Open to Hope Articles
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Holidays and Bereavement After the Loss of a Child
November 8, 2013
Today we usher in the month of November. The holidays are quickly approaching – first Thanksgiving and then Christmas quickly followed by New Year’s. I remember well the pain of those first holidays without Joseph. Prior to his death we were very traditional in the ways we celebrated, but now we didn’t know how to fill the gap among us. Learning to do that was a process. We discovered quickly that we each needed something familiar because life had become so unfamiliar. Since they were part of the fabric of our family, we chose to hang on to many of […]
Bereavement: Just a Word
November 6, 2013
The Webster dictionary describes the word bereavement as a state of being sad because a family member or friend has recently died. For anyone who has lost a loved one, they know in reality bereavement is a word that cannot be defined. Bereavement is a feeling with unknown depths triggered by love which too cannot be measured. We know love is a whole host of meanings with many acts of endearment far beyond words. So I have to wonder, if it’s difficult to describe the feeling of love, how can one put a definition on the feeling of losing it. […]
Mom Wears a Mask on Halloween
October 28, 2013
Monday is Halloween, and although we do not celebrate it like we did when my daughter Marcy was alive and young enough to enjoy the night, we still answer the door to the goblins and fairy princesses from our neighborhood. “How pretty you look,” I say to the young children wearing long princess dresses. “And how scary you look,” I tell the young boys who have on evil masks they hope will scare everyone. We have spooky music playing through the intercom when they ring the bell. We used to do that with Marcy’s friends especially. Most of the very little […]
Enjoying the Holidays … Differently
October 26, 2013
By Chris Mulligan — It’s time to party! the television advertisements say this time of year. Party? How could I party when some days I did not even want to get out of bed? I did not want to go to work. I did not want to confront my day. How could I party when I could not even look at my face to put on a happy one? Getting through one’s days are difficult at best after the death of a child, but enduring the holiday season seems almost impossible to surmount. Depending upon the length of time in […]
How the Graveyard Became a Place of Peace
October 18, 2013
There’s the joke about the cemetery. “How many dead people are in there?” The answer: “All of them.” Or, “People are dying to get in there.” It brought a smile to my lips the first time a ten-year-old told me. But after my son died, I was wondering why there are so many jokes about death and being dead. “We joke about what we fear,” Daniel’s pediatric oncologist at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hospital told me. Well, I don’t fear the cemetery anymore. The movies and TV shows, especially around Halloween, like to depict the graveyard as a scary place with ghosts […]
Thoughts of Holiday Gifts and My Deceased Daughter
October 17, 2013
Holidays are a time of reflection and self-discovery for those who mourn. Four years have passed since my daughter died, and I am still overwhelmed with memories at Christmas time. Since this was her favorite holiday, I naturally think of her. I remember the thought she put into selecting and making gifts. I have dreamed about my daughter, too. In my dreams she is either a baby or a toddler. Though four years have passed since she died, I still have times when I can’t believe she is gone. My daughter was 45 years old when she died and at […]
Ten Ways to Find Good Fortune in your Holidays
October 15, 2013
The Christmas tree we dragged from the woods wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t expect the Christmas holiday to be perfect either. The long gangly branches made the tree seem awkwardly out of balance. It was fat at the bottom and too skinny at the top. One of our guests during the holiday commented, “I can’t believe you paid for that tree,” with a teasing snicker. Gramps would have liked the tree with wide spaces between the limbs. He always believed a bird should be able to fly through the tree. He didn’t believe anything should be perfect. Little flaws were […]
The Fall Season: Creating New Traditions Among the Old
October 12, 2013
I am sitting at my desk looking outside at the glorious blue sky and just a tinge of color change in the leaves. The weekend was one of brisk cool air, the smell of bonfires in the neighborhood, and of mums replacing the petunias that are now stringy and overgrown. I am entering my 16th fall season without my son, Adam. Truthfully I don’t remember much of the first, or the second ones. My mind was numb, my heart hurt and it was enough to make it through each day let alone noticing what was going on in the world […]
Child-Loss Journey is Easier When Sharing with Others
October 11, 2013
When a husband loses his wife, they call him a widower. When a wife loses her husband, they call her a widow. And when somebody’s parents die, they call them an orphan. But there is no name for a parent, a grieving mother or a devastated father, who has lost their child. Because the pain behind the loss is so immeasurable and unbearable that it cannot be described in a single word. It just cannot be described. —Bhavya Kaushik, The Other Side of the Bed Each of the cards, notes, and e-mails that arrived following Joseph’s homegoing was cherished, but […]
