Coping with Grief - It's Called Living Through It - By Gail Stone

"Dad, I tried to wake Nana, I think she's dead."

"Grandpa died yesterday."

"Oh my God, Daddy's dead."

"Uncle Jack died today."

"Grandma died last night."

"I'm standing with the body of your deceased father-in-law."

"Hon, I think we should get a divorce."

"I'm sorry, but we weren't able to resuscitate your mother."

"Mike called. He thinks Mary is dead."

"I'm sorry to leave this on your voice mail, but Uncle Andy died last night."

This litany of phone calls and conversations on death or parting has all occurred in the past 30 years of my life, most in the last 20. Whether I was the one delivering or receiving these messages, the speaking of each one was the start of the long, seemingly endless process of grieving. Often, I felt so sucker punched that I doubted I could go on. Getting up the next day seemed impossible, yet somehow I almost always did.

Something deep inside told me I had to, that there was no other way to get through it, but to keep moving. I attribute that to my deep belief in a higher plan and a sense that getting through this trial was like going through a tunnel. I told myself that if I put one foot in front of the other, I would eventually come out the other side and be able to feel somewhat whole again. Sometimes, it was all I could do to put one toe in front of the other, but all forward movement I deemed positive.

The last five instances happened within the past five years, with my mother and sister-in-law and godfather's deaths back to back in '99, '00 and '01. Looking for the reason why I have been given so many opportunities to experience the grip of grief first hand, I now believe it was in order to help others and ease their way.

If you've been here, you know. There's no magic pill to get you through the immense pain, intense sadness and amazing denial, anger and upset that you feel. However, I did create, through trial and error, a few simple practices which have profoundly impacted my journey through the tunnel and I would like to share them with you.

(1) Every single day, let in the love of family, friends and co-workers. On those days that you feel you can't bear to see anyone or when you realize that some of them have moved on, thinking in error that you are "better", read through the cards you've received. Save and then play voice mail messages and re-read e-mails of support. Give your heart a visible reminder that others do care and want to share your pain. Let them - mentally off-load a bit of it onto their shoulders. Don't try to carry it all by yourself. It can crush you and it will try. Don't let it!

(2) Create a morning or evening meditation time. Even if you can't see how to find the time, do it somehow. This was especially helpful to me in getting through the horrible time of adjustment to life alone after my divorce and then again when my Mom died. I had always said a few wake-up prayers, but found I needed more. I started with Jerry Jampolsky's book, "Love is the Answer" and read one (short) chapter a day. Then, I bought the book "A Course on Miracles" and meditated on the daily passages. While the 365 lessons seemed to represent a huge commitment, the daily phrases were so empowering that I continued. Additionally, I saved affirmations from various sources like Science of Mind magazine and The Daily Word and read them daily. Any quote from a book or article that I thought would motivate me to get up and make the day a less painful one than the day before, I saved and re-read daily. I posted the best of them around my office and in my meditation area. I still do. When you actively start looking for empowering passages, you will be touched and inspired by what comes your way.

(3) Finally, but most importantly, express yourself in some way often! I would recommend that you do it daily, as well. I found out the hard way that keeping emotions bottled up or trying to ignore them hurt more in the long run and adversely affected my health. Talk to people about your loved one, write about him/her, start a journal of your thoughts and feelings, scream whenever you can find a place where you won't alarm the neighbors, family members or fellow travelers, do some kind of physical exercise to work off steam - whenever and wherever you can vent, do so daily.

To anyone caught in the black and blue morass of grief, I invite you to consider adding these three emotionally healing practices to your daily life. They have helped me come through some horribly upsetting times, still sad at heart, but feeling more serene in the knowledge that I can and will go on - living my life to the best of my ability - for my dear ones and with my dear ones safely ensconced in my mind and heart forevermore.

2005 © Creative Mastery Coaching, LLC. All rights reserved.

Gail Stone is Founder of Creative Mastery Coaching, LLC. Find out how you can Get a Grip and Go®! and register for your Get A Grip Clips today at http://www.GetAGripAndGo.com
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Death, Close and Personal - By Monica Mingo

I got an email recently from someone whose mother died. She knew I'd suffered the loss of my mother and wanted some insight on how to deal with it. Unfortunately for her, I had no advice...shit...I'm still dealing with it.

Every single day I think about my mother. I think about her living and breathing. Talking to me, laughing with me, yelling at me. But I never, ever think about her death. This email made me think of that so I began resenting that email. I began resenting that someone else had to deal with a mother who was dead. And I really resented that someone thought I was an expert on dealing with dead mothers. If you get to be an expert on anything...the last thing you want to be is an expert on dead mothers.

When I clean my home, I remember doing the same with my mother. Saturday was cleaning day and I always equate lemon fresh Pledge with her. I think of my mother often. I miss her every single day. I find myself wondering...I wonder what my mother would think of this duvet cover. Or I wonder what she would think of my efforts to create a beautiful home. I know it's weird that I know she's gone but I don't wonder about her as if she's dead...I wonder about her as if she's still in Louisiana wondering what I'm doing too. I know...crazy me.

