What makes me gravitate to places of where tears stream?

by Benjamin Allen | Jul 8, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

Why do I go into the epicenter of my hurt? What draws me to my sorrow? There was a song I wanted to play at Matt’s funeral. One afternoon, when I thought Matt was asleep, I was sitting on the floor in the living room listening to it. I was crying when Matt came...

I remember the little things.

by Benjamin Allen | Jul 7, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

Small occurrences, chance occasions, words spoken in passing loom large in my sifting through loss. It is not the big events that pass before me now. What I thought would be memorable moments subside. I seem to gravitate to the serendipitous scenes of simplicity. The...

Death stopped time, but time went on.

by Benjamin Allen | Jul 4, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

I grew older, but they did not. I continued to gather experiences, but the memory of them brought our today to an end. All three of their deaths happened over twenty years ago. The moment they died, moment changed. Matt took his last breath at the age of 13. He would...

There is so little I understand, so little I know.

by Benjamin Allen | Jun 30, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

So I have had to find a way to live in the unknown. I once had this idea that if I could make sense of my losses I would be able to find peace. If I could only understand why all this was happening, or figure out what I had done, or even what was being done, I could...

Layer upon layer, lost in the layers of loss.

by Benjamin Allen | Jun 29, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

I am in another phase of going deeper into life. There is so much I have had to leave behind. I cannot carry all that was into where I need to go. Some parts of my past have to find peace there. Other parts that have found peace must come with me into the layers that...

When each of them died, I needed to be alone.

by Benjamin Allen | Jun 26, 2014 | reflections on grief, reflections on grief recovery, reintegration after loss

I just want the world to go away, for my world had gone away. Nothing was the same, but I was sitting in the same house, the same chair, hearing the same sounds. The real became the surreal. I became the surreal. And I needed to be by myself, for self had changed....