Grief Digest Articles

Have you ever thought of this world as a casket?Casket originally meant a small box for jewels or jewelry. It is a storage and repository for valuables. Then, over time, the usage of the word shifted to refer to a coffin, a storage and repository for corpses: a death-casket. This is likely our primary exposure to the term casket: a storage and housing for dead bodies.Now, we may be more ready to explore how this planet is a casket world.Jewelry boxWe’ll begin with the more pleasant analogy.For m …

(a grief support group presentation)A couple of years ago I was visiting my 97-year-old mother and the conversation turned to significant people in our lives. She got a wistful look in her eyes, and she said, “My mother died fifty-five years ago, and not a day goes by I don’t think about her. And I miss her.” My frail little mother died in June 2017 and I know exactly what she meant. Not a day goes by I don’t think about her, and I miss her.I know a married couple up in their 80’s still grieving …

We can’t go through this grief journey without experiencing “triggers” over and over again. Our loved ones leave so many reminders of them both physically and emotionally. Triggers that set us off in a tailspin of tears, in a ball of agony time after time.In the early days, weeks and months of our grief we seem to be surrounded by triggers. Those clothes in the laundry hamper that we clutch to our face, breathing in that scent of the beloved. That special food or ingredient in the grocery store …

My grandmother, known to all her grandchildren as Nana, was in the hospital. She was terminally ill with bone cancer. When I was free from work with my rotating schedule, I would drive my mother to visit Nana in her hospital room. One day my mother and I went to visit Nana. She was lying in her hospital bed. She could no longer get out of bed and move around. We walked into her room and kissed her hello.Nana was very excited and had something important to tell us. She told us she had a visitor t …

Pets help carry us through the highs and the lows as we go through life and are often in tune to how we feel during sadness and loss, but they are also in tune with other emotions such as happiness.They seem to connect to us on a deeper level because they have feelings too. Our pets are always by our side showing us loyalty and trust and hold no judgment towards us. They are accepting of who we are, and live in the moment as a free spirit. Pets do help us heal through the darkest times in our li …