Category: Grief

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Breathing New Life Into Death

5 Tech Companies From Female Founders Making Sure No One Grieves Alone

by Emma Payne

There’s a movement afoot, and as the new Broadway Beetlejuice show suggests; it’s all about death. From Death Cafes and Death Over Dinner, to the surge in new Netflix shows like Dead To Me and After Life, new life is pouring into old conversations about death. After decades kept firmly backstage, people are talking about death and grief, and bringing difficult conversations into the limelight.

Until now, the typical North American death-phobic response we have upon hearing of someone’s loss is reduced to a quick, “I’m sorry for your loss,” on Facebook. We may send flowers, or a card, but these often feel like empty gestures that do little to really support anyone. Most people who have just lost someone they love are in very real need of help, and fast. Traditional supports seem antiquated, expensive, and worse – impersonal.

Fortunately, help is here. In Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, a group of female founders are on a mission to revolutionize death care and make sure no one grieves alone. Motivated by their own experiences with death, these women have created easy-to-use, thoughtful tools to help people navigate loss. Of course, death sucks, any way you look at it. No online tool can bring our loved ones back. But these women are working hard to normalize conversations about death, and make it easier – much easier – for people to help each other through grief.

First, meet Brooklyn-based Liz Eddy and Alyssa Ruderman, who co-founded Lantern to provide people with step-by-step guidance on how to navigate their lives before and after a death. When Liz’s Grandma died, she turned to Google in search of answers to her myriad questions about everything from funeral planning to closing accounts. What she found was a morass of unwieldy content, and none of the hand-holding she was looking for. So, Liz and Alyssa created Lantern, as a single source of guidance and information for end of life and death planning. It’s free to use their custom checklists and get help making your loved one’s funeral or celebration of life, everything you want it to be. I love that Lantern makes people feel empowered at a time in their lives when control is hard to come by.

Once you’ve survived the funeral, the daunting realities of grief come tumbling down. Litsa Williams and Eleanor Haley co-founded What’s Your Grief after they each lost a parent. Based in Baltimore, Litsa and Eleanor have built an incredible suite of practical and specific content and resources to help grieving people find a path forward. With their focus on education, exploration and expression, What’s Your Grief offers articles as well as affordable online courses on topics ranging from how to sort through a loved one’s belongings or develop strategies for surviving the holidays while grieving.

If you’re looking for ongoing grief support, Seattle-based Grief Coach sends personalized text messages all year long, based on your loss. And if you have friends and family who want to help, but aren’t sure how, they’ll receive tips and reminders too. Everyone’s messages will be customized based on things like cause of death, age, and your relationship to the person who has died.

I was inspired to create Grief Coach after the death of my husband and (a decade later) his best friend. After delivering the eulogy at my friend’s funeral, I was overwhelmed by the countless friends and family members who wanted to apologize for not having been there for me when my husband died. They were afraid, they said, and just didn’t know what to do. I created Grief Coach to answer the question of “I want to help, but don’t know how,” so that no-one would have to grieve alone.

Also in Seattle is Laura Malcolm, who founded Give InKind after losing her daughter. Laura had people around her who she knew wanted to help, but instead found herself in a room literally overflowing with flowers with no idea what to ask for, but a long list of things she wasn’t able to cope with on her own.

Give InKind brings together care calendars, fundraising, and wishlists. If you’re looking for a way to coordinate support, raise money for funeral expenses, and make it easy for friends and family to support you after a loss, GiveInKind is a great place to start. It’s free to create a page, and from there you can invite others to join and contribute.

And finally meet Ali Briggs and Rachele Louis in Chicago, who founded LifeWeb 360 after a friend’s brother died unexpectedly. As the years passed, Ali’s friend saw people’s memories of his brother fading away. He was worried that he couldn’t remember the sound of his brother’s voice anymore. LifeWeb 360 is a multimedia scrapbook that makes it easy for people to join together to collect and share memories that are then stored and shared online.

These eight women have created five valuable tools that recognize the power friends & family have to make a difference, after a loss.

