The Smell of Loss

By

The Smell of Loss

THE first time it happens is a dark winter’s afternoon, not quite a year after her death. I’m at my desk working, and there it suddenly is: sharp, glassy-green, with that faint, musky undertone that catches at the back of your throat.

I recognize it instantly: the scent that hung in our hall every time she came to supper. The perfume that clung to her coat, her scarves, detectable sometimes for hours on my babies’ hair after she’d been carrying and kissing them.

That first time, it’s a shock. Her perfume is something I’ve long forgotten (in her final months, mostly bedridden, she was beyond all that). But here it is — absolute and definite and quite overpowering. It lasts for three, maybe four minutes, long enough for me to get up and start searching the room for its source (my daughter, Chloë, has a few of her cardigans — did she leave one in here?).

Then, just as suddenly, it’s gone.

When I tell Chloë (who says that the cardigans have long since lost their scent), she rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, now you’re smelling dead people!” We laugh — and I soon forget about it.

Helen was my mother-in-law. She lived a happy, active life, but in her mid-80s her health and brain began to fail. After a couple of years of hip replacements and minor strokes, she died one warm April evening with her family all around her. As deaths go, it was probably a good one.

But in the weeks and months that followed, I was surprised at how often I’d find myself poleaxed by grief at the sheer fact of her absence.

Helen was in her 60s when I met her, a recent widow. A willowy blonde in an elegant camel-hair coat, she was a dead ringer for Lauren Bacall (“What nonsense!” she’d protest if someone said so, her eyes lighting up all the same). She was shy, but always well read, groomed and immaculate in her habits (and a tad judgmental about those who weren’t).

On our first meeting, waiting while her son — my new boyfriend — parked the car, she asked if I agreed that his recent attempt at a beard made him look like a used-car salesman. I burst out laughing and that comment set the tone for our whole relationship.

Helen was my ally, my champion (frequently even against her son, Jonathan). It’s hard not to love someone who’s always on your side; I’d never had that kind of approval from anyone.

When our babies came along, she threw herself into grandmotherhood. Her constant availability — to help out, to comfort, to babysit — was one of her most loving gifts.

The second time it happens, some weeks later, I am in the cellar, pulling wet clothes out of the washing machine. And there it suddenly is, filling the air around me. “Helen?” I say — and then blush.

I ask Jonathan if he knows the name of the perfume she wore. He has no idea. I ask his sister. “Something by Hermès?” she offers. At a department store perfume counter, I sniff a confusing number of bottles. Only one stands out — a touch of that glassy greenness: Calèche (and it is Hermès). But I can’t be certain.

At supper, a month later, all five of us around the table, the Bolognese being served, I ask, “Can anyone else smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Perfume. Just like the one Granny used to wear.”

I watch their blank faces.

“You can’t smell it? Really? None of you can smell that scent?”

Several months pass before the next episodes: two in one week, both in my study. The second time, the perfume lingers for so long, perhaps 15 minutes, that I’m determined to get to the bottom of the phenomenon.

I pace the room, inspecting shelves, drawers, the sofa — there has to be an explanation! How can an ostensibly sane person repeatedly experience such a definite smell and fail to locate the source?

But I do fail. And then, just like every other time, it’s gone.

A friend, Mike, comes to lunch and I end up telling him the whole crazy story. I wait for him to laugh; instead he gives me a beady look. “Well, it’s a ghost, isn’t it?”

Jonathan makes a noise of exasperation and Mike turns to him. “What on earth else is it going to be?”

It’s true that I am interested in ghosts — they stalk much of the fiction I write. It’s also true that I did once, on a winter’s night long ago, see a form that startled me from sleep and which I have never been able to explain. But do I really believe in ghosts? I don’t think so.

What I do believe in — am perpetually fascinated by — is the gulf between what humans are capable of imagining and what may actually be there.

