Grief Digest Articles

By Nan ZastrowI remember growing up in a fairy tale world. Our family of five wasn’t wealthy, but we always had food on the table (even in lean times). We had clothes on our back (even if they were hand-me-downs), and an occasional PTA movie or two (even if it meant bringing your own popcorn.) Our home wasn’t a castle, but we found laughter and fun. And there certainly was love, though as a family of German descent, affection was seldom expressed openly. Some would say we lived a sheltered life; …

When my parents died in 2002, within two weeks of each other, my sisters and I received advice from bereavement counselors and others who had suffered family loss. We were cautioned not to make any sudden changes in our lives. Often, we were advised to maintain as much of a status quo as possible for the first year following their deaths.None of us had ever been very successful at living according to the conventional wisdom, but floundering in the sea of grief, one clings desperately to any life …

I’m going to start backwards. Not that I’m healed, far from it, but it only seems logical to take my life now as a given, or at least as a reality, and reflect on what I’ve gone through over the past five years. Ken died suddenly of a rare and painful cancer. We had been happily married for about thirty years; we had three grown children, now all married. To say I was devastated would be an understatement.Efforts to rebuild my life were aided by friends, support groups, and therapy, not necessar …

The time passed since my son’s death, has been one year, 3 months, and 16 days. There is still a deep ache in my chest, a chronic longing that I know can never be filled. I hurt in a way that only another parent who has lost a child can understand. I am not being unfair to those who have incurred other losses, because their pain is also great, but when it is the child who you carried in your body for nine months, or the child you lovingly chose when you made the monumental decision to adopt, the …

By Thom Dennis, LCPCAntiques Roadshow is one of my favorite television programs. Viewers watch as antique appraisers travel across the country and spend the day evaluating the trash and treasures that people bring to them. Admittedly, this program does not offer much in the way of gut-busting comedy or high drama, but it does offer one thing: the possibility that you could be rich and not even know it. On the show, it is a regular occurrence for someone to find out that the old lamp they found i …