LA mortician, Caitlyn Doughty, captures the no-nonsense spirit of these founders best, reminding us that; yes, there’s a movement afoot – but we don’t want to be a movement. Death is part of life, and what we really want is to normalize difficult conversations and bring death & dying into our day-to-day lives.

With founders like these women taking the reins, I have no doubt that we’re moving quickly towards a world where everyone has the help they need, after a death.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Do doctors grieve differently?

After Dr Alison Edwards’ soulmate died, grief took hold. Who else, she wondered, knew what this was like?

Dr Alison Edwards set up the website, Doc Grief, following the death of her partner Mick 15 years ago.

By Doug Hendrie

‘We really need to talk more about death … it is an inevitable part of life, and yet we shroud it in euphemism, hushed secrecy, and denial. We often grieve alone with little sense of shared understanding as we sanitise our emotions and somehow carry on.’

That is how South Australian GP Dr Alison Edwards began a talk she gave to her local palliative care team. And it is why she set up a website, Doc Grief, dedicated to supporting doctors who have lost loved ones.

That is what she wished existed when she lost her ‘soulmate’ Mick to a sudden cardiac arrest 15 years ago.

Dr Edwards’ own path of grief has shown her that doctors often grieve differently – and that the professional distance necessary to deal with death at work simply does not cope with personal grief.

‘I felt the need to know others had walked a similar path and survived, and to maybe find some tips about how best to achieve this,’ she told newsGP.

‘I wanted to read a story that was a close match to mine, but found very little in print about doctors grieving. So some years later I felt drawn to create such a site for others.’

Writing on her site, Dr Edwards tells the story of her loss:

Mick was the local footy legend, the cheeky butcher with a sparkle in his eyes. After 38 years of thinking life for me was destined not to be one of a long-term couple, it was really nice to have someone to love and be loved by and even see myself growing old with.

Mick had spent the afternoon out with the kids and had had a couple of beers down the pub while I was in at work. He was in one of his favourite positions – lying on the lounge channel-surfing. And then Mick had a cardiac arrest and died. No warning. No clues. Just chatting with me one minute about the perfume the kids had given me for Christmas and next minute making funny breathing noises as if he didn’t like the perfume.

Mick died, and the world as I knew it crashed down around me.

Mick was just 37.

In the immediate aftermath, Dr Edwards’ small community – Port Broughton on SA’s Yorke Peninsula – reached out. That, she found, was supportive and challenging.

‘It meant having to share my grief with the town. There was no opportunity to return to work and not have everyone wanting to express condolences,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t turn around without finding more scones, lasagnes and soup.

‘People want to do something physical, which is beautiful, but you also can’t be anonymous. In an urban practice, you could sneak back and your patients would necessarily know. Here, everyone knew.’

Dr Edwards took several months off following Mick’s death. When she returned to work, she printed little cards for her patients to read ahead of consultations.

The cards stated that Dr Edwards was doing okay and asked patients to treat it as a normal professional consultation.

‘No one could stick to it. I gave up,’ she explained. ‘Patients felt rude not to express their condolences.

‘The first time you see everyone, they feel the need to go through it. It made things a little bit harder.’

Since she set up the site, many GPs have told Dr Edwards that it has been helpful. Some have written to her seeking support. Others have contributed their own stories of grieving.

‘Reaching out to those with lived experience can be very supportive,’ she said.

‘I’ve had people write saying thank you so much for setting this up. Just knowing that someone else had lived the experience while having a broader understanding of the health system [is helpful].

‘Doctors do get the idea that random stuff happens. In the community, there’s often the expectation that we can fix everything, but doctors understand that things are unpredictable.

‘People do randomly have cardiac arrests and die.’

Dr Edwards believes doctors grieve differently, due to their familiarity with death and learned ability to maintain professional distance.

‘Knowing death so intimately may falsely lead us to think we are acquainted with grief, but when it comes to losing a loved one all bets are off,’ she wrote in a KevinMD article.

Dr Edwards believes that the stereotypical doctor personality traits – high achievers able to hide their emotions and focused on control – can pose particular challenges, as grief and loss are entirely uncontrollable.

