Category: Grief

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My pets have stolen my heart again and again.

— I know I’m not alone.

Our relationships with animals can be as strong as those we have with humans, and far less complicated

By Marlene Cimons

The most searing memory of my childhood was the day my mother finally agreed to get us a puppy, only to change her mind several hours later. She decided it would be too much work. Growing up, all I ever wanted was a dog or a cat. All I ever got was a turtle, countless goldfish and two parakeets.

Not surprisingly, the first thing I did after leaving home was get a kitten, a half-Siamese who lived to nearly 20, then a Burmese who made it to 17. When my kids were old enough — 10 and 13 — we got a chocolate lab puppy, as much for me as for them. The kids grew up and left, but Hershey stayed. She was my first dog and — with no husband or partner — my best friend.

The years brought a half-dozen more cats and two more dogs, Watson, a black lab then age 6 months, and Raylan, a yellow shepherd mix, who, at 4 years old, arrived with a BB pellet in his leg and a clear case of post-traumatic stress. With patience and love, Ray morphed from a fearful defensive stray into a devoted and trusting companion.

Today I live with Watson, now 10, the king of fetch, a mama’s boy who follows me everywhere; Chloe, 15, a long-haired part-Maine Coon cat, who loves dogs more than other cats; and Zachy, 10, a gray and black tabby obsessed with food — and my socks. All are rescues.

It was predictable after my pet-deprived youth that I would have animals. What surprised me was the intensity of my feelings for them, and how much my relationship with them would come to define my life.

I was paralyzed with grief and guilt (did I do the right thing?) when Hershey, at 13, was diagnosed with an advanced untreatable cancer and I had to let her go. Similarly, I fell apart after Raylan, then 12, and two of the cats, Max, almost 18, and Leo, 15, also developed cancer, and — in a recent short time span — were gone. Today I feel intermittent anxiety about Watson, Chloe and Zachy, the scientific term being anticipatory grief.

Social media is rife with personal stories of the animal/human bond, especially how difficult it can be to say goodbye. Our relationships with our pets often are as strong as and sometimes stronger than, those we have with our humans, and far less complicated. This may explain our deep connection with them.

“Often, pets are our first or even only chosen family when we leave childhood homes, when we live alone, when our children leave, when we go through breakups,” says Marjie Alonso, former executive director of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants and the IAABC Foundation. “Our pets provide a steady, stable presence in a way humans do not.”

Researchers sometimes use attachment theory to describe this bonded relationship between humans and their pets, which holds that humans are born with an innate need to bond with a caregiver, usually their mother. “For many pet owners, the attachment relationships we develop are as emotionally close and similar in intensity as a human attachment,” says Michael Meehan, a senior lecturer in veterinary science at Massey University in New Zealand. “Our pets also display the same attachment behavior toward us.”

Sandra McCune, visiting professor in human-animal interaction in the schools of psychology and life sciences at the University of Lincoln in England, agrees. “It may be that companion animals have hijacked our innate desire to form attachments,” she says. “They depend on us like a child that never grows up.”

My companion animals make up the rhythm of my days — and nights. It’s not just the walk/runs with Watson, or his endless preoccupation with tennis balls, or ensuring Chloe gets her medicines on time, and that Zachy has the special food he needs to prevent urinary blockages.

It’s also those exquisitely sweet moments: Watson, warm against my back while I sleep, and Chloe, who starts on my stomach, then moves into the crook of my arm when I shift. Zachy, still dog-wary, stays downstairs overnight, but waits at the bottom of the steps and demands breakfast as soon as he hears us stir.

“Pets tend to be always the same, even on good and bad days, reliably who they are and reliably ours in our relationship with them,” Alonso says. “Their own needs and wants are fixed around food, enrichment and care, focusing on us, rather than ‘Is my promotion going to come through?’ ‘You forgot our anniversary,’ or, ‘What do you want for dinner?’”

Emily Bray, assistant professor of human-animal interaction in the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine, agrees. “When they are tuned into us, you have their full attention. They are not texting on their phones,” she says.

My children have their own lives now — and their own cats — and make their own decisions. But pets need us to make choices for them, even when it isn’t easy. “Pet owners have to decide when the time comes for euthanasia, which often complicates grief and doesn’t often exist in relation to human death,” says Meehan, also a pet grief counselor. “Unlike human death, there are no traditional rituals or protocols in place to memorialize a pet.”

McCune calls anticipatory grief a normal response to the prospect of loss. “It’s part of the love you have for them,” she says. “Enjoy them while you have them, make and keep memories for when they go. There are just some very special dogs and cats, the ones that steal your heart, that you constantly involve in your life, and that you change your life for.”