Death is pretty permanent. It's as permanent as it gets actually. It's the end. I like to think of my mother being everywhere. I don't like thinking of her as a skeleton in a casket under 6 feet of dirt on the side of an old church in the country. That's too permanent.

I didn't have much to offer she-whose-mother-just-past. I don't know her that well so was unable to infer much. I offered what I could. A place to come and rest and just be without the responsibility of dealing with death. Granted, with her in my home, in my space, in my world I...would have the responsibility of dealing with death. With personal death. With my own permanent tragedy.

I invited her into my haven where I am safe from all things painful and I helped her in a very small way deal with her mother's death at the expense of my peace. She left yesterday and I turned to my guy and the normalcy of my life to bring me back from my abyss.

I, Monica Lenay Pattan Mingo, a self-professed, uptight, prude bitch, allowed someone to hurt me without knowing because I knew how badly she was hurting. I didn't feel a kinship with her. I just felt renewed in my own personal, permanent pain, in my infinite grief. And I left knowing only one sure thing...I'm not cut out to be a hero.

http://www.MonicaMingo.com

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You Can Help A Grieving Heart - By Alice Wisler

Oh, we can talk about the best cold medications and if cherry cough syrup tastes better to kids than orange. We can recommend preschools and sneakers. But the hardest part of parenting is the least often discussed. The roughest aspect of being a parent is losing a child.

Then we clam up. We don’t want to hear. We are threatened. If her child died, mine could, too. What can we do when parenting goes beyond the normal expectations? “What do I say?” friends ask me with a look of agony in their eyes. “I feel so helpless. I can’t empathize, I haven’t had a child die.”

You can help. You don’t have to stand there with a blank stare or excuse yourself from the conversation. You can be informed so that you will be able to reach out to a friend who has lost a child.

“Jump into the midst of things and do something,” says Ronald Knapp author of the book, Beyond Endurance: When A Child Dies. Traditionally there are the sympathy cards and hot casseroles brought over to the bereaved’s home. But it doesn’t end there. That is only the beginning of reaching out to your friend or relative who has recently experienced the death of a child of any age.

Here are 15 tips you can learn to make you an effective and compassionate friend to your friend in pain:

1) Listen. When you ask your friend, “How are you doing today?” wait to hear the answer.

2) Cry with her. She may cry also, but your tears don’t make her cry. She cries when no one else is around and within her heart are the daily tears no one sees.

3) Don’t use any clichés. Avoid lines like, “It will get better.” “Be grateful you have other children.” “You’re young, you can have another baby.” “He was sick and it is good he is no longer suffering.” There will never be a phrase invented that makes it all right that a child died.

4) Help with the care of the surviving children. Offer to take them to the park, your house for a meal, to church. Say “May I please take Billy to the park today? Is four o’clock okay with you?” Don’t give the line, “If you need me, call me.” Your bereaved friend may not feel comfortable with asking for help.

5) Say your friend’s child’s name. Even if she cries, these are tears that heal. Acknowledging that the child lived and has not been forgotten is a wonderful balm to a broken heart.

6) Give to the memorial fund. Find out what it is and give, today, next year and the next. Show you want to keep the child’s memory alive.

7) Some mothers start to collect items that bring comfort after a child dies; find out what it is your friend is collecting and by one for her. My son liked watermelon and we have many stories of watermelons and him. So now my house has assorted watermelon mementos----a tea pot, a dish towel and a soap dispenser. Many mothers find solace in collecting rainbows, butterflies and angels.

8) Send a card (I’m thinking of you is fine) but stay away from sappy sympathy ones.

9) Go to the grave. Take flowers, a balloon or a toy. How honored your friend will be to see what you have left there the next time she visits the cemetery.

10) Don’t use religion as a brush away for pain. Stay clear of words that don’t help like, “It was God’s Will.”

11) Don’t judge her. You don’t know what she is going through each day, you cannot know of the intense pain unless you have had a child die.

12) Stay in touch. Call to see how she is coping. Suggest doing something together but if she isn’t up to it, give her space.

13) Read a book on grief, focusing on the parts that give you ideas on how to be a source of comfort for your bereaved friend.

14) Know she now has a hole in her heart, a missing piece due to the death of her child. Holes like these never heal so accept this truth and don’t expect her to get over this loss.

15) Remember that with the death of her child, a part of her died - old beliefs, ideals, etc. Her life has been forever changed.

Even as you participate in the suggestions above, you will still feel uncomfortable. It has been three years since my four year-old Daniel died, and even now when I meet a newly bereaved mother, I am uncomfortable. Talking of the untimely death of a child is never easy for anyone. However, avoiding reality does not bring healing. You will provide many gifts of comfort along the way when you actively decide to help your grieving friend. When my friends and family acknowledge all four of my children, the three on this earth and the one in Heaven, I am honored. Each time it is as though a ray of warm sunlight has touched my soul.