I tell Mike that even if I did believe in ghosts, it would be extremely uncharacteristic of Helen to haunt me like this. It’s not so much that she was resolutely rationalist (though she was), more that she’d be embarrassed to come back in this demonstrative fashion.

Later, I Google “smelling perfume of dead person” and find an excerpt from a book about “after-death communication” by an American academic and self-styled skeptic named Sylvia Hart Wright. She claims there is convincing research on the subject and cites the example of her late husband who, after his death, appeared to make frequent contact by turning electrical appliances on and off.

I email her to ask if she can account for my experiences. She writes back to say that my episodes are “perfect examples of a common phenomenon.”

“My gut feeling,” her email concludes, “is that when you smell your mother-in-law’s perfume, her spirit is visiting you in some fashion, trying to communicate to you her continuing closeness and support.”

A nice idea. I wish I could say that my own gut feeling supported it.

Next, I email Jay A. Gottfried, a neuroscientist who runs the Gottfried Laboratory at Northwestern University, which investigates the links between brain activity and sensory perception.

Professor Gottfried tells me that what I describe is known in his business as “phantosmia” or “phantom smells.” The sense of smell, he says, is our most ancient, primal sense and has “intimate and direct control over emotional and behavioral states.”

“This is especially true for personal, meaningful memories that tend to get stamped into our brains very robustly,” he explains. “Thus it is possible that a seemingly random trigger or thought — perhaps even outside your conscious awareness — has triggered some aspect of your mother-in-law memory.” In some ways, he says, “it is true that your mother-in-law is ‘visiting’ you, to the extent that your memory of her is strong, and that the vividness of her perfume makes it seem like she is there.”

I read that last sentence several times over. It seems reasonable. But could it explain so many episodes? And what about the persistence of the perfume, lingering often for minutes at a time: Can a triggered memory — a random sensory “thread,” in his words, snagged from the “patchwork” of the unconscious — do that?

I put all of this to him in a carefully concise email, and then add — because I can’t resist it — “I would just love to know: Have you ever, as a scientist, experienced something you feel you can’t explain?”

He doesn’t reply.

I decide to try another branch of science.

FLORIAN Ruths is a consultant psychiatrist at London’s Maudsley Hospital. I know Dr. Ruths from attending a course he taught a few years ago. I am slightly embarrassed to approach him with such an eccentric-seeming inquiry, but Dr. Ruths’s reply is affable and serious.

“A sensory experience without an appropriate stimulus,” he explains, “is called a hallucination,” and these are “not unusual in grief reactions.” In less clinical terms, he tells me I “have been given a wonderful sensory memory cue that brings back your beloved mother-in-law in such an immediate and emotionally charged manner.” Maybe, he writes, “it is a very wise trick of your brain of maintaining such a fond memory of her, and an emotional connection to her.”

The idea of a “wise trick” of the brain is a seductive one. But the phrase “grief reactions” bothers me. I did grieve when Helen died, very much so, and for several months. But after five years?

If this “grief” now takes any shape, it’s a simple longing to see her again. How wonderful it would be to call her, hear her pick up the phone, shyly pleased, and to go over and sit on her terrace, drink a glass of sauvignon blanc and watch the boats slide past on the Thames, as we used to.

I recognize this for what it is: a natural nostalgia for the days when our children were small, when life seemed so uncomplicated, when so much still lay ahead.

But if this is just about my own, unrequited longing, then — Mike might ask — who exactly is the ghost? Could this be a case of the living haunting the dead, rather than vice versa?

I’m not a churchgoer or even strictly a believer, but realizing that I’ve allowed no possibility of a religious context for these experiences, I email my friend Giles Goddard, who is an Anglican vicar. He tells me he’s certain that “strange and inexplicable things” are regularly “perceived by the subconscious often with no obvious cause.” Like Dr. Ruths, he suggests it’s a normal part of grieving. He sends me a verse by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Original, spare and strange, I like that. But I still find it hard to believe that this is a response to grief. Why would it suddenly come back at me like this?

“Maybe grief is the wrong word, then,” he counters. “Maybe loss?”