That has been true for me and, as it turned out, for my parents, too. Years after my brothers and I moved out, my sister-in-law gifted my parents, then in their 70s, with their first dog, a cocker spaniel puppy.

Too much work? Maybe. But they were too smitten to care.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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My dad’s funeral in the Philippines showed me it’s OK to party the pain away

— When my father died suddenly of a heart attack, I was thrust into an unfamiliar world of grieving

Jim Agapito, left, and his father, Simeon Agapito, being mall rats in 2017.

by Jim Agapito

After his father’s sudden death while on vacation in the Philippines, Jim Agapito rushed to his funeral. But when he arrived from Canada, he was thrown into an unfamiliar world where his sombre understanding of mourning was replaced by superstition and festivities.

It took three days to get to my dad’s funeral in the Philippines because of a chaotic string of flights and cancellations: Winnipeg to Vancouver, Vancouver to Tokyo and Tokyo to Manila. When I landed, it took another four-hour drive to my mom’s home in a small, rural area called Jaen, Nueva Ecija.

I was tired and devastated. When I saw the coffin, all I wanted to do was burst into tears. But I couldn’t.

Crying on the coffin is bad luck, I heard in my mind. It’s what I had been told again and again by my Filipino family, who were all intent on observing Filipino customs and superstitions for my dad’s journey from the living to the afterlife

Imagine that. You rush halfway around the world to grieve your father’s death but don’t cry on the coffin because it could curse both of you.

I thought, Rest his soul, Dad is already dead. Who would be getting the bad luck?

I felt torn standing before his coffin, surrounded by family and friends who seemed to be keeping it together. On the inside, I was a wreck, and I just wanted to grieve for my father the only way I knew how. I wanted to cry. I wanted to be sad. I wanted to be alone with my mom and my brother.

But in the Philippines, there’s an unwritten but important rule: No one grieves alone, and it’s the family’s duty to create a happy atmosphere for grieving loved ones. Even if that means karaoke.

A smiling man with shoulder-length hair puts his arms around a smiling woman and a smiling bald man. They’re all standing in a mall.
Agapito, centre, with his mom Yolanda Agapito, left, and dad Simeon Agapito, right, grabbing coffee in 2018 in Winnipeg.

Fulfilling my father’s dream

This push and pull of how to grieve was a shock because it had been 34 years since I’d been to the Philippines. I was born in Canada and visited my parents’ homeland only once when I was nine.

After they retired, my parents split their time each year between the Philippines and Winnipeg. Dad was in the Philippines for Christmas when he suddenly died of a heart attack.

It was my dad’s wish that my older brother and I would explore this country he loved so much. And there I was, fulfilling his dream under the worst circumstances imaginable.

I’ve been exploring my Filipino culture through a podcast I host called Recovering Filipino. I delve into everything from why we as a community love basketball so much to what’s the obsession with sweet spaghetti.

But all of that exploration and learning didn’t quite prepare me for this deep dive into Filipino customs surrounding death.

A different way of grieving

Funeral parlours are expensive in the Philippines and there is no refrigeration for the body.

Instead, my dad’s coffin was placed in the living room of my family’s home. A home that consisted of my entire extended family — Lola (grandma,) three aunts, three uncles, five cousins and their children.

The house is big, but it’s also in a rural environment and a farm. As a city-slicker living in Winnipeg, It wasn’t like any of the Manitoban farms I went to on school trips in grade school. Our family home in the Philippines was an open door. It felt like every cat and dog in the neighbourhood roamed in the house, and goats and chickens roamed the yard. My family had to rearrange their living space based on burial tradition and superstition to accommodate the funeral. People argued about the proper procedures for mourning and how the donation box should be presented (one aunt said it has to be covered in a certain way or it’s bad luck).

Two men dressed in formal wear stand next to a woman. An older woman in a wheelchair is next to the trio. The group is standing next to an open coffin surrounded by white flowers.
Agapito, centre back, with his mother Yolanda, Lola (Epifania Bulaong) and brother Mark Agapito grieving by Simeon’s casket at Yolanda’s home in Jaen, Nueva Ecija, Philippines.

When my extended family gave their condolences and tried to talk to me, it would go in one ear and out the other. It felt like there were too many people surrounding me, and there was an expectation to entertain the guests who came for the funeral. It was a nightmare.

Dad’s funeral also coincided with Christmas. Christmas to Filipinos is like the Super Bowl of holidays. It’s the absolute biggest event of the year. Everyone is celebrating.

