Good Mourning Grief

A blog about my adventures as a grief warrior

Month: June 2025

The Souls of Rotary

June 29, 2025 /

Our city welcomed Rotarians from around the globe to visit and celebrate community service through the annual International Conference. My husband’s Rotary Chapter hosted a BBQ for fifty delegates to which we were invited to.  A beautiful moment with old friends meeting new friends and sharing stories of personal experiences had through the involvement of Rotary. It was enjoyable, to which many emotions were felt as I caught up with people who I have not seen for years and some whom I will never see again. Surreal might be a good word to describe the night.

There were the new introductions which included how I was connected to Rotary and what did I do and how many children did I have. For the most part, easily answered.  As I was chatting with one of the wives of Jon’s Rotary group, another joined us. We exchanged pleasantries and then she asked me, “what are your two kids up to?” She had remembered, we had the same number of children but had forgotten what we have gone through. I smiled and told her about Payton getting married and her upcoming trip this summer and then moved the conversation back to her by asking about her son’s recent travels. When she left, the woman I was previously chatting to, noticed my tattoo as I reached for my drink and asked, “was this for Zane?” Yes. “Do you have other tattoos?”, she asked. Yes. “May I see them?”  As I pointed out each tattoo I have in memory of my son, she nodded. Her sincerity was genuine. It was wonderful how she remembered. And I realized why she did that. She was ensuring me that Zane was not forgotten, as was seemingly the case from the previous conversation with the other woman.

I was not angry with the other woman; I knew that it was an oversight on her part.  We are not close, and we see each other seldom. She is a wonderful caring being who came over to say hello. The beauty in the innocence of her question was that she will always remember me as the mother of two children.

Another mother who has lost a child in this small Rotary family, came over to give me a hug. Our hugs are different. They are more of a “I see you are still standing” hug with never the question, “how are you”. I remembered this was the time of year she had lost her daughter. We had attended the funeral, with no ability, at the time, to comprehend the horror of what she was going through. She told me of how they celebrated her this year. I reached out to hold her hand. She squeezed back and said, “it’s been sixteen years, and it still feels like yesterday”. 

The night carried on, catching up with others of their own challenges with health, family, retirement and as I listened, I thought of how it has been over thirty years that I have associated with this group. When Jon joined, we were all so young, starting families, buying a new home, eager to help change the world. And now, we stand, together, much older, each carrying the scars of experience that life has bestowed upon us.

The fellowship of this group is steadfast. We have celebrated happy times and stood behind each other during hard times. It is the Rotary way, “service above self.”  It is how we live, how we raised our children. A surge of gratitude filled my heart that night, to be a part of a collective whose soul purpose is to shine their light such that others may see the way.

“Just a Dream Away” by Claudia Carlton Lambright”

June 22, 2025 /

I found a note I wrote to myself from August of 2021 which read, “my dream last night, Zane approached me and told me to buy the book Just a Dream Away.”  I have no recollection of why I didn’t buy it right away and I don’t have an explanation of why I rediscovered the note. I can only imagine, the Universe decided to nudge me. Better late than never, I bought the book and read it.

Claudia, the author, writes about the after-death communication she has with her father and her spouse.  It is written in short, easy-to-read chapters, beginning with the loss of her beloved father who began showing up in her dreams about a month after he passed. Claudia, who has been invested in dreamwork since she was a child, explains to the reader of the two altered states of consciousness when we fall asleep and wake up. She also talks about the concept of lucid dreaming whereby one can learn to hold conversations with those they dream about within the dream. The idea of communicating with those of the other realm is fascinating.

She writes, “Death is an ending only for the survivors. For the dying person, it is just a change in frequency.” If we believe that we are made of energy, and science tells us that energy can never vanish, it only changes form, then we can believe that as energy, our loved ones are still around. In our sleep, our subconscious energy can reach those who have passed and connect with their energy through our dreams. It is a very hopeful theory that she shares her experiences of its truth.

