19th Annual Grief Column   Cope with Hope

There is no playbook for grief. You may be on defense or offsides. But probably should be on the offense.

It takes a team around you, huddling. You may not win the coin toss every day.

You will have many incompletes. But you will also score. There will be quarters, timeouts and seasons.

Winter is cold and lonely with trees with no branches. A daughter goes to her deceased parents’ home, arriving to dark windows, piercing her heart and chiseling it away, into a house that smelled damp, with nothing in the oven and no hugs at the door. A reassuring presence will never greet her again. Friends could help put a ministering blanket over her.

Spring will bring a few budding trees. Plant a bulb. A man did this for his wife--100 of them. Blossoms speared each spring; they bloom and she knows his love surrounds her. Dylan Rounds’s mother has sent seeds all over to remember her murdered child by. Ethan Chapin’s memory is in tulips from Idaho,  where he was murdered.

Summer will remind those grieving of family vacations.

When the first anniversary of death approached, a lady featured in “The Sun” did not know what to do. It was the anniversary of the worst day of her life. She went to the ocean and thought about the trips she and her dad were going to take, things she wanted to tell him. A relief washed over her at sunset. She would never have to go through that first year again.

Death is a date in the calendar, but grief is the calendar, it is said. Your calendar will function properly one day. Just know that grief has different shelf lives.

There is the pain of separation, isolation and changing environments. The choice is yours. Turn inward or curl up into your pain. As Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 said, “Tell me what on the ship is good.”

Joy McNair said she thinks of her astronaut dad every day, but It’s not always a sad thought. The process is absorbed differently by everyone.

You get stronger when you proactively deal with your grief, said a doctor in the midst of dealing with the pandemic.

You have to reconcile a new world, said Nancy Grace when her boyfriend was shot. You will eventually connect the dots. Death never has the final say. We’re people who believe in the Resurrection, and as awful and terrible as loss has been, there will be light coming from it. --Spoken by the presider of the funeral of Evelyn Dieckhaus Nash, a young Nashville shooting victim.

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory, said Dr. Seuss. In “A Man Called Otto,” he just wanted people to say he pulled his weight.

Every joyful occasion had sorrow with it, said the mother of Sarah Yarbrough, who was murdered. Encased in bronze at her grave are a dog and a book. If it interests you, Turning Hearts Medallions makes it easy for you and your family to preserve the legacy of your ancestors by sharing their memories, accomplishments and photos with the world. Unique engraved QR codes provide a lasting link to their personal profile page, ensuring their memory remains accessible to future generations.

Death steals everything except our stories, said poet Jim Harrison.  Preserve your stories while the memories are vivid. Do triumphs, failures and mistakes. The oddest, funniest, most wonderful things. Putting them into words helps organize your mind. Someday, your life story is likely to be boiled down to a few lines. If you leave things to chance, your obituary is almost sure to be solemn, formulaic and full of errors—an obligatory final chapter written in haste by others. Mine has been written for 45 years, with constant updates.

Irving Berlin said the song is ended but the melody lingers on.

When you realize your father's mortality, it's a great opportunity to say the things you'd like to say to him. James Blunt wrote a song to his ill father: Sleep a lifetime. Yes, and breathe a last word. You can feel my hand on your own. I will be the last one so I'll leave a light on. Let there be no darkness in your heart. But I'm not your son, you're not my father. We're just two grown men saying goodbye. No need to forgive, no need to forget. I know your mistakes and you know mine. And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud. So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid; it's my turn to chase the monsters away.

You will find yourself doing something and wishing your late loved one was by your side. Grief reveals you if you allow yourself to feel it. You will be guided by it. You will become someone it would have been impossible for you to be, and in this way, your loved one lives on in you. --John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars”

Pat Boone feels Shirley's presence in the house all the time. He gets lonely and misses her, but that's one of the blessings. He's at peace with his own mortality and looking forward to seeing her soon.

Death is a leaving and a welcoming. Grief is like a long, winding valley where any end may reveal a totally new landscape, said C.S. Lewis.

Someone lost her husband after surgery and told the doctors she said she would pray for THEM.

On his deathbed, Thomas Edison whispered, “It’s very beautiful over there.” Those were his last words. He would not fabricate anything. He would report only what he saw. Is that scientific proof enough for you that heaven exists?

A nun who lost a student put a construction-paper crown on her desk the rest of the year to remind the others she was crowned in heaven. Absent from the body is present with the Lord.

It is said the heaviest coffin is that of a child. A child said to its to mom who "lost" a child, is something lost when you know where it is? David Jeremiah’s first funeral was a crib death, still his worst in 50 years. It's like the period in the middle of a sentence, he said.

The mother of Tyre Nichols, a man shot in Memphis, said “I cannot put his name in the past tense.”

In 2 Samuel 12:23, David says on the death of his son, “Instead I will go to him. Yet truly he will not return to me.” We never lose those we give to God.

If a tiny baby could think, it would be afraid of birth. To leave the only world it has known would seem a kind of death. But immediately after birth, the child is in loving arms, showered with affection and cared for every moment. Surely, it would say it was foolish to doubt God’s plan for it.

Grievers don't know what they need

A woman was out of town and her husband and 5-month-old died in a fire. She hurried home from her parents with their other two kids. She also lost a brother in a car accident. She had been visiting her dad in the hospital after he had a major car wreck. Her dad went to her family’s funeral on a gurney and said, “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” The stunned attendees sat like statues, not expecting to hear that. When her brother died, she and her husband wanted their lives to be about joy, come what may. Her whole life has been a “collector of people.” Friends, young and old, near and far. Church members, family, neighbors, co-workers and college buddies. They stepped in to make a way for her to move forward. Meals, cards, donated vacation time and care for the girls. Then they built her a house!