I was unprepared for this highly superstitious, party-the-pain-away take on mourning.

After the funeral service, we had a party to celebrate my dad’s life. Filipinos don’t believe the family should be alone and sad; it’s the job of the guests to make sure the family will be OK.

The party atmosphere was hard for me to stomach. I felt guilty for having fun after my dad died. I thought about locking myself in a room and just crying. In fact, I did try doing that at first but it’s something my family wouldn’t let me do.

Instead, they took me to shopping malls, public markets and to eat all the sugar and fried chicken my body could inhale. There was dancing, there was karaoke singing, and they even took me to ride ATVs and hold snakes at an agriculture and off-road park.

Initially, it was uncomfortable and strange to mourn like this, but I soon realized that being surrounded by family in this way actually made the initial grieving process easier.

A man holds a large brown snake around his shoulders and in his arms.
Agapito holds a Burmese python while visiting the Philippines for his dad’s funeral in December 2023.

Even the dead aren’t left alone.

Filipinos believe the body must have company so that the person can go to heaven peacefully. They believe mourners must stay with the body for at least three days so the person’s soul knows they’re dead but they have family to support them on their journey to the afterlife. It’s called the Lamay or wake.

Although many people I met in the Philippines for the funeral were strangers to me, they showed me that my dad always made people feel like they were not alone.

“You’re probably unaware, but your dad was why I could attend college,” one of my cousins told me. He helped pay for that cousin’s tuition for several years.

I heard so many stories like this.

Dad’s body wasn’t cremated with the casket. Initially, this made me angry. It felt like he was being cheated somehow. But then my mom told me, “We didn’t burn the coffin so it could be donated to a family. People here are poor. It’s something your dad would have wanted.”

Several adults and children pose for a group photo in a park. One of the women in the group is holding balloons that say “70.”
Once called a ‘bad Filipino’ by his lola (grandma), Agapito, second from left with the rest of his family, has been on a cultural recovery mission to learn more about his roots.

A different type of loss

I see now that my dad was a guy who loved living life. He liked to have a good time, so celebrating his life with laughter, singing and dancing made sense.

But how do I reconcile that with my understanding of mourning?

Back home in Canada, I often think about the time with my family in the Philippines. They helped me get through a lot of difficult times when the crushing weight of my dad’s death left me paralyzed and speechless. They taught me it’s OK to let loose and have fun.

It’s been hard being back in Canada. I feel so alone. I don’t have the warm and fuzzy security blanket of the family to grab me when I feel sad. But my mom reminds me that all of them, including her, are just a video message away.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Grieving the death of a pet

— Here’s how to help kids cope, according to experts

Involving your children in your pet’s death helps them grieve.

For many kids, the death of a pet is their first experience with grief. Here’s how to help them get through it, according to experts.

By

Many parents aren’t sure how to talk about the death of a pet with their kids. Children often have not experienced death and loss before, and many do not have an understanding of permanency yet. Thankfully, there are some experts in pet loss — and a slew of helpful books — that can help families cope with the death of a beloved pet.

As a veterinarian and mom of four, Dr. Stephanie Nelson has had a lot of experience with losing pets — and with how to talk to kids about it. Her kids, who range in age from 2 to 11 years, are used to having several dogs at a time, and many of those dogs joined their family as adults. “My kids have experienced losing many pets. My kids very much understand that dogs don’t live forever, and we are very open in discussion about the fact that they will see all of their pets die at some point,” says Nelson.

While a pet’s death will always be painful, there are some strategies and tips that can help children navigate their feelings. Here, Nelson and others share how to help kids cope with the loss of a pet, including how to talk about their grief and what to do to help them work through those painful and confusing feelings.

Whether you’re preparing kids to say goodbye to a beloved pet or sharing an unexpected loss, there are a few things to keep in mind as you explain the situation.

Be honest about what’s happening

Some of the language adults use to soften the blow of pet death can be confusing for kids, says Cōlleen O’Brien, a licensed social worker and the founder of BLUE dog Counseling. Phrases like “put to sleep” or “cross the rainbow bridge” make sense to adults because we are used to hearing them. To kids, those phrases are confusing and often scary, says O’Brien.

“Start with fewer details. You can always work up from there based on their questions. Young people are great investigative reporters.”
— Cōlleen O’Brien, licensed social worker

“We say they died or they will die, and that means that they won’t ever be awake or their body won’t be working. And they won’t be here with us,” she offers instead. She says to keep it as simple as possible. “Start with fewer details. You can always work up from there based on their questions,” she adds. “Young people are great investigative reporters.”

