Good Mourning Grief

A blog about my adventures as a grief warrior

Month: September 2022

Traditions, The Glue Holding Us Together

September 26, 2022 /

My daughter, Payton, and I have an annual tradition to make pickles and jam.  Life has recently gotten too busy. Between what must be done and what should be done, we have had little chance to relax. So, we missed the season of getting pickling cucumbers in time to make our famous dill pickles.  This year we opted for cranberry relish, zucchini relish and a whiskey peach jam.

The truth is I am with Payton a lot. Time together is our tradition.  Zane called us two old ladies as we enjoy shopping, patio hopping, Netflix binges, crafts and cooking together. She is a best friend. Being acutely aware of the pain of loss, traditions with my daughter have become the priority in my life. I have watched her, over the last years, deal with the loss of her big brother and realized how important that these bittersweet traditions we share are. They are the glue that keeps us from falling apart with grief.

This got me thinking, what can we do to revel in the traditions we have. How can we celebrate with our children who live on the other realm. We can tweak the traditions to fit around our grief.  Adding something new or modifying how it is done. We can create a whole new tradition. This all takes practice. Somethings help, somethings don’t. Each year you can refine your traditions to be a little more comforting.  Traditions are long-term, passed down ideals which gives us the freedom to change them up. With loss, traditions need to become events that also honor our loved ones.

Let’s look at traditions and ponder how can we fill these with the memories of our loved one.  What can we incorporate that will acknowledge their likes, their personality. Let’s go a step further and look at the other identifiable holidays that come along each year and what can we do with them to bring to life the memory of our beloved? Why can’t we have a calendar filled with celebrations that we enjoy with family and friends that include, that honor, those we have lost.

Somewhere between the zucchini draining and the peaches boiling, Payton and I talked about who we wanted to share our jars with.  A new part of our fall tradition; someone will receive a jar that would have been devoured by Zane. 

I am blessed to have such a wonderful young woman to create and celebrate traditions with. Her loving heart has a desire to include and commemorate, those that are here and those who should be. I know her brother is smiling as we pour a little of his favorite whiskey into the peach jam.  He will always be a part of our traditions.

Keys to Grief

September 18, 2022 /

Grief comes in many forms and many levels of intensity. Grief is a result of loss and there are losses almost daily that we accept, sometimes without even recognizing it. Until they accumulate and you are not feeling well or can’t focus and not understanding why. Such was this week.

We drove to British Columbia to see friends who are not aging well. In our conversation with them I heard the loss of hope in my friend as he talked about not having the capacity to be the person he once was. No one likes bad change. And his physical issues are not good. But as we spoke, I realized that sometimes we have expectations to be the person we were decades ago, or days ago, from what life has handed us. Adaptation is key to happiness.

We came home to news that another close friend had stumbled and thinking it was a stroke, his children took him to the hospital.  What they found was a large cancerous tumor in his brain. He underwent surgery the next day and the doctors have told us there will be a long road to recovery and a much shorter life expectancy than we had thought would be his life plan. Hope is key to resiliency.

Over cocktails, another friend told me she was diagnosed with cancer and will be having her toe amputated in hopes that it has not spread. We shared feelings about the realism of aging and how everything happens for a reason. God only knows what the reasons are this week. Trust is key to strength.

What I do know is that my plate is full. I am connected, by heart and soul to these friends. So, when falling to sleep is not happening and my body hurts, I know that I am grieving for the loss.  The loss of what was and the loss of what is coming.

It is an unsettling feeling, empty of promise with no clear predictions. Such is life. Such is love. Such is loss. And what I know now is that grief is also a part of life and love and loss. Acceptance is key to courage.  

Road Signs that Increase Grief

September 11, 2022 /

In May when we visited friends in Kelowna, I told my husband that it was my last time driving there. I wasn’t sure if I hated the drive because of the construction detour or the fact we brought our dog who howled the entire 7 hours. Well, we are back, driving west to see our friends.  This time, there was no detour, and we left the dog behind, and I figured out why I hate travelling by car. It’s the road signs.  Specifically, two types of road signs.

The first sign are the crosses. The sign that someone else lost a loved one to a highway crash. Someone else walks this journey beside me. Even though I know not of them, I sigh, whispering “I am so sorry” under my breath.  I can’t enjoy the majestic scenery my husband reminds me of.  We are in God’s Country.  And where was God then?

The second, and more personal, are the dozens of road signs stating, “Passing Lane 2KM”. You wait for these expanded areas to pass slower moving vehicles safely.  Here, you are not as likely to have an oncoming vehicle in your lane.  It is this sign that was at Zane’s crash site.  It haunts me to this day; 2 km and my boy would have been safe.  2km was all he had to travel before the divided highway would have kept him apart from the other driver crossing the centre line. 2km and he may have survived. Every time we drive by one of these signs, I can feel my heart explode and my hands grip the wheel tighter and my jaw clenches. I am a ball of angry bitter tension by the time we reach our destination.  These road signs kill me emotionally.

It’s true that our life is all about bittersweet.  When I see a feather or balloon, a sweet sign from Zane, I am elated. Connected. When I see a bitter sign, like one of these road signs, I am reminded of my truth. The ugly truth. A grief warrior’s life is a yin and yang of bitter and sweet. It is part of grief. I must remember this. The bitter signs are just that.  They are signs of what happened. They are part of the story but not the whole story.  And I can choose which signs I want to focus on, the ones that elate me or those that crush me.

Our trip home I will experiment with this concept. I will search for the sweet signs that I know are also there. I will watch the skies and the countryside and the mountains for clues that Zane is with me. This is an exercise in choosing how I look at life and I wish to see it with my boy, riding next to me, past the signs that repeat he is not physically here.

Goals For Our Grief

September 4, 2022 /

With September, comes the rush of more work, school, and busier times. We know this. Summer leaves behind the long days of less. It is a time to plan as well. I recently read, for mothers especially, that September can be a quiet but impactful opportunity to look at your life. And to plan your goals.

January is when we make new year resolutions; it is a time where we are exhausted and needing to rest and perhaps why so many of our goals fail. If we choose to look at what we want, what we need, in September, our perspective might be different. If we use this month to focus on what goals would support our grief, perhaps the upcoming months won’t be as harsh. September goals are about self care.

What would you like to see this upcoming year for just you. Between now, when the leaves begin to change colors and next year’s summer heat? What would you like to bring into your life and what would you like to remove? When we are grieving, the answers seem obvious. I want my child back. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to have peace, maybe a little joy. We feel it’s impossible. This thinking stops us from healing.

Grief will never leave and because of that we must look at how we live with it. What do we do to include it as the big part of our lives it will always be. Our goals need to include our grief.

In the quiet morning hours, before the drama of life unfolds, what if we sat with a journal and meditated about what we need this year to live with our grief. What would that look like for you? Would it include more time alone or more time with friends? Would it include a trip or a move or just more walks? What would you like to incorporate or remove or change with the upcoming holidays. What do you need that would support your grief? Start writing your thoughts.

September goals are the secret wishes of your heart. They do not need to be shared, no one knows we have made them.  They are between you and God. Quiet prayers of what we have discovered through journalling to try. Just try. 

And what if these feelings were heard by the Universe? What then? Could we find the energy to chase these desires? Would we accept, if what we dreamed about, approached us? We must be open to such happenings. We must do the work to bring to life the ideas we have recorded in our journal.

Identifying and working towards the goals of what is needed to build a life around grief is good mourning. Only by searching our hearts for new ways or modified ways to integrate our grief, will we then know what may bring us comfort.

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