Grief Digest Articles

By Nancy WorleyI needed time alone to work with my thoughts when my mom died.What I did not need was advice. I wanted no company.Getting through and beyond the loss of a beloved is heart breaking and tedious. Healing within must take place on many levels.I came up with a series of simple steps that moved me from stifling grief to gratitude.Buy a blank journal to capture death artifacts.I included the newspaper clipping announcing her death, which named survivors. I saved a thank-you note I wrote …

My Analog DissonanceJust in time.Just in time, he said, or else we would never have had the chance to say goodbye.Just in time, she said, or else watching the suffering would have been too painful.Just in time, I think, in time, in time, it won’t hurt so much and I won’t feel as if I am dead, too.The flowers arrive early, as does my family and a group of friends.The funeral directors and reader I’d selected were on time.We started late, because I didn’t want to go through with any of it, even th …

Grief Ebbs and Flowsby Shelley RamseyGrief ebbs and flows like the ocean tide. Some waves rise to engulf us and suck us into the undercurrent. Others cause us to merely loose our footing and throw us off balance. In the first years after my seventeen-year-old’s death, there were many life-threatening tidal waves that knocked me over and left me gasping for air. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason when each would hit, and their timing was completely unpredictable.When tossed about by the waves …

The MittensLast year about this time, you wanted to give me a present.I pushed your wheelchair to Macy’s.We walked around and I choose a few things.I really didn’t need anything, but I knew a gift was important to you.Maybe you didn’t notice, but I paid for the items I liked and you approved.One was a pair of very nice black mittens with fur around the cuffs.I didn’t need mittens, but I liked these.They were warm and lightweight.They looked like “lady mittens” like everything else at Macy’sIn th …

It’s here. Not quite available to us all, but someday it will be, and we will be faced with the decision: to take it and reduce the effect of our bad memories or continue to suffer with them.On the surface it sounds fairly straightforward. A negative life experience continues to cause problems; we take a pill and the negative effect of the memory is nearly gone, or at least significantly reduced. According to the research, the memory is still there; it just doesn’t hurt as much. Other related me …