Help kids understand the process

Jana DeCristofaro, the community response program coordinator at The Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children and Families, says that pet euthanasia in particular may be hard for children to understand. “It’s different than when we talk to kids about a human in our life dying. As adults, you’re often making a decision in collaboration with a vet to help end a pet’s life, and we don’t really do that with humans yet.”

There’s a few simple scripts DeCristofaro says are helpful for parents to use:

  • “When our pet can’t get better and is suffering, we need to help end their suffering.”
  • “The doctor will give Franklin a medicine, just for animals, and that medicine will let them die peacefully and painlessly.”

DeCristofaro also recommends The Dougy Center’s guide to helping children cope with pet death, created in conjunction with Debra Lee, the veterinary wellbeing director at the DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital.

Offer reassurance

Letting children know that euthanasia is a choice due to suffering helps them process the deliberate act of ending a pet’s life. Clarifying that the medication is only for animals can ease fears. It’s important to reiterate that the pet will not feel anything when they pass away.

Helping kids cope with the death of a pet

While some children experience the loss of a human loved one devastatingly early in life, for most children, a pet’s death is their first experience with grief and loss. The skills they use to navigate the loss of the family dog are part of a foundation that will help them handle other losses throughout their lifetime — think of it as a chance to add to their emotional toolkit.

Viewing pet death as a form of grief is actually a relatively new way to look at it, says O’Brien. “Pet loss only started to be acknowledged in the 80s,” she says. “They were going like, ‘Hey, folks, we’ve missed lots of forms of grief.’” The death of a pet can affect kids — and grown-ups — in the same way that losing a human family member can, so it is important to acknowledge how big this may feel to your kids. Here are some expert suggestions to help them work through it.

1. Make room for complex emotions

It’s important to recognize that kids process grief differently at various ages, says O’Brien. “The question I get a lot is, ‘My little one is totally upset, and then the next minute they’re playing with their dolls. Is there something wrong with them that they’re not registering this properly?’” That compartmentalizing of grief is actually very common for young kids, she says. They may grieve for short periods of time and then appear unfazed.

For older kids, tweens and beyond, parents may see more classic signs of grief. “They’re conscious enough to know death is permanent,” says O’Brien, “but they haven’t had a lot of experience with permanency, so they’re grappling with that.” She says tweens and older kids are the age group that often becomes very quiet or even explosively angry at times while grieving.

2. Let kids take the lead

When kids are dealing with grief and loss, all the experts say it’s better to let them take the lead on processing their feelings. Offer basic information and answer follow-up questions. “As a parent you’ve got your kids in front of you, and your biggest priority is their well-being,” says DeCristofaro. “Our biggest instinct is to protect our kids from pain.” That instinct, though, can also prevent them from getting to say goodbye and feel what it means to grieve. If your pet’s death is not sudden and there’s a chance to say goodbye, offer it to your kids. If they say no, do not push.

“I think that it is good to have rituals with kids when they lose a pet. We scatter some of the ashes in that dog’s favorite place.”
— Dr. Stephanie Nelson, veterinarian

3. Create a goodbye ritual to help ease the pain

When one of their dogs is showing signs of aging or a terminal illness, Nelson says they use truthful language to explain what is happening. If they know when the death will happen, they prepare the kids and follow the same rituals each time.

“We spoil the dog beforehand. Every one of our dogs gets a whole Happy Meal that the kids get to feed to them,” she says. They let the kids say goodbye, but do not let them witness euthanasia. The family also keeps photos of beloved dogs on shelves in their house. The kids often stop by to look at them and share a memory or two, which Nelson thinks is helpful for them. “I think that it is good to have rituals with kids when they lose a pet. We scatter some of the ashes in that dog’s favorite place,” she says.

4. Consider censoring certain parts of your pet’s death

Some kids may ask if they can see the pet be euthanized or see them after they die. “Most people do not bring younger kids to a euthanasia and instead choose to say goodbye at home,” says Nelson of young children. Some tweens and teens do ask to come along, and she advises being honest about what they will see. “Some children do not want the last visual of their pet being after it has passed away; it is often easier on them to remember only the pet alive and at home,” she says.

As for viewing ashes or other remains, that is another decision to let the child make once you’ve provided them with all the information. Explain that their pet will not look like they remember — ashes will look like a small pile of bone shards and dust, and a deceased intact pet will be cold and stiff. O’Brien says it is better to wait until the child asks, rather than to offer.

5. Practice bibliotherapy

All of the experts love bibliotherapy, or the art of using books to process emotions. They recommend the following books to help kids deal with the death of a pet:

Nelson adds that for older kids and teens, any book on grief is helpful, even if it’s not pet-specific — kids are able to make those mental connections as they age.