‘Doctors spend most of their time observing … [but] unless we have loved in a dispassionate, dissociated way, we do not give our grief a fair chance if we do not live it,’ she wrote.

Dr Edwards’ grief was ‘very raw’ for the first few years. Over time, it gradually changed.

‘I went from feeling it with every breath and as if it was sitting right in front of me, to a place of living with it rather than living for it,’ she told newsGP.

But she still misses the shared life that could have been, writing:

I still love him and what he gave me. And I miss the future we didn’t get to share … I think I have a more profound sense of living life to my fullest capacity and valuing what I do have.

I have coped by taking one day at a time, allowing time to soften the impact and create new memories.’

There are no shortcuts and no way of bypassing the process of healing after a broken heart.

There are no right ways of grieving. Whatever you find works for you is probably the best for you. This is unlikely to be booze, drugs or running away but you may need to try this for yourself for a while before you believe it. There is no standard timeline. You do not get over it, you do not move on as if it could be left behind. But you do learn to live with it rather than be consumed by it.

Increasingly, Dr Edwards finds people grieving in her long-time community are seeking her out.

‘It has changed how I practise,’ she said.’ ‘You’re taught not to bring too much of yourself into the consultation, to keep your distance, be professional, as it’s not about you.

‘In a little community, it’s almost impossible to do that. Patients want that sense of connection – especially when they already know your story and you can’t duck away from it.’

Dr Edwards will share parts of her grief with patients to help normalise their own experiences.

‘You almost need to do this in smaller communities, but it might not be appropriate in an urban setting,’ she said. ‘There is power in a shared understanding.

‘Often people want to talk because they know I have that lived experience. Not to acknowledge that would be counterproductive.

‘We’re humans, we like to know we’re not alone. We can be reassuring, to let patients they’re not going mad – that this is a normal response.

‘It can be powerful to hear that from someone who lived it.’

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Challenging Cultural Norms About Death to Reframe My Grief

By Hannah Velten

I denied my grief for 15 years. My brother, Christian, had disappeared in Africa while traveling alone in 2003. But he wasn’t dead. He was still alive, just having problems that meant he couldn’t or didn’t want to return home. That’s what I told myself.

Part of me knew, though, that he was dead. But those hulking great feelings of panic, terror and abandonment would only surface on anniversaries and birthdays. Then I’d bury them and concentrate on life again. I didn’t know what to do with these feelings. I couldn’t label them as “grief,” because we had no news to say he was dead. But now I can see I was grieving. Of course I was. I’d been abandoned by my soulmate, whether he was dead or not.

The label for this type of grief would be “anticipatory grief,” but when you’re in the throes of searching for a missing person it feels disloyal to accept grief. I had also invested too much of myself and my time in trying to find him, via social media and media exposure, to stop and admit it was a wild goose chase. I was determined to find him. I had not been abandoned by him, and I certainly wasn’t going to abandon him.

But that’s what I was feeling. Abandoned. Left behind. Lost without direction. Yet years later, in 2018, when I did finally accept that Christian was dead, I had no feelings of abandonment. Why? Well, he’d been drugged and drowned all those years ago — he’d never meant to abandon me, or anyone — and, although he is no longer in the physical world (and his body has never been retrieved), he and I have a closer relationship now than ever before.

It’s a leap for most people because of the cultural norms we hold about death being the end of life. The end of the relationship. Grief, I believe, has its roots in abandonment. If you think you’ve been abandoned, you feel lonely, angry, distrustful and fearful. Depending on how your loved one died, and the relationship you had with them, you might also feel anger, guilt, shame or any number of other emotions towards yourself, them or others.

Abandonment is something no one wants to deal with, so when death affects us (and no one is immune), we label it “grief.” Grief is commonly understood — it’s expected when someone dies. There are stages of grief; there are books written about it. But what if grief is actually one thought: “I’ve been abandoned”?

We’ve all been abandoned at some point in our lives, and it’s painful. The first time I lost Christian was when he left for boarding school; my trust in him, and everything, shattered. Loss affects us emotionally, socially, financially and mentally — the death of a loved one is no different.

