Grief Digest Articles

It’s been too long since my last visit with you, my son. I’m coming to visit you.It’s been on my mind most of the time, this is true.I so look forward to seeing your sneaky smile and light hair.I never know what to expect, I can’t help but stare.I’m so proud of you! When you were younger, you were such a spitfire.You were adventurous, always trudging in muck and mire.But you’ve grown up to be a wonderful young man.You were always strong in your actions and stuck to your plan.You became so indep …

Pushing Through Loss in the KitchenMy late husband Mark was ever-patient, flexible with my whims and most generous. These virtues were tested when he had to deal with my thoughts about designing our kitchen. We moved into our home in November of 2001. While adapting the floor plans from a builder’s model, I asked the kitchen designer if he had ever put a bookshelf in a kitchen. He looked perplexed; it really wasn’t done much at that time. In the model there was a kitchen desk, which I knew, with …

My son’s death was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. I fell apart, couldn’t think straight, barely talked, and rarely left my house. During that first year of grieving, taking care of my daughter was one of the few things I could still think about and care enough to do. The first time I took her to a grief support group, I sat at a table in the back of the room making eye contact with no one while Sylvia made bracelets out of multi-colored rubber bands and talked with the other chil …

CHAPTER SIX “I Still Exist”“Get yourself some girlfriends,” Max said. “That’s all I got to say. We did everything, I mean everything together, and now he’s gone.” I was at my first College Board Advanced Placement reading—scoring thousands of student essays from that year’s AP Literature Exam. Sitting by herself, smoking and writing, was this beautiful petite woman who looked so sad. I sat next to her and lit my own cigarette. We traded stories and I found out that her husband had died suddenly. …

----John, 10 years old, experienced the death of his sister from cancer. He did not talk about her illness or death. His parents never saw him cry. There was no bereavement support at his school.John’s family moved to Syracuse when he was 14. He started attending HOPE For Bereaved’s youth support group. At the very first meeting, John drew a volcano with every swear word he could think of erupting from it, he even spoke at the meeting. On the way home, he talked to his parents about his feelings …