Currently Browsing: Grief

February Blossoms

February Blossoms
February started out as a difficult month for me this year. I had just begun a new class in my master’s program and spent a few weeks adjusting to the level of research required for assignments, all the while getting back into the swing of balancing a full-time job with schoolwork, church, and relational responsibilities. And I was anticipating today—the seven-year anniversary of my mother’s death—with more emotion and grieving moments than usual. Then, just before Valentine’s Day, the trees surrounding my office building broke into winter with springtime blossoms.     It was unexpectedly...
read more

No Ordinary Tuesday

Today was an ordinary Tuesday in just about every way. I used my yellow umbrella to get from the door to the car. I had my performance evaluation at work. I came home and made soup, then finished the reading for this week’s assignment in my master’s program. But it is not an ordinary Tuesday because it is the sixth anniversary of the worst Tuesday of my life: the one on which my mother died. And I can no longer talk to her about any of the ordinary events of my day.     Yet, today I felt a different kind of joy in several small, caring gestures—the ones I received, and the ones I gave. They...
read more

The Years in Front of Us

The Years in Front of Us
My grandfather is known for many things–the summer days fishing on the ocean, the cars he fixed, the funny songs he sang to his grandkids, the poems he’d recite to anyone who’d listen, and the sayings he quipped throughout his life: “The early morning has gold in its mouth,” and “I have more years behind me than I have in front of me.”     Tonight, my sweet, kind grandfather has only hours in front of him. Right now he sleeps an unconscious sleep, his body carrying out the process of dying. It requires neither food nor drink, only rest. Only the effort of taking in oxygen and...
read more

Remembering … Five Years Later

Remembering … Five Years Later
Today is heavy with cold and ice and clouds.     I’m propped up in bed, where I’ve spent most of the day due to whatever nasty ailment that’s going around, and I look out the window. The ice-encrusted seed pods on the Crepe Myrtle tree pull the branches downward, as if in sadness.   The imagery of sadness comes easy; it was this day, five years ago, that my mother left us. I had determined to make this a day of celebration in remembering her life, and I am forever blessed that she is my mother. It is hard, however, to not remember the day of her death. My sister has memorialized that...
read more

Christmas in Dark Decembers

Christmas in Dark Decembers
I awoke this morning to bad news in a voicemail message: The fiancé of a widow who was to be married today died suddenly last night.     How do you digest news like that? And in light of God’s sovereignty, how do you explain it?   December is supposed to be a month of joyful Christmas celebration. But there are many, including this dear lady, whose tears are not of joy. The media tells us of countless others weeping with sorrow this Christmas season: mothers whose sons were killed by police. Parents whose children were shot by angry gunmen. Loved ones of hostages murdered by terrorists....
read more

« Previous Entries Next Entries »