Grief Digest Articles

By Heather Hattie-Mae Mahaney For as long as I can remember, music was our language. My late husband used to make me mixed tapes — carefully crafted collections of songs that somehow said all the things we did not need to speak aloud - things that we felt when the music played. His love for music ran deep, across every genre, and it was something we shared since childhood. I inherited it from my mother; he from his stepmother. Both women filled our homes with melodies. In high school, he c …

By Amaal Zaki (Ama) There’s a kind of grief that doesn't come with casseroles or condolences. It doesn’t wear black or take time off work. No one calls to check in. There’s no ceremony, no eulogy. But it can hollow you out just the same. It’s the grief for the life you should have had. I’m talking about the grief that lives in people like me, people who grew up without safety, without care, without anyone to tell them they mattered. People who were hurt and then bla …

By Harikleia Sirmans Orthodox Easter had always been a joyful day for my family in Greece, roasting lambs, cracking red eggs, drinking wine, and dancing. But Easter in April 2012 was tragic. I was shopping at Sally’s in Georgia, where I’d made my home since 2000, when my cell phone rang with news that would bridge the 5,500 miles between my two worlds. It was my husband asking me to meet him at our house. “What is it?” I asked. “Just come home and I’ll tell y …

By Heather Mahaney “The email arrived less than two days after he died. Not condolences. Not memories. Just an inventory of our possessions.” The End of Us Four and a half weeks before my husband died, we got the devastating news: lung cancer. It hit us like a freight train, a sudden storm that shattered the fragile calm I had clung to for years. He was admitted to the hospital, and as the days slipped away, I watched the man I thought I knew crumble before me.  Three days befor …

By Amaal Zaki (Ama) Grief has always been a mystery to me, a puzzle I never learned how to solve, no matter how much I wished I could. My first true encounter came with my grandmother's passing. I was very young, still in school, and I couldn't grasp why someone so kind, so full of love, would simply vanish. The pain felt like a knife, carving my heart in two. Every night, I dreamt of her, pleading for her not to leave me alone.  An unbearable ache settled in my ch …