Further Reading:

When A Child Has Died: Ways You Can Help A Bereaved Parent. Bonnie Hunt Conrad. Fithian Press, 1995.

When Your Friend Is Grieving: Building A Bridge Of Love. Paula D’Arcy. Harold Shaw Publishers, 1990.

Beyond Endurance: When A Child Dies. Ronald J. Knapp. New York: Schocken Books, 1986.

Slices Of Sunlight, A Cookbook Of Memories: Remembrances Of The Children We Held. Alice J. Wisler. Daniel’s House Publications, 2000.

Down the Cereal Aisle: A Basket of Recipes and Remembrances. Alice J. Wisler. Daniel’s House Publications, 2003.

Alice J. Wisler of Daniel's House Publications, leads workshops on living with grief after the death of a child. Her web site teaches how to write for healing. She is also the editor of the popular ezine, Tributes and author of "Down the Cereal Aisle" and "Slices of Sunlight."
http://www.geocities.com/griefhope/index.html

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Adapting to the Loss of a Loved One: Three Tips on how to Cope - By Wendy Bridger

Have you ever sat down and played a piano where one of the keys wasn’t working? Or made cookies and left out an ingredient? Perhaps you’ve started listening to a favorite CD, and just when it gets to your favorite part of your favorite song, you realize that there is a scratch in it.

In some ways, losing a loved one is similar. Here you are going easily through life, and then, BAM, they are gone and life will never be the same. That piano piece sounds different because the middle C is broken, the cookies just aren’t the same, and at times, we are frustrated like we are when our CD gets scratched. Unfortunately, with the loss of a loved one, it is more difficult to fix than the piano or the batch of cookies, and your loved one was irreplaceable, unlike the CD.

Short and simple, this is what grieving is: learning to cope with the loss of someone who was apart of what made us what we are. So, what do we do? How do we go on after they are gone? I have a few suggestions that might help you through.

First of all, just as each of us has different personalities, each of us grieves in a different way. There is no right or wrong way to feel or act, as long as you are not endangering yourself or others. Some of us cry. Others of us bury ourselves in work or hobbies. If the person is still living and only the relationship has changed, it is very easy for us to do all we can to change things back to how they used to be. At times, it may take a while to truly even admit that they are gone. We just might feel numb. Some of us might even feel guilty if we don’t feel sad enough! So, take your feelings and actions for what they are and be patient with yourself. After all, you have just lost a part of what makes you who you are.

Also, find a way to transition your loved one into your new life¹. My father in law lost his dad last year and he hung a picture of him up in the living room to remember him. Others write goodbye letters to their loved one, giving themselves a chance to tell them things that they never got to say. Some of us keep a little box full of pictures and memories only to be taken out when we want to remember them, because remembering them all the time would be too overwhelming. I had a friend who’s little brother died. She got married on his birthday as a way to include him at her wedding. Once again, it depends on you and your relationship with the one you loved. For instance, burning every picture you had of an ex-boyfriend might be the perfect way to transition.

Another thing, you usually don’t ever “get over it.” Your loved one is gone. If you no longer have an ingredient to make cookies, it’s easy to realize that replacing it with a different ingredient would not make the cookies start tasting like they used to. To expect that you will be able to replace your loved one is also unrealistic. This reality may sound even more depressing. Frankly, I love chocolate chip cookies, and the idea of not ever having one again is quite upsetting! But in time, if I had to, I could grow to love other sweets, like banana bread, sweet potato pie, or brownies. So, even if you aren’t going to get over it, in time, you will adapt to the loss and find fulfillment through other experiences and relationships.

So, be patient with yourself. Losing someone isn’t easy. It turns your life upside down. Naturally, it’s going to take a while to pick up the pieces and transition to life without your loved one. Remember, Beethoven composed some beautiful music after losing his hearing, and you will find happiness and fulfillment again in your life after losing your loved one.

¹Wordern, J.W. (1991). Grief Counseling & Grief Therapy: A guidebook for the Mental Health Practitioner. Springer Publishing

Hello, I'm Wendy Bridger. Thanks for reading my article. Surely you have more unanswered questions, or want to know more about me. Here’s how I can help. Go to http://www.stratateam.com/news/anmviewer.asp?a=87&z=2 and simply ask me your personal question related to the article, and I will respond to you privately.

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Articles on Losing a Loved One in Death

I've recently been hearing from several of my readers that are having a difficult time coping with the death of a loved one. I have found several helpful articles that I will be posting right away. My prayers go out to all of you who have lost loved ones. I can only imagine your pain. So, with this articles, it is my goal to try to bring you some kind of comfort. Hang in there.

To Your Health,
Anna