“Why have you left me behind?”

“What am I supposed to do without you?”

Common thoughts; well, they were my thoughts anyway. But the reality of death, in our experience, is that Christian didn’t, and hasn’t, abandoned me at all. He’s still perfectly alive, just in another room.

To get a full connection, like Christian and I have, I realized we needed to clear the “gunk” between us, which means releasing the fearful feelings between us — the anger, the mistrust, the shame, the hurt. Death brings these unhealed wounds to the surface, even in the best of relationships.

Through mediumship sessions, we’ve been working through our sibling relationship for almost a year — understanding and forgiving each other — when he was still physically missing in Africa. He’d repeatedly told me he was so changed, after being in Africa for 15 years, and that it would be a shock for us all on his return. He wanted to know that he could trust me, that I would protect him and look after him. That I would still love him whatever had happened. As I told him I loved him whatever he’d done and whatever he was now, I felt the unconditional love passed between us.

With clarity gained, Christian’s been free to move into the Light. This might have felt like another layer of abandonment, but because there was/is unconditional love between us, Christian went from being my brother to being my soul-brother — a wiser, all-knowing, ageless and eternal presence in my heart. He’s still my brother in the way we speak with each other, in the way he’s with me and the way he interacts with others.

At this point, if you are grieving and can’t seem to move on, ask yourself, “Do I feel abandoned?” If the answer’s ‘Yes’, you may just have your key to healing…

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Anger, sadness dominate day of mourning for homeless people who died in L.A. this year

Pancake, a community organizer, leads supporters as they march in downtown Los Angeles in tribute to homeless who died this year.

By Gale Holland

A joyous New Orleans-style Second Line parade to honor the roughly 1,000 homeless people who have died in Los Angeles County this year turned to anger on Friday, as skid row mourners stopped at City Hall to denounce elected officials for not halting the growing death toll.

Dozens of skid row residents and advocates, all decked out in Mardi Gras beads and flying black, gold and purple balloons, chanted: “Three a day! Too many!” They waved their fists at the windows of City Hall, where a homeless man in his 50s was found dead Tuesday night.

The parade and angry demonstration were part of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day, marked in dozens of cities.

Lorraine Morland speaks and sings to a crowd of supporters gathered outside City Hall to pay tribute to homeless people who have died this year in Los Angeles.

L.A.’s day of mourning began soberly at the James Wood Community Center with prayers, songs and the traditional recitation of the names of all people who died at skid row missions and programs. Later, advocates planned to release candles at Echo Park Lake, where dozens of people have been living and dying in tents over the past year.

The Los Angeles County Public Health found in October that deaths among homeless people have increased each year, from 536 in 2013 to 1,047 in 2018. The tally so far this year is 963, they said.

Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, the parade organizer, accused City Atty. Mike Feuer of hypocrisy for expressing sadness over the homeless man who died outside City Hall, the same week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a landmark homelessness case that curbs police powers to clear homeless encampments when there aren’t enough shelter beds available.

Feuer and officials from several other cities and counties across California had asked the high court to either clarify or overturn the lower court ruling in City of Boise vs. Martin.

“The city attorney had the audacity to hold a press conference [about the death] … when, days before, his office was trying to figure out how to criminalize that man,” White said.

Rob Wilcox, the city attorney spokesman, said Feuer wanted the court to clarify the Boise ruling, not to extend police powers over homeless people.

Feuer announced the man’s death at a press conference on Wednesday morning.

“He was someone’s son. He might’ve been somebody’s dad or somebody’s brother,” Feuer said. “I don’t know. But I do know that he died alone, and if there is any truth to statistics, he is not alone.”

The first parade to mark National Homeless Persons Memorial Day took off at noon Friday from San Julian Park, accompanied by drums, a trumpet, a keyboard, bicycles festooned with beads and Christmas garlands, and a giant banner that included photos of skid row residents who had died. It was labeled “Death by neglect” and contained a dot map of every homeless death site in Los Angeles County in the past year.