When to get a new pet after a loss

As to when to get a new pet? That’s another great place to let children lead, though it is important to make sure the whole family is on board with adding another animal. Some families find getting a new pet quickly helps kids shift their focus from the loss, while others need more time to feel ready. Both options are normal and acceptable.

Many kids worry their deceased pet will resent a new pet. “We ask, ‘What would your pet think if you gave another pet a loving home and cared for them?’” says O’Brien. “Most kids say, ‘Well, they would want me to do that.’”

The bottom line

Losing a pet is one of the most difficult experiences a family can go through. But, with the right preparation and openness to discuss big feelings, it can also be a foundational moment in a child’s life where they learn how to navigate grief and loss. As you navigate a loss, don’t forget to talk to your veterinarian, too. Many are experienced in helping families navigate pet death and can be a great source of support.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How it is

— Dealing with ‘disenfranchised grief’

By Dianne Hendricks

I have reached an age where reading the obituaries has become a routine activity. According to statistics, about 50% of Americans born in my birth year are still alive. So reading the obituaries is also a math exercise addressing the question of how many people eulogized today were younger than I am, and how many were older? Oddly, the answer is often about 50-50.

I feel blessed to have made it this far relatively intact. I don’t come from a family of long-lived people, so I am somewhat surprised to still be here. There are so many upsides to my life, but there is one significant downside — repeatedly grieving those who have been removed from me through death.

Sometimes, usually late at night, I Google names from my long-distant past, looking for traces of people I used to know. My generation does not have a particularly large internet presence so finding any information can be challenging.

I have found the kindly Ohio oboe teacher who shared silly jokes during my lessons, the Connecticut neighbor with eight daughters who doted on my two young sons and the California nurse I shared shifts, lunches and gripes with in the 1970s. These memories are bittersweet, but there is also comfort in revisiting them.

A few months ago, an obituary popped up online, bringing with it painful and unexpected feelings of grief and loss. Working through that experience has been different from all the others, and different as well from losses suffered up close in real time. I needed to discover how and why in order to deal with my profound sadness.

The man I’ll call Harold was, for two years, my high school boyfriend. On the day he died, we’d had no contact for 55 years. I found a lengthy obituary with a photograph on Legacy.com.

It was not difficult to unearth the teenage boy hidden among the folds and wrinkles of the completely bald old man I was viewing. I saw the little scar on his left cheek that had resulted from an elbow to the face during a varsity football game. I noted the half-smile that looked a great deal like an expression I remembered.

So, what was I grieving for? Through the years, I’d thought about Harold many times, always with fondness and always wishing him well. I harbored a fantasy that someday we would see each other again — at least once more before we died. Was the grief for the death of that fantasy or for my lost youth? If so, I felt rather silly.

In 1989, Dr. Kenneth Doka created the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe a loss that is not “openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned.” This covers relationships that are not generally viewed as significant or valuable by others. The loss is not seen as worthy of grief, nor is the grief-stricken person recognized as a legitimate griever. Thus, I found myself in a position of being reluctant to discuss my feelings of loss with others.

Doka recommends finding a personally meaningful way to memorialize the deceased, and I took his advice. A few weeks ago, I changed the passcode on my phone to reflect the letters of Harold’s name — 427653. Now, every time I open my phone, I think of him briefly, and I smile. The sadness has finally drifted away.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Age 30, I went through the death of my fiancé. If you’re grieving this new year, here is my advice to you’

— For those entering 2024 without a loved one, one bereaved writer offers her wisdom

By Lotte Bowser

A few days into January 2021, I lay on the bathroom floor in the foetal position, sobbing.

For non-grieving folk, the start of a new year can prompt a dogged determination. Perhaps they set goals and resolutions, run a marathon, quit smoking – that sort of thing. But for me, the striking of the clock hand at midnight on New Year’s Eve triggered a horrifying realisation. My fiancé, Ben, was dead. And, no matter how much I kicked, screamed and dug my heels in in protest, time would keep moving forwards without him.

Six weeks earlier, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, my beautiful Ben took his final breath with the aid of a mechanical ventilator in an intensive care unit. He died from complications attributed to the virus, compounded by stage four soft tissue cancer. He was 36-years-old.<

‘There were many mornings in the early aftermath of his death when I woke up and wished I hadn’t’

There were many mornings in the early aftermath of his death when I woke up and wished I hadn’t. His absence catalysed an existential crisis, leaving no corner of my life untouched. Everything changed, from the way I went to sleep at night in an empty bed, to how I made my coffee in the morning for one instead of two.