Six years after her father had passed, her husband Rusty passed of metastatic lung cancer. The dragonfly, their favorite song, were signs that Claudia knew were Rusty letting her know he was still with her.  Shortly after his passing, the dream communications began. She shares her many dreams with the readers and her interpretations of what they meant. She talks about how, with practice, we can become aware when we are dreaming and engage in questions and conversations to remember when we wake. This is the power and beauty of lucid dreaming.

We all dream, the challenge is remembering them.  Claudia suggests falling asleep with intention. “Tonight, I will realize I’m dreaming”. Write your dreams down as soon as you wake, while the memory is fresh. Speaking the mantra “raom gaom”, pronounced “rah…ohm..gah..ohm”, can help recapture lost parts of a dream. And practice. Practice. Practice.

My husband speaks of how I live two full lives. One here, with family and friends, and one, when I retire to bed, to connect with my son and other loved ones. I am grateful to travel to other realms. I practice it often and although I do not receive a visit every night, I often do.  Claudia’s book was validation that lucid dreaming can link us, confirming that those we love are never truly gone.

The Yin and Yang of Grief

June 15, 2025 /

Men are different. They are built to be problem solvers, strong and non-emotional. And yes, ‘modern men’, are more in touch with their feelings and many do not shy away from tears. Yet, there is a difference in the make up of grief between men and women. It has been a recent discussion amongst my female grief warriors; how their husbands handle, or don’t handle grief.

Grief being a very personal and often lonely journey, can also be blinding. We get immersed in our own pain and instinct takes front seat. Researchers have confirmed this and have identified it as two different types of grieving, masculine and feminine.

Masculine grievers keep to themselves, they appear in control, getting on with life, believing they need to fix their grief. Feminine grievers want to tell their story, feel their way through the pain with support and connection. Feminine grievers often have a deeper feeling of guilt when life pushes them to move on.  It is important to note that these patterns are on a spectrum to which individuals can exhibit both styles.

 I didn’t handle my grief when it first arrived.  I focused on my family, their needs and how I could help. I ignored mine. I watched my husband pack his car to visit friends and family, following his energy with social and solitude.  I watched my daughter try to cope with a combination of remembrance and finding new relationships. My family needed to gather for the holidays, and I arranged the details. Looking back, I was a mix of masculine and feminine. More masculine in the early days; I wanted to fix the pain my family was feeling. I wanted to control the tiny, shattered pieces left of our life. But in no way, did I want to get on with life.  What was life without Zane?

My true grief, the grief I have come to know and am trying to honor, is feminine. I want to share my story, to connect with others walking this path for support and to support. I still do not want to move on. That is the part of my grief that I believe will always be within me and why I struggle with giving up anything that is related in any way to my life before Zane was killed. That complicated concept of feminine grief makes so much sense now.

It is the reason why my mother friends can’t change the bedroom their child lived in or discard the boxes of personal items from their apartment. It is the reason why my mother friends showcase a tattoo symbolic of their precious child. It is why they wear their child’s ashes in a charm or bead. The feminine side of grief shouting out for remembrance.    

Within the conversations of my friends who have lost a child, there are common denominators. One of them is that they worry their husbands are not ok because they appear to be discounting their grief.  The truth is that they are grieving, just differently. Understanding that there are generalities around gender and grieving sheds light to why we sometimes are not on the same page.

The important factor is to recognize that the grief journey is a solitude one to which we may not understand the path the other chooses. When we respect the yin and yang of grief, which is felt within each of us, we can then respond with love in the knowledge that the essence of all life is trying to find our own balance.

Under the Lilac Trees

June 8, 2025 /

Zane was two when I took him to the Lilac Festival for the first time. It was a free event with vendors and music and bubbles filling the streets of downtown. It was magical. We both loved the energy of so many people gathering to celebrate the upcoming spring and enjoy the scents of the lilac trees outlining the walkway. After that, he was hooked and attended every year.

This year, I wanted to be there. At my work, we are creating a social media project in honor of Zane. What better day to kick it off then at Lilac Festival, the symbolic event of shaking of the (winter) blues and reconnecting with nature and people. This day captures Zane’s persona beautifully.