Several singers led the crowd in “Wade in the Water” and other civil rights anthems. Stephanie Arnold Williams, a longtime skid row advocate, sped around the crowd in red sequined skates, live streaming the parade on Facebook from a solar-powered tablet strapped to her back.

“When death comes to the doorstep of City Hall, you know we must respond,” White said. “We are going to set up shrines to show our people didn’t die in vain.”

Several of the dead were remembered by name, including Rodney Evans, who died on skid row waiting to get housing.

The parade eventually returned to the skid row corner where Dwayne Fields, a longtime skid row street musician, was killed in August when his tent was set on fire in what authorities said was an intentional act.

A memorial sits Friday at the site where homeless man Darrel Fields was set on fire and died.

Jonathan Early, 38, who also was homeless, has been charged in Fields’ death. The death — and that of his partner, Valarie Wertlow, a month later — underscores the stakes in the epidemic of homeless deaths.

“Fields was a Jimi Hendrix impersonator in Las Vegas, and he was a better guitarist than Jimi Hendrix,” Anderson said. “It’s like genius is being snuffed out. This is all of our fight.”

In Echo Lake Park, homeless advocates place floating candles containing the names of homeless people who have died.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Teens Talk About Grief

In grief, things that don’t normally bug you can bring on strong feelings – anger, resentment, jealousy. And sometimes you feel guilt that you should have done more, spent more time with him or her, or just said ‘I love you’ one more time.

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‘Pre-grieving is important – we talked, cried and laughed with Mum before she died’

Most of us think of experiencing grief after a death, not before, which means anticipatory grief is less talked about

By Claudia Tanner

Most of us think of grief occurring after a death. But anticipatory grief, or pre-bereavement, the painful emotions we feel before death, is experienced by many people facing the impending loss of a loved one or their own death. But as this experience is spoken about less often, some find it difficult to express the deep pain they are feeling and fail to receive the support they need.

Claudia Tanner spoke to Max Cassily, a 28-year-old area manager at Aldi, from Canterbury, Kent, about how he and his family dealt with his mother Nanda’s terminal illness at 54.

My dear mum was diagnosed with sarcoma, a cancer of the bone and soft tissue, in 2017. She’d shrugged her symptoms off as back pain.

She’d had cancer – of the breast – two years earlier and we thought we’d been through it all and it was over, she’d beaten it.

But this time around, the doctors told us straight: it was incurable. Our lovely, kind mother was going to die. They said she had three months left.

I remember just after we were told the bad news, all four of us – myself, mum, my dad Steve and my sister Ruby who is two years younger than me – all hugging and crying as we sat on a hospital bed.

Nand loved the colour pink

They say there’s five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Perhaps because we had dealt with my mum having cancer before and we had already felt all the anger and sadness, we were able to move more quickly to the acceptance stage. It was dad who said to us something along the lines of “We have got to do this, and accept this is happening.”

We knew we had to embrace this, talk about it, plan for it, cry about it.

I remember leaving the hospital, and the daughter of a woman with Alzheimer’s who was in the bed next to my mum hugged us and said she had loved sitting and listening to our conversations.

Open attitude about death

Last time it was all about staying positive and helping mum pull through. We knew this time, that approach wouldn’t help at all. It was a difficult decision to stop “fighting” her illness, but this was part of the process of accepting what was happening.

You may feel angry, mum was too young to go. It wasn’t fair. But you are so sharply aware of the fact there is little time to waste. Mum was going to die and we didn’t have long. We wanted to cherish the precious time we had left with her and make the most of it. Mum lived 180 miles away from me in Eastbourne, so I arranged with my employers to allow me my two days off a week to be taken together so I could spend quality time with her.

We took a really open attitude to talking about death and making practical arrangements. We announced on Facebook and other methods to everyone who knew Nand, as she was know , that she didn’t have long left and invited people to come visit our house week in, week out.

Mum had been a drama teacher who had spent half her time in Cyprus. People from all over, some she hadn’t seen for years, were grateful for the chance to say goodbye. They would apologise for breaking down, and we’d assure them it was okay. It’s only human to get upset.

