Grief Digest Articles

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall All the kings horses and all the kings men Couldn’t put Humpty together againThe image of this old children’s rhyme stuck in my mind as I began to think of how broken I felt with the loss of so many loved family members. For years, I kept trying to piece together my crashed spirit. Sometimes, my patchwork repairs were quite awkward. Recent outward manifestations of patching cracked sidewalks, brick patios, and disintegrating sto …

It was the evening of July 20, 1988. The phone rang and I received the call I knew I would eventually receive but didn’t expect so soon. Bill Lawless, my friend and police academy classmate, had been taken from his family and friends by the horrible disease, leukemia. Over the next few days, I attended his wake and stood in formation in uniform as we celebrated his life with a police funeral attended by many of his friends and fellow officers. I wanted to let Bill’s two small children, Bil …

In a previous Grief Digest article, a new concept specific to child loss was discussed (Grief’s Ladder). This concept evolved from decades-long journaling about the loss of our 17-year-old son, Andy, in a car accident in 1997. Although this model is fully explored in my Amazon memoir, Grief’s Ladder: A Son’s Death and a Father’s Healing Promise, this follow-up article will provide greater detail about the top two rungs of Grief’s Ladder, shown below.To provide some context I must first backtrack …

Ambushed by the news, I dropped the receiver from the pay phone. My knees buckled and I was on the ground. I might have screamed. I don’t remember.Susie is dead.My 8-week-old grand daughter is dead.Over the next week I experienced an exponential dimension to grief. I grieved for our baby. I grieved for my son’s loss and for my daughter-in-law. I grieved for the baby’s uncle, my younger son, who was tasked with letting the family know what happened. I grieved for my mom, just diagnosed with demen …

The tree that stands tallest in my rear garden is THE TREE that everyone advised me to cut down. It could not be saved, said the tree experts, nature experts and state experts in SW gardening.It is The Tree towards which robins, bluebirds, doves and the little green finches migrating on their way to elsewhere flock and whose tall branches are sought for safe harbor. It is a tree that bears many wounds. Its’ bark is gray and decayed - dead and hollow in places. Indeed, its trunk is flaked and ash …