Tag: Bereavedparents
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Don’t Give Up
A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “What I Write About.” My impetus for this blog was the loss of my younger daughter Rachel in April of 2017. My initial writing was mostly just pouring out the emotions that were going to break me as a person if I didn’t find some…
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Honor
A dear friend of mine lost her infant granddaughter last week. This friend is no stranger to child loss. In fact, we met through her blog and Facebook group for bereaved parents. She lost her middle son a year before my Rachel died. He was a talented musician and on track to graduate from law…
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Sob Story
Missing a loved one during the holidays is hard. Looking at an empty chair, literally or figuratively, quickly brings up memories. And not all of them are comforting. I know I often wish I had been more patient and more giving with my time. I cringe when I remember how frequently I said, “not right…
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God Be With You
According to English language experts, the word “goodbye” is a contraction or diminutive of the phrase “God be with you.” Every summer as a child I attended a week-long family reunion/camp meeting. It was one of the highlights of my summer vacation and I still try to time my annual trip to west Tennessee to…
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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…
A Light for My Path 