When your loved one passes, see if you can offer someone else something--a bed hoist or gently used medical equipment.

I went to a book review on Edith Wilson. They passed around a piece of mourning jewelry that is a tribute to the deceased--possibly hair can be placed inside.

There will be awkward conversations. Some things are none of your business. If a widow keeps her first husband's last name, puts the ring on the other hand or has his photo up, that’s her prerogative.  I try to say deceased not dead in conversations and never something like bought the farm, kicked the bucket, gave up the ghost, is no more, left this world or c'est fini. There are so many descriptions. Life-altering, living in a maze, wrenching, crumbling, cratering, unmooring, withdrawn, oblivious, weighted, disoriented, gutted. It’s like having a bad dream on repeat. You may lose your happy place, fall apart, have a hole in your heart or have half a heart or lose your anchor. The eulogist at my cousin’s funeral said he lost his white hat because they were a duo.

There was a story about the recipe reaper who is going viral on TikTok for baking recipes that are on gravestones. Such a niche. Rosie Grant of California discovers recipes in a unique place: cemeteries. A cobbler recipe belonged to O'Neal Bogan "Peony" Watson, who died in 2005 and is buried at New Ebenezer Cemetery in Castor. Grant flew to New Orleans for a conference and decided to make the peach cobbler while she was in Louisiana. She was staying at Tulane University and baked in the dorm. She then took the cobbler and made the four-hour drive to Castor. Watson's peach cobbler is one of 23 of 25 gravestone recipes that she has heard of that Grant has made since starting this project. She's always been comfortable with death, having grown up with parents who gave ghost tours. She has a clam linguini that she wants on her tombstone.

A chef equated grief with a burrito. Open it up and pick it apart. Sometimes you forget they are not here and you bring home too many groceries. You'll also have to sort through belongings as well as what's left behind in your mind. 

Steve Hartman featured a man giving up half his salary for things like Starbucks, groceries and gas. He saw a woman behind him at Burger King who appeared sad. He bought her food. She had lost her husband of 41 years. She told his utility company boss. Their circle has grown. She is now doing the same type of kindnesses.

In "Our Better Angels," one man built Habitat houses in honor of his mother who was an architect.

Anderson Cooper’s father died of heart disease when he was young and a brother committed suicide. Overwhelmed by the wilderness of grief after his mother passed, he recorded voice memos of his thoughts and feelings on his phone. He realized he could deal with his own feelings of sadness in a journalistic way as a correspondent from the world of grief. Within two days of its launch, he topped Apple’s podcast chart in the United States. It features, for one, Stephen Colbert who lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was 10. He believes his loss has made him more human and allowed him to love more fully. Comedian Molly Shannon said the death of her mother, baby sister and cousin in a car crash when she was 4 contributed to her development as a comic writer and actor. Cooper asked people to Instagram or voice mail him something they’d learned that helped them. He received 1,000 calls and had a week to go through them. He was able to listen to 200 to select stories for the episode he did. Cooper said “All There Is” is the most valuable thing he has ever done.

Besides this podcast, there is an app called After Death to help with grief; you can meditate or journal. There are also AI companies where a mother “attended” her own funeral. At the end, she said goodbye and everyone burst into tears. A no from me.

Luke Russert left NBC because he realized he hadn't grieved. Grief is going to get caught up to you. You can try and outrun and ignore it, he said. But what I’ve learned is that the longer you do that, the more painful it is. I think the real peace comes through acceptance. He said, “I miss my dad, I love my dad, and I wish he was here. But I know that he is here in some capacity. And I know that he’s proud of me and happy for me. I can’t change the events of the past, but I can accept them and get to a place where I’m at peace.”

I’ll end with this. In "The Story of a Mother" by Hans Christian Andersen, a mother has not slept for three days and nights watching over her sick child. When she closes her eyes for just a moment, Death comes and takes her child. The mother rushes into the street and asks a woman, who is Night, which way Death went. Night tells her to go into the forest, but first the mother must sing every lullaby that she has ever sung for her child. In the forest, a thorn bush tells her which way to continue, but only after she has warmed the bush by pressing it to her chest, causing her to bleed. The mother then reaches a lake that carries her across in exchange for her eyes, which she cries out. The now blind mother reaches the greenhouse where Death cares for the flowers and trees, each one a human life. Here the mother finds the little sick plant that is her child, recognizing it by the sound of its heartbeat. The old woman who helps care for the greenhouse tells her, in exchange for her hair, that when Death comes, she must threaten to rip up the other flowers. Death will then be afraid for he must answer to God; only God decides when the plants are pulled up and planted in the garden of Paradise, where we do not know what happens. Death gives her back her eyes and asks her to look into a well. Here she sees the futures of two children, one full of happiness and love, the other full of misery and despair. He says that one of these futures would be the future of her child, were it to live. Then the mother screams in fear, "Which is my child! Rather carry my child into God's kingdom than allow it to suffer such a life." Death says, "I do not understand. Do you want your child back or should I carry it away into the unknown?" And the mother wrings her hands, gets down on her knees, and prays to God: "Do not listen to me when I ask against your will! Do not listen to me, do not listen to me, do not listen to me!" And Death leaves, carrying her child into the unknown land.

The end of the story is glory. --EWTN