Tag: Bereavedparents
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Noel
It’s hard not to get into the Christmas spirit, isn’t it? I mean, just look around! Every other yard, it seems, has huge blow-up reindeer, and snowmen, and elves, and skeletons left over from Halloween now dressed in Santa suits. (Why?) All the stores are playing cheery Christmas music at top volume reminding us it’s…
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Celebrate
I’ve written before about “grief seasons.” Bereaved parents often experience a period each year where their grief is especially strong because of recurring triggers within that timeframe. Most of these triggers are self-evident: your child’s birthday, death date, holidays, etc. Grief seasons aren’t limited to child loss, of course. There are similar triggers associated with…
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Memories
I am writing this on Thursday, October 30th. Tomorrow would be Rachel’s 39th birthday. After I typed that sentence, I had to walk around and compose myself a bit. Your child should never be in your past. I’ve talked before about what not to say to a bereaved parent. Pretty much any sentence that starts…
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Logical
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post titled “It Could Happen Again.” I talked about my fear of losing another child or a grandchild. This fear is always in the back of my mind, no matter how much logic I talk to myself. For example, according to the National Center for Health…
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Words
Many of my friends who are writers have had a significant loss in their lives (child, spouse, parent, marriage, home, job, etc.). These losses are devastating even if they were foreseen. My mother died of breast cancer in 1995 at age 62. She was diagnosed with the disease five years prior and the doctors warned…
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Trouble
In the Our Daily Bread devotional for October 7th, Arthur Jackson talks about something Oswald Chambers wrote at the beginning of WWI. He references John 16:33 where Jesus warns his disciples of the “inevitability of peril.” Bad things will happen. Christ was specifically warning them about his upcoming arrest and crucifixion as well as the…
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The Thing With Feathers
There’s a famous poem by Emily Dickinson called “Hope is the Thing With Feathers”. The first verse says: “Hope” is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soulAnd sings the tune without wordsAnd never stops at all It’s a beautiful metaphor in that it implies that we can carry hope with us always. It is…
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What’s In Your Pocket? (redux)
Today is September 1st. Labor Day. It’s also my dad’s birthday. He would be 95 if he were alive today. I originally wrote this for a writing critique group I belonged to and then posted it in 2022 when I first started my blog. My dad set an example for me of what “good grieving”…
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What’s the Plan?
A Bible verse that is quoted frequently is Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Taken out of context this verse can feel like a feather pillow or a stumbling block. We can take…
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Triggers
Last week I talked about grief triggers and how pictures especially can trigger tears. Both pictures with my daughter in them and ones taken since her death can stab my heart and make me smile at the same time. The last pictures I have of Rachel were taken at her wedding. She died in a…
A Light for My Path 