And yet, despite the monumental sense of loss, there was a hastiness in the way others met me in my grief. They insisted that I meditated, that I stayed positive, that Ben wouldn’t have wanted me to be sad.

My GP regurgitated something about the six stages of grief, before handing me a prescription for antidepressants. The celebrant at Ben’s funeral in mid-December invited us to say our goodbyes.

‘My GP regurgitated something about the six stages of grief’

I quickly learned that bereavement support falls woefully short of what’s needed. We tend to pathologise grief. We condense the grieving process into clear-cut stages with a beginning and an end. We impose arbitrary timelines.

We hold another’s grief at arm’s length, or better yet, turn the other way. I suspect it’s because grief is a reminder of everything we stand to lose. Why would we contemplate our mortality when it causes so much fear and pain?

‘I knew that thinking happy thoughts or waving sticks of sage in the air wouldn’t make my grief disappear’

I knew that thinking happy thoughts or waving sticks of sage in the air wouldn’t make my grief disappear. I understood that while it was possible for my grief to give rise to mental illness, it was not a mental illness in itself. Nor was my grief a problem to be fixed – because try as I might, I couldn’t bring Ben back from the dead. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him either, and nor should I have; I loved him then, and I love him still.

Rather, my grief was a normal response to loss that demanded my patience and compassion. It was part and parcel of my humanness, something that would accompany me through life. It made sense then, to find a way to not merely tolerate my grief, or to overcome it like others had suggested, but to honour it. To grant it all the time it needed to metabolise.

‘If leaving them behind in 2023 feels counterintuitive, it’s because it is’

There is no such thing as ‘letting go’ or ‘moving on’, either. There is only moving forwards. When you form an intimate bond with another person, you create new neural connections that change your wiring. Your person is – quite literally – encoded into you. This coding is the physical manifestation of your bond. Your love. If leaving them behind in 2023 feels counterintuitive, it’s because it is. Take them with you instead.

You might have heard of the six stages of grief by now: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and meaning. Perhaps you question whether you’re ‘doing grief right’, like I did. Perhaps you think you ought to be doing better than you are. But the stages of grief model was created to describe the experiences of those facing death themselves, not of those left behind. In grief, our emotions often coil together, overlap or reoccur in unpredictable ways, rather than progressing neatly.

One moment you think you’re fine, and the next you’re crying into a bowl of porridge. Some days you’re making progress, and others you’ve taken ten steps back. We all grieve in our own time and in our own way.

I urge you to meet yourself, wherever you are, with radical compassion. Recovery from loss is not easy. And it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. It happens bit by bit, in the baby steps, in the small actions taken over time. Think of a ball inside a box for a moment. The ball represents your grief. At first, the ball takes up all the space inside the box.

As time passes, the box grows bigger, creating more space around the ball. It’s not that your grief necessarily diminishes in size – it’s that the space around it expands. Eventually, those baby steps will grow bigger, becoming strides and leaps until one day you look back in awe of how far you’ve come.

Entering the fourth year without Ben feels far easier than the first. My grief, once agonising, is softer now, like a dull ache. I’ve learned that no feeling is final, and that in-between the bad bits in life, there will be good and gorgeous bits, too. Whether it’s a gentle nudge or a thread of hope, let it pull you forwards. Reach for what gives you purpose and meaning, and hold on with both hands.

Purpose does not have to mean transmuting your pain into something big and radical, like running a marathon or climbing a mountain. It can be found in the small, everyday ways you show up for yourself, and in the ways you honour your person. Meaning does not mean finding meaning in their death.

It can be found in what you do from here on out; in saying ‘yes’ to life again, in choosing joy in spite of your grief.

From my grieving heart to yours, here are some practical tips for navigating the start of 2024 without your loved one.

Feel free to take what resonates, and leave behind what doesn’t.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Good Grief Gives Grief a Home For the Holidays

A portrait of Marc (Daniel Levy) and his friend Thomas (Himesh Patel), “painted” by Marc in ‘Good Grief.’ Kris Knight was the shadow painter on the film.

by Laura Zornosa

Art is the linchpin of Good Grief, a warm dramedy set in the heart of winter, out in theaters on Dec. 29 before coming to Netflix on Jan. 5. It’s a film that feels like snowfall: a gradual accumulation of a blanket of muted comfort. Dan Levy, who wrote, directed, and stars in the film, plays Marc, who is guided through grief by his best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel) in the wake of his husband Oliver’s (Luke Evans) death. An artist who used to paint, Marc finds his way back to the canvas as he heals.

