Tag Archives: Now: life after loss

Grief grabbed me again

5 minute read

For the first few months after Sam’s death, I suffered stabbing headaches in and around my eyes. 

“Narrow-angle glaucoma,” the ophthalmologist said. “Yours is the worst I’ve seen.” 

I wondered if the pain was from not crying. I didn’t ask. The question sounded ridiculous in my head: My son, he’s gone, and it hurts when I cry, so I wonder, did this happen, this buildup—of tears?—because I’ve been stopping myself from crying? Suppressing grief, like pruning branches, I’ve learned, only causes it to mushroom.

(an excerpt from Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss: Chapter 8. Grieving)

It’s been over eighteen years since my little boy died. So I wasn’t expecting this.

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sidewalks (2) luna moth

2 minute read

pieces of treasure

LAST WEEK’S POST, sidewalks (1), was the first in what I’m hoping will be a series of short posts (if I can stick to my plan). You don’t have to read sidewalks (1), or look for my upcoming sidewalk posts (each Wednesday), but . . . I really hope you do.

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sidewalks (1)

4 minute read

all the sidewalks

The word sidewalk appears thirty times in my book Willower.

The line I love you more than all the sidewalks in the world appears nine times.

The first time I heard this was when Sam, as a toddler, said it to me. It stayed with me. It was a funny thing to hear, an unusual measurement to use—sidewalks? But then, the sidewalk was our world; where we spent most of our time collecting acorns, bugs, sticks, stones . . .

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Joe D.

4 minute read

it was April 30, 2008, the one-year anniversary of his brother’s death

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side effects of rewriting

reading time 2 minutes

In grief, sometimes you’ll feel stuck.

What if, instead of seeing the idea of being stuck as a negative, we think of it as being anchored for a period of time. Which sounds okay, doesn’t it? Anchoring yourself in the silence, in meditation, in the remembering? In grief, the rewiring process that goes on deep inside you sometimes requires a serious shutdown—a rebooting of sorts.

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the missing letter

I have no more words.
Let the soul speak
With the silent articulation
of a face.

– Rumi

He is the missing letter from every one of my words.
And, he is the lost words I seek.

Though words never can truly describe his essence, the sound of his voice, his wit, his loves, his promise, his unrealized potential…

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unfriended

“In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.”

~ John Churton Collins

If you are an underclassman (in your first few years) majoring, involuntarily, in Life after the Death of your Child, you may find yourself bewildered at the flight of your friends, at the loss of your former support system, and at the dead air you’ve heard crackling since the death of your child. The phone has stopped ringing. The emails have ended. The holiday cards are conspicuously absent. The voice messages you left (“Hey, friend’s name here, just checkin in. Hope all’s well. Talk to ya soon. Love ya.”) have yet to be returned. The summer visits are no longer anticipated. The secrets you’ve shared have gone underground. And, at this point you’ve run out of excuses for their absence. You’re angry. Hurt, abandoned—left for dead. And, if it’s even possible, you’re sadness has deepened.

Okay, so this was my experience.

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what I learned from a soldier

What I learned from a soldier…

About strength
It’s okay to cry…

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Reggie, my heart therapy

He sees me

June 27, 2014. He loves a freshly cut lawn. He does a down-dog-stretch before squeezing through the rectangular flap of a door. Outside. Sniffing a path, he finds a patch of sun and flops onto his side. Lying still for a minute, he soaks up the warmth, then rolls onto his stomach. Sphinx-like, his front legs out, chest high, ears alert, nose twitching, reading the air. He starts when a dragonfly skips by him, and I laugh. I’ve been watching him from the patio, learning from him how to be in the moment. He sees me and stands up, tail wagging. Making his way back through his magnetic door, he prances over to me and presents himself for a back rub.

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“Wanna see a picture of my baby that died?” she said.

Life had different plans

The day before yesterday (Thursday, May 1, 2014), I had plans to hit the month running, or at least walking. Post the first entry in the new series I’ve been working on. And then meditate—for at least ten minutes (a day)—a personal goal I’ve set for this May. Neither happened though. This day, life had different plans in store.

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