Lessons Learned
As bereaved parents, we are all learning to bear the unbearable whether our child died recently or many years ago. Each morning when we wake up, we have a familiar queasy feeling. We’re reminded that she’s gone or I can’t…
As bereaved parents, we are all learning to bear the unbearable whether our child died recently or many years ago. Each morning when we wake up, we have a familiar queasy feeling. We’re reminded that she’s gone or I can’t…
My nineteen-year-old son, Nick, died by suicide when he jumped from a bridge just outside his college campus. His body was lost for almost five weeks. The week prior to its retrieval, I received a call from a coroner who…
If you have already endured the death of a child, spouse, parent or sibling while in service to our country, you probably already know what I am about to say. If you are a warrior who lost one of your…
When I first began my journey of grief following the death my only child, Todd, I didn’t comprehend that I would have to take an active role in what would come to be defined as “grief work.” All I knew…
The first Mother’s Day after Tom died was just a few months after he passed, and our loss was still fresh in the minds of our community. I awoke to a knock on the door, and when I opened it,…
I can say without reservation that the years spent grieving the loss of my daughter, daily missing her presence, created a loneliness harsher than anything I could ever have imagined. Now, throw in an isolating, disruptive virus floating through our…
Well…here we are again; another day that for many is a major holiday. It feels like it really was not that long ago that we were bombarded with the November/December holiday army that decended on us! Perhaps this is the…
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway For years I cursed spring… During that time my heart woke to the bitterness of life. In the harsh frost of winter, my anguish…
I have struggled with a question for many months now. Was Tom mentally ill, or did he just decide he could no longer go on? Is mental illness a label we put on someone who dies by suicide to lessen the…
