Grief Digest Articles

© Jamie Boshears Author Anne Lamott wrote in Traveling Mercies, “I do not at all understand the mystery of Grace, only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” Grief is like that, too. As both a professional in the field of death and dying and as someone acquainted with deep personal loss, I’ve come to believe that where we begin in grief and where it takes us are vastly different places — landscapes carved by pain, but also by discover …

© Maria Odessky Rosen I once was so afraid of death. The first time I attended a funeral, I became hysterical seeing the corpse openly displayed and hearing the moans and sobs of the dearly beloved. My mom was so embarrassed that she rushed me out the door. When I was seven years old and still living in Russia, someone in the building next to ours died. As I was on my way to visit a friend across the street, I saw a black swarm out of the corner of my eye, the funeral procession passing by. …

© Steve Lipman Work never got done when the Finkelstein girls spotted a bird in our family’s backyard. By the 1980s, they were no longer girls; they were married adults, and Helene was Helene Lipman (mymother) and Henrietta was Henrietta Burgeman (aunt Hennie, Mom’s sister), but they were close assisters could be, and Aunt Hennie, by then divorced, was a frequent visitor at our family’s house in aBuffalo suburb. They would work on all sorts of chores together. Until they n …

© Iris Waichler A cloud of cigarette smoke stood stationary as my mother held court at our kitchen table.  It hung in the air surrounding the overhead hanging light. The smoke cloud was ever present with  her three packs a day habit smoking Virginia Slims. Our home was in a suburb of Chicago called  Skokie. It was 1966 and I was twelve years old. Even at that young age my siblings and I  knew there was something dangerous about smoking. Back then she would send me to bu …

© Tim Koechlin On May 16, 2023 - the day after my son Alex died, at age 32 - I pulled off of Route 95 North in Palm Beach, Florida. The 45th Street exit. There was a red light at the end of the exit ramp, so I came to a stop. I was third in line. Up ahead I could see a worn-out, wiry man – 45 years old or so - with a worn-out cardboard sign in hand, in conversation with the driver of the first car in line. No money changed hands so, I thought, it’s likely that the driver of the …