The Marc we meet at the beginning of Good Grief is diminished—he stopped painting after his mom’s death, finding it too painful. Before Oliver died, Marc still made art, illustrating his husband’s books. But he shrank himself to magnify his husband. Now, he’s lost his partner. The people around him encourage him to pick up the paintbrush again.

We learn over the course of the film that Marc and Oliver’s marriage was far from perfect; Marc holds his complex emotions about Oliver’s death at arm’s length, watching them circle the drain, but never quite emptying the bath water. First Thomas, and then a lover, Theo (Arnaud Valois), nudge him toward art to help him heal.

“If you have the ability to write or to paint, sometimes that’s all you can do,” Levy says in an interview. “It might not look like the sobbing, fall-down-the-wall, on-the-floor hysteria that we’ve come to equate with grief or with loss. And that’s OK.”

Daniel Levy directs on the set of ‘Good Grief,’ with a painting by Kris Knight behind him.

Levy himself is not a painter. When he got the green light for the film, his first move was to solicit the help of one of his favorite artists, Kris Knight. Levy called Knight, whose work he’d been collecting for a decade, and asked him to be a shadow painter for his character.

Just a week before Levy’s call, Knight had a conversation about the 1998 Alfonso Cuarón movie Great Expectations, in which the Italian contemporary artist Francesco Clemente painted for Ethan Hawke’s character, Finn. Knight was 18 when Great Expectations came out, and it inspired him to pursue art. Now it was his turn to paint the art that we see onscreen.

“It was important that the art stand out, that the portraits have a very distinct point of view,” Levy says. “The work had to reflect that emotionality, so that the audience can understand why he took a break from it and why he then would return to it.”

Knight’s work slots neatly into Marc’s character, interlocking like one had a notch carved for the other. Like Marc, Knight has illustrated book covers. (Most recently the forthcoming Henry Henry by Allen Bratton, a queer reimagining of Shakespeare’s Henriad.) “His romantic paintings and portraits are simultaneously intimate as they are remote,” reads Knight’s website. “Halcyon queer moments have impact without being sensationalized.”

A portrait of Theo (Arnaud Valois) “painted” by Marc (Daniel Levy) in ‘Good Grief.’ Kris Knight was the shadow painter on the film.

Knight tries to paint different modes of masculinity that he connects with, he says. He likes softness and darkness, and he loves humor and history. Melancholy seeps onto the canvas, as does most of what he absorbs, consciously or otherwise. Something similar happens for Marc in the film: He leaves the suffocating comfort of his home in London, where he lived with Oliver, to paint in the sharper, starker seaside of Kent.

“With my art, it comes from a queer lens, and I can’t do anything about that, just because that’s who I am,” Knight says. He interviews those who sit for his portraits, usually other queer creatives, and one of his main questions is about their coming out experience. It binds them together over generations and social and economic backgrounds.

Knight estimates that he made 15 to 17 pieces for the film, many of which are on display in a final, cathartic gallery scene.

A portrait of Oliver (Luke Evans) “painted” by Marc (Daniel Levy) in ‘Good Grief.’ Kris Knight was the shadow painter on the film.

“I connected with this story in terms of it being basically a new look on grief, and it’s a queer lensing of grief,” Knight says. “And that’s something I haven’t seen in film before. Especially with the character dynamic of Oliver and Marc: I see that in straight film, and I see that in straight couples, where one partner kind of lives for the other.”

Knight and Levy both lost grandparents during the pandemic, a window of time that even further distorted our already slippery understanding of grief. For Levy, that grief spawned an onslaught of questions: “Is there an appropriate way to grieve? Why was I not feeling what I thought that I should feel? Was it enough?”

Good Grief airs those questions out loud, though it doesn’t necessarily answer them. “If it’s not saying explicitly what you should do, I think it’s a cautionary tale of what maybe you shouldn’t,” Levy says. “To write Marc as an avoidant, it felt important, because I know so many people that choose the distraction over the confrontation.”

Good Grief is also, above all, a love letter to found family, to the friends who “help [detangle] that knot of feelings,” as Levy wrote in his director’s statement. In the movie, Thomas and Sophie buoy Marc with quiet acts of care, keeping him afloat. In Levy’s own life, he came out as gay to his friends first, unsure how the news would change the dynamic of his relationships with his family.

Terrance (Jamael Westman), Thomas (Himesh Patel), Sophie (Ruth Negga), and Marc (Daniel Levy) pile onto the couch at a Christmas party.

“My friendships are the great loves of my life,” Levy says. “And the idea of telling a story where the romance was the friendship felt really important to me.”