We talked with mum about what funeral arrangements she wanted. She wanted to be cremated. She loved pink and was known as “The Pink Lady” due to her hair colour. She wanted a pink casket and a pink hearse. We were able to find the first but not the latter – there mustn’t be the demand for them!

She didn’t wan’t the flowers to go to waste and be cremated with her. She requested that everyone take a single stem home with them to enjoy.

Video camera to cherish memories

We had set up a video camera to record our chats with Mum. This helped with the practical side of remembering her wishes. It also allowed us to cherish the memories she shared.

There were plenty of tears, sad ones and happy ones. It was difficult watching her break down and grieve her own death.

But there were positives. It was a time to learn more about my mum’s past. I knew dad didn’t have a great memory so I wanted to take the chance to ask her all about her childhood and upbringing.

Mum was 26 when she met dad and he was just 18. It was unusual in those days, and she was the one who dealt with the more adult things – she was the breadwinner who got them their first house.

At one point, she looked deep in thought and she turned to me and my sister and she said, “You are all okay, you’re all happy aren’t you?” She knew Ruby had her boyfriend and child. She told me I was going to marry my girlfriend Nina. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought of marriage at that point. But mum, you were right, Nina and I tied the knot earlier this year.

Saying goodbye

Max finds comfort in watching videos of his mother talking in her final months

‘Talk about everything. It won’t change the fact that someone you love is about to die; but I promise you, it will certainly help’

We had lots of trips out, coffees and lunches, until mum got too tired and wanted to stay indoors. The last month was hard watching her struggle for breath.

On 27 February 2018, mum was rushed to A&E. She passed away while I was travelling in a desperate rush to get there on time. I remember balling my eyes out while driving, and not wanting to stop as I wanted to get to the rest of my family as quickly as possible.

I’d never seen a dead body before. I found it really helped to see Mum’s. She looked so peaceful and not in any pain, in stark contrast to the last few months.

Over 250 people attended her funeral. We live streamed in on Facebook and thousands watched it from 21 different countries.

I found it so comforting to watch back the videos of Mum in the months after her death. I got to see her laughing at jokes, crying at the situation, chatting about her first house that she bought 30 odd years ago. Just seeing how she was in her normal, every day life was lovely.

I started a blog about grieving to help other people deal with loss, which can be found here. It can be so easy to go into denial and not face difficult emotions when someone you love is dying. If I can help one person going through the same, that would be great.

Talk about everything. It won’t change the fact that someone you love is about to die, but I promise you, it will certainly help. I had felt I had to be “the strong one” to help everyone else out. So when someone asked how I was, I’d say “Yep, I’m fine”, when really I wasn’t. So I called a men’s mental health line. It helped to speak to someone I didn’t know.

Pre-grieving is an absolute emotional rollercoaster. At times you’re going to be frustrated, sad, angry and even happy, and that’s fine.

Max’s tips when facing a loved one’s death

Max’s blog outlines several pieces of advice:

  • Talk – if you don’t feel comfortable sharing with someone close speak to a professional. It’s okay not to be okay.
  • Capture you loved one on video – not only does it encourage you to talk through things, it also means you have memories on record and it can be a comfort to watch your loved one when they are gone.
  • Look after yourself – you cannot expect to look after and support your loved one if you don’t look after yourself.
  • Encourage people to say their goodbyes – it’s a chance to reminisce about old times and just generally have a laugh and forget about death.
  • Plan the funeral with your loved one – you’ll find comfort in knowing you’re following their wishes.
  • Embrace normality- try and do normal things as much as possible. Go for coffees, shopping, a meal, have friends over, watch TV, get a takeaway, and so on. A loved one with cancer is still a loved one, so, when possible, treat them the same and do the stuff you always used to do together.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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If You Are Grieving at Christmas

An excerpt from the book Exhilarated Life: Discovering Inner Happiness

By Marilyn Harding

Rose Petals

The Little Drama vs. the Big Picture.

Yesterday I made love to my home. I reclaimed her as my sanctuary. I got down on my hands and knees and actually reached under furniture, damp dusted the underside of things where the dog hair clung, carefully rewound the Christmas tree lights, dragged the tree outside, vacuumed the pine needles from under the carpet, and put the gasping poinsettias outside to “go to sleep.”

