Tag: Childloss
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What’s So Happy About It?
A lot of people wake up on January 1st looking forward to the new year. It’s a new beginning – a time to start fresh. To put last year’s mistakes and worries behind you and start over. Just like that new calendar you hang in your kitchen or office, you’ve got 365 blank squares to…
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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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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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Bitter or Better?
Recently I was invited to attend a ladies’ tea at a dear friend’s church. It was a fun and inspiring event. First of all, we got to dress up, which I confess is something I don’t do very often since I retired. And when I say “dress up” I mean we wore hats or fascinators,…
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Coffee
I’ve read countless posts in the bereaved parents’ groups that I belong to about grief triggers. I’ve written about them myself. If your child has been gone for a few years, you can usually anticipate and avoid (or at least prepare for) many triggers. Specific dates are obvious: your child’s birthday or homegoing date, your…
A Light for My Path 