Loss. Isn’t that the hardest lesson of human existence? The finality of losing someone you love, of having them fall right out of your life forever: the cold and terrible permanence of it.

Intellectually, I comprehend that Helen is dead. But even after all this time, I’m still not sure I believe it.

It’s been weeks since I smelled the scent. Whenever I haven’t smelled it for a while, I begin to think it won’t come again. And I don’t know what I feel about that.

The other day, killing time on a rainy autumn afternoon on Oxford Street, I walked into a department store and, on a whim, went to the Estée Lauder counter. The sales assistant asked if I’d like to try the new perfume. I smiled and shook my head, picking up one bottle after another — with names like Beautiful, Youth-Dew, Pleasures — and sniffing at them.

I sprayed White Linen onto a card. It wasn’t far off: clean and citrusy.

“Is it a gift for someone?” the girl asked.

I hesitated. “I’m trying to find the one my mother-in-law wears.”

Sensing a sale, her eyes brightened.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“You can’t ask her?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a surprise, then?”

I smiled. “Kind of.”

“Do you think that’s the one?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible.”

Complete Article HERE!

‘The sudden death of my daughter changed my life forever’

When Valerie O’Riordan was told her daughter had died, she dropped to the ground.

 
MY LIFE AS as I knew it changed forever on the 10 August 2009. I was in Lourdes, France on a pilgrimage with my elderly mum, my sisters and other family members.

On that morning we were visiting a tiny village called Bartrès. After mass, we were strolling back towards the buses laughing and joking and in very high spirits, happy and content and carefree. What happened in the next few moments will haunt me forever.sudden death

My sister June answered her phone, and immediately I knew whoever was speaking to her had upset her. Not for one moment did I imagine the impact that phone call would have on my life. She looked straight at me and her words were, “Paul said Debbie is dead”.

I dropped to the ground. Every horrendous emotion ripped through me: devastation, heartbreak, sadness, the impact was unbelievable. I felt I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was going to die. My darling, beautiful, only daughter Debbie was gone and I never even got to say goodbye, or hold her one more time.

My beautiful daughter 

No, I thought, it couldn’t be right. Someone got it all wrong. I tried to speak to my husband Paul but we were inconsolable. My two sisters and I travelled back to the hotel in a car. When we arrived I then had to tell my beloved mum that our Debbie had died. My mum adored her as she was their first granddaughter and they looked after her when I went back to work after she was born.

My mum was heartbroken, and as the realisation began to sink in all I wanted to do was get home. Debbie had taken my young niece Lauren for a mini-break to London, and they had arrived back to Cork the night before after having a great weekend away together.

They headed off to bed after texting me goodnight. The following morning Lauren woke to find Deb at the end of the bed. Having tried to revive her and gotten no response, Lauren went and got my son David.

Immediately, Dave knew she was gone. He telephoned his dad and the emergency services and then that life-changing call to tell me what no parent ever wants to hear.

Debbie died of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy – SUDEP. At 16, Debbie had her first epileptic fit and for ten years she was on medication and managed it very well. A few weeks previous to her death, her consultant started to wean her off her meds. She died one month later at the age of 26.

Realising she is gone 

Today, six years on, my life is so much different and so much has changed because Debbie is gone. There isn’t an hour of any day that I don’t think of her or long to see and hold her, but yes, life must carry on and I too must go on living.

I have a loving husband and a great son and an amazing extended family and they too mourn and miss her so much. All the love I had for Deb is now for everyone else.

After Debbie died, I went looking for people who were also bereaved parents and found Anam Cara. It was perfect.

Paul and I went to our first meeting three months after Debbie passed. In Ireland every year 2,100 families experience the death of a son or daughter. For some families the death has been expected because of illness while for others it’s sudden through accidents, suicide or substance abuse.

At Anam Cara we focus on the similarities of our loss rather than the differences, and have found a level of support and understanding that others cannot offer. What unites us all is that we are all bereaved parents.