There are two significant aspects of this; one is that I normally mutter and spit through a perfunctory swiping of the floor—gathering the tumbleweeds of pet hair, and not quite reaching the corners. I usually make a joke that the maid will get the rest—but I am she…and well, you just can’t get good help these days. The second is that I am putting my home in order after the first Christmas and New Year since my beloved husband George’s death, last February.

Three weeks ago I was ready to bolt. I was going to take my sons to a beach somewhere and let the holiday roll right on past. It was my younger son who stopped me in my tracks. He said, “I don’t know why you have a problem with Christmas. Last year wasn’t our best Christmas, for sure, but this is our home and this is where we should be.” In those words and in his wise young eyes was the absolute spirit of George. It is just what he would have said. I hugged him in relief for his clarity and the three of us chose to celebrate the season by having a holiday much more joyful and healing than sad.

On Christmas Eve a year ago I knew that George was going to die. On Christmas Day at 11:00PM a 20lb turkey, stuffing and vegetables were dumped into a green garbage bag—no one could eat. At 3:00AM the day after Boxing Day, my older son, Nick, helped me maneuver George into the car, and I drove my husband to the hospital, where he stayed the week.

He wanted so much to be home for New Year’s that he was released that afternoon. We no sooner got home than we realized it was a mistake. As the clock ticked toward midnight, New Year’s Eve, George and I sat in the emergency room; George in a wheelchair, silent and still, enduring God knows what kind of pain, and me breathing and praying.

Our two sons, aged twenty and seventeen, were out at celebrations. I wouldn’t call them until after midnight to tell them I had brought their dad back to the hospital. They had been so relieved when he had been allowed to come home just that afternoon.

But wait, that isn’t the point of this story.

That part is the Little Drama as opposed to the Big Picture, as I havecome to view Life over the past several years. My good friend calls it the “Epic Story.” Like the Iliad. The one that is truly our path to God, which in my view is manifest in self-actualization, the path of love seeking love.

It is the divine blueprint of All That We Can Be. That path leads us right through the minefield of the small self with all its fears and rages, and life and death dramas, to our Greater Self—the poet, teacher or leader who resides in the heart of God or divine creation.

Here there is no death. Or rather death has no “sting.” There is only love—in its many and glorious forms. As we are birthed into this world, live and sooner or later die out of this world, we can be carried through our darkest nights on the grace of this knowing, or be badly bruised on the harshness of a “real” and physical world.

It actually becomes a conscious choice over which only we have control. I cannot trivialize the illness and death of my husband, the father of my sons, my business partner, mentor, lover, and soul mate. “George and Marilyn” was a phrase. For twenty-seven years we worked together, played together, had lunch together, shopped together, and on the way home in separate cars chatted on our cells to one another. We always had something to talk about. We rarely argued. We loved one another deeply and always wanted what was best for the other. We were only ever apart three or four times in more than a quarter century.

Was I afraid? Yes, I was terrified. I look back and realize I had bargained with God and offered to endure years of a million daily fears in exchange for the One Big One.

Was I sad? Yes, many nights I lay on our bedroom floor and wailed in the middle of the night, mindless in sorrow.

Was I angry? You bet. I hated the arrogance of doctors, the soullessness of CAT scans, the iniquity of the body. I was bloody outraged that my husband was to die. I wasn’t ready!

Did I suffer? In the sleepless nights and the numbed out days when I couldn’t fix what was broken, yes.

But so what? It all happened anyway—whether I liked it or not.

What emerged from the depths of my experience were a series of lessons about life and death. Really about life, mostly. They are a mere handful of truths that will help us live life more fully, prepare for our own death more objectively and accept the death of those we love.

Death is just the context for living our life. We are all going to die, one way or another, sooner or later. We all know this but continue to act surprised or betrayed when the end befalls us or one we love. There are no untimely deaths. Cancer, car accident, or crib death is merely part of the script. We all have an exit ticket.

There is a purpose to every single human life and how we express that to its fullest is our job on this planet. To the extent that we fulfill that mandate, the easier it will be for us to let go of the physical world and give ourselves over.