Toward the end of the movie comes a monologue from beloved British icon Celia Imrie, who plays Marc’s lawyer, Imelda. She’s helping Marc parse through Oliver’s will and offers him advice that, as he was writing the script, Levy felt was like an epiphany of sorts, a potential answer to his many questions.

“Physiology has a clever way of protecting us from what we perceive to be a threat to our bodies,” Imelda tells Marc, “which is why the more we close ourselves off, the less we feel.”

“And you can survive that way, until the usualness of it all starts creeping in, and the new life you’d built as a refuge begins to feel like a void,” she continues. “Because, as it turns out, to avoid sadness is also to avoid love.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Breaking the ‘Widow Rules’

— I’ve lost two wives and I know there can be a better end-of-life experience and a better grieving process

By Jill Johnson-Young

When I tell my “how I got here” story, the usual responses are sad looks and a weird sigh that most seem to think fits responding to loss. You know that experience, especially if your partner has died. It’s one the grievers I work with learn to loathe.

It’s confusing when you smile in response. You are supposed to be sad, perhaps a bit hopeless, and, very possibly, needy. You have a role to play. And while we may be sad at times, we need to smile and feel capable just like everyone else.

Actors in the movie Steel Magnolias in a funeral scene. Next Avenue
Like the cemetery scene in the movie ‘Steel Magnolias,’ research shows that families experiencing terminal illness need humor in those around them.

You can insist that you are treated as a couple, not a caregiver and patient.

After the losses I’ve experienced on the ‘bingo card’ of life, my take on how to do illness, dying and grief is a bit different.

Working in hospice as a social worker and administrator added to that shift, and quite possibly to my sense of humor in talking about it. Hospice staff have a bit of a twisted sense of humor simply to survive, but we don’t take it out to share in public. We should. Research shows that families experiencing terminal illness need humor in those around them. Remember the cemetery scene in the movie “Steel Magnolias?”

A Need to Take Control

They also need a sense of control. Dying is not like the movies; it takes work, but there can be some magic in the end. It needs to be actively managed, not something that takes control of your life: the couple should make the decisions, with education, great hospice care and setting boundaries to preserve their roles.

You can insist that you are treated as a couple, not a caregiver and patient. You should be allowed to use your anticipatory grief together to finish your relationship, and to say goodbye in a way that works for you.

Terminal illness can be sneaky. You cope with the disease process and adapt, over and over. And suddenly that ongoing disease is now going to be terminal.

My first wife, Linda, survived metastatic breast cancer — but died of pulmonary fibrosis a decade later from chemo. My second wife, Casper, (yes, she was named after a friendly ghost) died of Lewy Body Dementia. Think Robin Williams, but not the funny part. That started with a weird assortment of symptoms that were repeatedly misdiagnosed. Her final diagnosis was months before she died, and only after I asked if that was what we were dealing with.

It was managing their illnesses and symptoms that allowed control over some of the craziness that is today’s medical system. (That, and being an outspoken wife who is also a social worker, much to their dismay at times.) I am not alone in that experience.

Steps to Take to Manage a Loved One’s Illness

So how do we manage facing ongoing illnesses that have the potential for becoming life shortening?

  • Document! I know, it takes time, and it feels unending. It’s hard to look at the words. Do it anyway. What are the symptoms throughout the day? What level is the pain? What works? What doesn’t? Who have you talked to? What have you been told? Take a medical notebook with you to every appointment.
  • Write a summary for doctor’s visits. Use bullet points for easy reading. Write down what you need from the visit. Expect care that meets your needs and follow-up.
  • Find an online community of caregivers/patients. They get it, where others will not. And they share survival humor.
  • Get your advanced directives done. Get paperwork in order: A POLST (Physician’s Order Regarding Life Sustaining Treatment), trust or will, caregiving plan, end of life plan, memorial plans. Consider hiring a private end of life doula. There are some great books out now (“I’m Dead, Now What?” is popular). The National Funeral Directors Association has some helpful resources about having hard conversations. Unfinished plans and paperwork make things harder, and take away your control when others step in to do them for you.

What happens when the illness gets worse? It would be nice if doctors would tell us that our loved one is now considered terminally ill, but the reality is many will not. Many physicians do not tell families or patients when an illness is no longer treatable. Some will mention palliative care to open the conversation, but won’t say hospice.

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization offers information about hospice care; hospice can extend life because a good care team reduces stress, and the support provided allows the patient and family to use their energy on quality of life, not battling insurance companies, pharmacies and unrealistic expectations of one another.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!