There were over 100,000 people this year. Including Zane. The bubbles floating around us. The man who stood in front of us wearing a t-shirt with the quote ‘the dude abides’ were all signs that my son continues to attend this springtime favorite. The festival was as wonderful as I had remembered. We stopped for lunch at a favorite watering hole and nestled into the booth. Jose had invited a friend to join us. When she arrived, she slid in between Jon and Roydon and Jose began introductions. Pointing to each of us as he spoke, he said, “this is mom and dad, this is my brother-in-law and this is my sister”. My heart lit up. I have called Jose my other kid for years. He calls me his Mama J. But hearing it out loud to someone who doesn’t know us or our story, was different.  

I speak of how blessed our family is that Zane has such great friends who continue to include us in their lives, in his honor. My daughter spoke at his celebration of how she grew up with many of his friends, who were like brothers to her. On that day, they promised her to be there as Zane would have been, and they have kept that promise. The bonus is Jon, and I were also adopted by them. I am the mother of five other boys.

We left the kids that afternoon in the company of their friends to continue soaking up Lilac Festival. My heart was full, a rare day where sweet seemed to reign over bitter.  The essence of the Lilac Festival showering over us, the bonds of la familia celebrating a sunny Sunday. A moment each year that Zane discovered early in his life, and whose love of the energy this event brings, he has shared with all of us. Lilac Festival is a tradition of warm, simple connections. An annual gathering our entire family enjoys.  I must remember to attend each year, as my kids do. It is good mourning.    

Regrets That Masquerade

June 1, 2025 /

My wish, when I turned thirty, was to have fewer regrets in my next thirty than I did in my first thirty years. I felt I failed. When I look back on my first thirty years, the regrets I had are so small compared to the regrets in adulthood, specifically motherhood. In my first thirty years I was young, learning, supposed to make mistakes. After thirty, you are expected to be grown up and raising the next generation so one better be complicated free. Yes, I realize this is unrealistic; idealistic expectations are the doorway to regret. I read the posts about how your first born ‘grew up’ with you as you learned to parent. Your second one shares with you a sense of freedom or adventure you wish for. Both are true for me.

Regrets can be powerful teachers in the lessons of life. In grief, they can also become a trap that snares any chance of healing.  Exploring what is a regret, my list includes things that have happened that I had control of and some I had no control of. So, are they all regrets?  I regret not putting a tire swing on the tree for the kids. Why? They had lots; the lack of a tree swing did not alter their development. Get over it. I regret moving to a new community albeit we returned.  So, mistake fixed. I regret telling Zane to go and enjoy that night he was killed. I think the things that I say I regret are the things I will never know if they were the decisions that forged the path to where I now travel on.

Pondering my feelings, meditating with my angels, as I often do, I came across a quote. “Regret is the only wound the soul does not recover from.” Could this be why I feel stuck? It encouraged me to think about if what I am feeling is regret (I was in control) or disappointment (out of my control). Then I read the author of this quote was Sarah Ban Breathnack.  She wrote Simple Abundance, a book I read over and over, and that Zane knows is my all time favorite. And I knew that her quote came to me, through Zane. Perhaps it is not regret that I am feeling, perhaps the emotion is disappointment.

Regrets are all the things said or unsaid, done or undone that we no longer have a chance to fix. Or at least we feel we have no chance. And sometimes we don’t. And I think that is where disappointment lies.  Part of grieving is that your heart explores every corner, every aspect of what might have been done differently to not have ended up here. The truth settles into your soul disguised as regret, but really it is disappointment of what we wished was to be is not ever to be.

In the end, the answer is always one could have done more. Death takes that away. The quote sent to me is a reminder that if I wish my soul to heal, I must understand that I have no real regrets. I used the daily strength given to me to do my best. With that, whatever came to be, it cannot become a regret chained to me to cause more angst. The regrets I thought I carried are just disappointments that I did not have more time, more experiences with those I love.

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