There is a saying that a good life means a good death. To my mind a “good” life does not mean one of perfection—pleasing God in our flawless following of rules, but of being real in all its darks and lights and striving. When we embrace this truth, we express our divinity in being God’s hands, eyes, mouth, ears, heart—healer, artist, teacher, counselor, lover—whatever.

The irony of all this is that I live in a world of healers—spiritual, energetic, natural. A world of miracles. In fact it is my business. After we sold our company and retired, George helped me realize my dream.

In July 2005, two weeks after I opened my boutique dedicated to the healing and creative arts, George collapsed and was rushed to hospital. He had a tumor from prostate cancer that had shut down his kidneys, he needed fourteen liters of blood, and he nearly died. The oncologist refused to take him on as a patient because she said there was nothing she could do. His urologist said he wouldn’t live until Christmas (2005), and he would spend the rest of his life dependent on dialysis.

George lived another eighteen months. He did it for me and our two sons, his family, and many others whose lives he touched during that time. I thought he was going to be my poster boy for miracles. How could the husband of one in the healing world die of the nastiest of illnesses—cancer?

But George did die. And in that passing emerged a profoundly beautiful love story. For in that final walk on Earth together, George, always my protector, led me through the fire of my greatest fears, and in return, I had the privilege of looking deeply into his eyes as he passed through the veil so he would not be afraid. From that moment the life and death drama of every day fell away and I witnessed my own soul’s journey.

I have lived my life in pursuit of the spiritual. I have prayed for clarity and understanding. I was certain that as I prayed for God’s Will to be done, that if I was really good and fulfilled my guidance in building this business around living life authentically and spiritually, I would be rewarded by my husband’s miraculous cure. How else could I really interpret his illness?

As it happened, something was lost in my interpretation. When I surrendered (small ‘s’) to God’s Will, I sensed this voice saying, “Are you sure?” and I answered, “Yep, yep, yep!” because, of course, I thought I knew what that meant. But what God really meant was that I would have to go where I dreaded more than anywhere on earth—and that was to the hospital. In this case, forty-two hours in the emergency section where George, awaiting medication, rocked back and forth on his gurney in pain and I sat on an overturned barf bowl for hours on end.

God’s Will also meant that I would ultimately have to give up my beloved when in my heart of hearts I knew he could have been “healed.” This is where I learned that healing does not always mean living.

To some I have shown strength or courage, but the truth is strength comes through surrender. In surrendering to what is, we can then look to what we need to lift us up and move us through a difficult passage.

This is where I can gratefully acknowledge the cast of hundreds who helped me—and George and family—by word or deed, practice, therapy or healing to take Life in hand and really live it…to death.This is the part I want to share.

The circumstances of the Little Drama are the tools for the Big Picture and serve only as the flash cards of greater meaning and purpose.

Yesterday, I plucked some faded roses from the Christmas centerpiece on the dining table. I was about to put them in the recycling bin, but instead to honor George (who never threw flowers in the garbage), I went out on the deck and, opening each dead rose one at a time, strewed them across the snow. The crisp brown outer petals fell away in my hands, and within the bud, deep pink silken petals unfurled.

Snowflakes and rose petals swirled in the air, then cascaded to the ground and rested there. As I looked out the window and saw the graceful pattern they left, it was a message that, like the roses, there is no death—just transformation and beauty when we look through the eyes of Love.

Marilyn

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from my book, Exhilarated Life: Discovering Inner Happiness.

Today, December 8th, is George’s and my wedding anniversary.

The truth of a divine plan expressed in the chapter above is illustrated now in the diagnosis of prostate cancer in my life partner, Athan a year ago, October. Rather than being devastated by the news, we see it as destiny.

How can that be? There is a miracle unfolding for a new treatment and Athan is the sole volunteer to test it.

The irony? We have spent the past seven years involved in the testing and research of the cancer fighting properties proven in the phenolic compound oleocanthal only found in olive oil.

The adventure continues and finding the love, light and lessons in every moment is what happiness is all about.

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