 
Anam Cara is an all-Ireland organisation founded by bereaved parents. It provides a range of online and face-to-face services, with local groups meeting monthly across the four provinces. Anam Cara is today launching a seven-booklet Information Pack for bereaved parents which can be read or downloaded here. To request hard copies or find out more about Anam Cara services please call 01 404 5378 or 085 2888 888, or email info@anamcara.ie.

Anam Cara has also just produced a series of information videos in which bereaved parents speak on different themes such as ‘Sudden and Traumatic Death’ or ‘The Grieving Family’.

Complete Article HERE!

In rapidly aging Japan, dying is big business

In rapidly aging Japan, dying is big business

At Tokyo’s Life Ending Industry Expo, companies touted products for the $41 billion industry in end-of-life planning and memorials.

By Anna Fifield

Traditional statuary and memorials were among the products on offer. In Japan, death is an opportunity for growth. Business growth, that is.In a country with many more deaths than births each year, Japanese companies are looking to maximize the amount of money people spend on shuffling off their mortal coil, from preparing “ending notes” and choosing coffins to arranging to have their ashes blasted into space or turned into diamonds.

“I want to promote our products because we have almost 1.2 million people dying each year but we sell only 60,000 of these mats,” said Koichi Fujita, a representative of a company selling tatami liners and pillows for coffins. He was using slightly outdated death figures: Japan said goodbye to 1.3 million citizens last year but hello to only 1 million new babies.

Fujita’s was one of the scores of companies touting their wares at Endex, an expo devoted to planning for the end of one’s life, held at a huge exhibition center in Tokyo.

“Japanese people spend their lives on tatami mats,” Fujita said, referring to the straw flooring in traditional Japanese rooms. “And there’s a saying that they want to die on a tatami mat, meaning die at home. But so many people die in the hospital, so at least they can have a tatami mat in their coffin when they are sent off.”

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Japan has the fastest-aging population in the world. Slightly more than one-quarter of the population is 65 or older, and the Health Ministry forecasts that the proportion will hit 40 percent by 2060.

Many aspects of Japanese life are now geared toward senior citizens. Go into any drugstore and you will find shelves of diapers and sippy cups — for the elderly. Banks and post offices have reading glasses on the counters for customers with failing eyesight, while big pedestrian crossings have buttons to push for those who need extra time to get across the road.

Panasonic has a line of easier-to-use household appliances — including washing machines, microwaves and rice cookers — targeted at the elderly, while convenience stores sell packaged food in smaller portions for seniors.

But the business of actually dying is a whole other opportunity. There is even a term for it here: “shukatsu,” or preparing for death. It is a play on a more common homophone for job-hunting.

“The government estimates that in 2038, 1.68 million people will die,” said Midori Kotani, a social scientist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, part of a major insurance company. “Because there are so many more people dying, people see business opportunities there.”

At the first Endex, or “Life Ending Industry Expo,” more than 200 companies were trying to get a bigger chunk of the industry, which the expo’s organizing committee said was now valued at a whopping $41 billion.

There were the usual coffins and tombstones, plus the latest-model hearses. But there were also Buddhist monks touting for business — people are not keeping up with the annual rituals these days — and coffee retailers hoping to sell their products as gifts for funeral attendees, which is a custom here.

There was also a mobile pet cremator offering to pull up his furnace-loaded van in front of your apartment building and turn Fido into ash. A 20-pound dog costs about $300 and takes about an hour to cremate. A hamster, considerably less on both counts.

There were also some novel products for humans.

“Some people have long wanted to go into space,” said Hirohisa Deguchi of Galaxy Stage, a company that will send a small metal container of ashes up in a rocket. (Funnily enough, his surname means “exit.”) “We can put them in this capsule and launch them on a rocket.”

Five people have had some of their remains sent into space, and another five are scheduled for liftoff next month .

