn’t lie/She is closer than she seems,” Sexton writes of her mother. Of her father: “I look toward Round Top/and know he is there, stitched/in a tuxedo.”

What Not to Say to a Suicide Survivor

Suicide survivor Carol Loehr shares what others often say when they learn that her son died by suicide. She advocates for educating people about the neurological illnesses that cause suicide.

Memories Flooding My Heart

As the cleaning, clearing away and releasing of objects phase of this
grief is continuing….

I just woke up at 4:30 am and could not go back to sleep. I gave up
and went to brush my own teeth and it hit me to clean out the bathroom
cupboards below the counter on Joseph’s side and his shelf in the
medicine chest. It is surreal that the Spiderman bath bubbles, the
Power Ranger, Batman and Spiderman toothbrushes are more reminders of
silly, child centered themes. Yes, even have their own story of the
routines in the daily habit of brushing teeth…with the alphabet ball
playing songs to encourage this longer brushing habit holding the
attention span just a little easier with a built in fun distraction…

Finding “Self Help” to Deal With the Death of My Daughter?

Just last March my 48 year old daughter, mother of 5 young girls died of a cerebral hemhoridge.My older sister and 2 of my husbands brothers came over and stayed in our house for 3 weeks to help us in our grief. It did wonders. The day that they left I really broke down. I don’t feel like leaving the bedroom, I read a lot and watch tv, no cooking, neither my husband and I are hungry much. I let messages accumulate on the telephone.