The AfterLoss Blog
Coming Home to Peace and Comfort“I can live here. I just don’t fit here,” a dear friend said this morning on the phone.
She and I share many commonalities, but two of the most familiar on this path are loss and life. I, too, have said on many occasions to other people, “I just don’t think I fit here anymore.” read more…
How do we bear the unbearable?
I wish there was a roadmap in my Afterloss. I wish I knew what I needed to do when my world first imploded. It would have been nice to know the pain was going to last for a certain amount of time and then it would be okay. read more…
On the night of his birth, the doctor said it may be his only night.
I sat next Matt in the ICU that night. We lived life in seconds, in short rapid breaths, in love. He held my index finger. He held my heart. And I begged him to hold on. I matched the rapid rhythm of his breath, the short palpitations, the gasping for air. On that night, what could have been our only night, we lived love’s infinite night. read more…
I miss them. And I miss the missing pieces of me.
When they left a part of me left, too. In loss, I wandered through life wondering what else of me was gone. I have not found anything that replaces what has left and what is left of me today is scattered across the landscape of my Afterloss. read more…
I did not understand just how much I lost when they died.
I understood the loss of their touch, the sound of their voice and that deep connection reflected in a smile or a quick glance. But what I did not understand was how death changed every relationship. Death changed me. Death irrevocably changed my world. However, the tragedy of loss did not stop there. Death changed my relationship with the living in ways I was not prepared for. read more…
How do we get to here from there?
I recently met someone who spoke of a friend whose baby just recently died suddenly. As I was sharing my experience of my baby’s death and all that I went through and felt, I felt for her friend. I did not feel what I felt when I held my child in death. I was for her I felt, not me. read more…
To others, something is wrong with me.
To me, something is right. I just need to find what it is and follow it wherever it leads. I’ve come to know the phenomenon as invisible memories. They are memories I can’t see on the surface of my day, but buried beneath the hustle and bustle is a low-grade feeling, an undercurrent undetectable to the noise, yet I feel it. I feel something drawing me deeper than the day. read more…
Who do you know who knows you? And where do you meet?
We collect in our solitude in the hope of connection. Grief, by its very nature, separates. Yet, there is a desire in my emptiness to find another that can fill me with theirs. read more…
Have you ever just wanted to walk away? Just be somewhere else?
I sometimes live for the moment that has not yet arrived and miss the moment that is just to about to depart. There is an undercurrent of unsettledness that pulls me even in most pleasant of moments. read more…
It is human nature to want to know and be known by another.
It is natural to want to be loved and to love. The yearning for connection is an integral part of life. The yearning to know, to love and to connect to another does not end at death, but where it once went, it could no longer go. I had nowhere to lay my heart within the heart of another. read more…
I just wanted one more day.
Is it wrong to just want one more day? My Afterloss took me on a quest into the dynamic of continuity and closure. I needed to find a way to come to peace with what was left unsaid, undone, unfinished. And I needed to find a new way of relating to what continued. read more…
What gathers us? What scatters us?
Gathering and scattering. Loss has left me gathering what is left as life scatters the rest. We gather by hospital beds and car wrecks. We gather for funerals. We gather in homes to mourn, but come morning we scatter back into our singularity. read more…
How do we measure the years?
What are my reference points that tether me to time? I recently had a birthday. In the early days of my loss I would do the rose ceremony on Lydia, Matt and Bryan’s birthdays and the anniversaries of their deaths. It was an honoring of their births; that they walked this planet. It was the grieving of their deaths; that they were gone and I was still here. As the years went on I started to just have my ritual of remembrance at the day they died. read more…
How does a child understand death?
When Matt was three, his little brother was close to death. After work I would take him to the park. On the way home one day he said to me out of the blue, “When I die, Mickey is going to come get me and we’re going to dance on the clouds.” read more…
Where can I harbor this sorrow?
In whom, in what, can a safe haven be found? When there is nothing left to hold on to, who will hold me? read more…
I wouldn’t exactly have called them “panic attacks.”
They were more like “panic ambushes”. read more…
Grief is surreal.
I know that place where night fades into day and day gives way to night. I have rested in the relief that another day is finished and dreaded the moment the sun steals my night. read more…
What happens when the world goes on and you want to stop?
Today is Monday and I have to go to work. I’m trying to cut down on my use of four letter words, but I just can’t seem to shake ‘work’. I want to go back to bed. It’s not that I’m physically tired. I’m just a little road weary. read more…
Who defines what is ‘normal’?
When I say to someone living in loss, “It’s one of those days,” they know. They know what “those days” means when it feels like I’m running in water and everything is sluggish. They know what it means when I say I’m a little down. And those that know me know how down that can go.
Grief does not come to me in stages. Grief unfolds in layers.
I do not relate to the famous 5 Stages of Grief. I experience grief in the paradigm of The Multi-layers of Loss. My loss unfolds layer after layer that is not bound by dimension or time. Memory and moment weave their own directional course and my sorrow follows the watercourse way.
I do not lead my grief. Loss leads me into the places I must go. I go there because hurt yearns for healing. Sorrow summons solace. And my heart is drawn to wholeness in the fragmentation loss leaves. read more…