Grief by Gwen Flowers

Grief by Gwen Flowers

I had my own notion of grief.

I thought it was the sad time

That followed the death of someone you love. And you had to push through it

To get to the other side.

But I'm learning there is no other side.

There is no pushing through.

But rather, There is absorption. Adjustment. Acceptance.

And grief is not something you complete,

But rather, you endure. Grief is not a task to finish

And move on, But an element of yourself- An alteration of your being. A new way of seeing. A new definition of self.

Healing Arts_Poetry by Gwen Flowers

What a Home Funeral Is Really Like - True Story of Dying at Home

"[I]n recent years, Americans have become increasingly interested in alternative death practices, like home funerals, environmentally friendly burials, and liquid cremation, which dissolves human remains through a process called alkaline hydrolysis. A Seattle entity has been working on a plan to compost corpses and perhaps one day use the nutritive remains on trees and in gardens. These efforts are about a lot of things: environmental concerns, the right to keep commerce and strangers out of a sacred rite, and a long-standing Boomer interest in customizing everything, including their exits. But they're also part of a growing death positive movement that sees death as the natural order of things rather than a violation of that order."

What a Home Funeral Is Really Like - True Story of Dying at Home

Celeste Headlee The Mistake I Made with My Grieving Friend

Celeste Headlee's new book We Need to Talk describes some of the things we say to try to show empathy but instead redirects a conversation in a way a person in pain does not want to hear.

"I had totally failed my friend. I had wanted to comfort her, and instead, I'd made her feel worse. At that point, I still felt she misunderstood me. I thought she was in a fragile state and had lashed out at me unfairly when I was only trying to help. But the truth is, she didn't misunderstand me at all. She understood what was happening perhaps better than I did. When she began to share her raw emotions, I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know what to say, so I defaulted to a subject with which I was comfortable: myself. I may have been trying to empathize, at least on a conscious level, but what I really did was draw focus away from her anguish and turn the attention to me. She wanted to talk to me about her father, to tell me about the kind of man he was, so I could fully appreciate the magnitude of her loss. Instead, I asked her to stop for a moment and listen to my story about my dad's tragic death."

Celeste Headlee The Mistake I Made with My Grieving Friend

Beth Malone on Her Father's Dementia

The Lies of the Deathbed Scene (and Also the Truth) | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert

From a beautiful, moving essay by Noah Gittel about the death of his father:

"The simple practice of caring for him made me love him more than ever before. He was on a heavy dose of morphine the day we took him off life support, and after the doctors left the room, I sat with him and stroked his beard, which the doctors had let grow back to its normal length because there was no reason to keep it trimmed. I started talking, saying all the things they suggest. “I love you. I forgive you. Forgive me. Thank you. Goodbye.” He opened his eyes and rolled them over in my direction. Did he see me? Had he ever seen me? I kept talking, He closed his eyes and did not open them again. For all of my grappling with my feelings, and for all the lies that cinema tells about the death of a family member, this was as close to a "Magnolia Moment" as I was going to get. And yet frogs did not fall from the sky. He slipped away, and I am left searching the movies for answers, still struggling to make sense of a relationship that I couldn’t find the courage to scrutinize while he was alive. The credits have rolled, but I’m still waiting for the movie to end."

The Lies of the Deathbed Scene (and Also the Truth) | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert:

Dying May Not Be as Awful an Experience as You Think

Does the very idea of death worry and frighten you? There may be reassurance from a new study that finds those fears might be exaggerated. In fact, the research shows, death is often described as a peaceful, "unexpectedly positive" experience by those who approach it. Death is one of life's guarantees, yet it's something people often avoid talking about, according to study author Kurt Gray. He's an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "There's almost an unspoken assumption that death is something to be avoided at all costs," Gray said. But his team found that the abstract concept of death may be scarier than the reality.

Dying May Not Be as Awful an Experience as You Think

A nurse with fatal breast cancer says end-of-life discussions saved her life - The Washington Post

And while this metastatic cancer will one day kill me, the advanced-care planning conversations I have had with my health-care team have been lifesaving since my diagnosis. I use the word “lifesaving” advisedly because that is what these conversations are truly about. When done well, they can shape care in ways that give people with serious illness a chance at getting the best life possible. This kind of conversation initially helped my care team understand what was important to me and helped clarify my goals of care. Faced with an incurable disease and a prognosis where only 11 to 20 percent survive to five years and there is no statistic for 10-year survival because it so rarely happens, I came to understand that my priority was to seek a “Niagara Falls trajectory” — to feel as well as possible for as long as possible, until I quickly go over the precipice. Quality of life is more important to me than quantity of days, if they are miserable days.

A nurse with fatal breast cancer says end-of-life discussions saved her life - The Washington Post