The cheapest “space memorial” — being launched into space and burning up on reentry — costs about $3,700, or you can go into orbit on a satellite, where your family can track you with GPS for 240 years, for $8,000. The deluxe model — having your ashes left in a capsule on the moon — costs an out-of-this-world $21,000.

For those who want to stay on the ground, the Heart in Diamond company offers to turn a person’s hair or ashes into a gemstone. The company offers a range of colored diamonds — including orange, blue and green, in various sizes and carats — starting at $3,000 and going up to $20,000.

Most customers are women wanting to keep their mothers close, said Naoto Kikuchi, a company director, as he manned his busy stall.

There is a special reason this “mourning jewelry” appeals to Japanese women, he said: “If you’re married, you are buried with your husband’s family, not with your own family.” That makes jewelry a way to keep your birth family close, he said.

But there is another reason people in the shukatsu business need to innovate: Even as the number of deaths goes steadily up, the money that people spend on funerals and other such expenses is going steadily down. That means the overall industry is stagnant, said Kotani, of the Dai-ichi institute.

“In a place like Tokyo, about 30 percent of people who die don’t even have funerals — they just go straight to cremation. Plus, how much people spend on one funeral is declining,” Kotani said, adding that people are becoming increasingly frugal and are not wanting to cause stress for their families left behind.

“So people in this business have to find ways to maximize the amount of money spent on each death,” Kotani said. “That’s why we’re seeing video messages from deceased people and offers to send ashes into space.”

One of the 22,000 people who were checking out the options at the expo was Mariko Saito, a 68-year-old widow from Tokyo. “I learned about this on television,” she said as she perused small Buddhist urns.

“I don’t want to be buried in the same grave as my [deceased] husband as I don’t have a good relationship with his side of the family,” she said with a laugh. “So I’d like to think about what I want to do with my money and about my ending and share it with my daughter when she visits for New Year’s holidays.”

For businesses, there is a strong incentive to cater to people such as Saito, to be innovative and come up with new ways to make money. As Kotani puts it, “After all, you only die once.”

Complete Article HERE!

Children, Grief, and the Holidays: How You Can Help

By Pamela Gabbay, M.A., FT

parent-grieving-child

The holiday season is painful for adults after the death of a loved one, but it can be even more isolating and distressing for children if they are not given ample guidance from the adults in their lives. Here are some suggestions for how to help your children during the holidays:

1. Suppress the urge to ignore the holidays because they seem too painful to endure. It’s important that children are given the opportunity to celebrate the holidays without feeling bad or feeling guilty. After all, they still have a need to “just be a kid,” especially during the holidays.

2. Discuss the painful feelings that might arise during the holiday season. Children are flooded with memories from the past and they want everything to go back to the way it was before. Help normalize these feelings for your children by allowing them to openly talk about their feelings. As a parent, you might explain that you’ve been feeling that way, too.

3. Together, as a family, create new holiday traditions. When creating these new rituals, ask your children what they want. Their input is extremely important. If you have more than one child, get all of their opinions. Then, as a group, decide the best way to spend the holidays.

4. Include the memory of your loved one in your celebration. Encourage your children to make something meaningful, such as a holiday card or special gift, specifically for your loved one. Decide as a family where these items should be placed during the holidays. Your children might want to place them under the tree, on the fireplace mantle, or in their room. Some children might want to take these items to the cemetery.

5. Spend time together reflecting back on special holiday memories from the past. Have your children draw a picture of their favorite holiday memory. Give them the opportunity to talk about their drawing, if they choose to.

6. Light a candle in memory of your loved one. If you have more than one child, allow each child to have his or her own special candle. Consider creating a place of honor for the candles in your home.children and grief

7. Together, make a holiday ornament in memory of the person who died. Or, consider an ongoing ritual of purchasing an ornament each year in their memory. This ornament could represent anything your loved one held dear.

8. If the person who died had any favorite holiday songs, play these songs with your children and reflect back on meaningful times that you had together while listening to these songs.

9. Plan a special remembrance meal together. Help your children bake a favorite holiday dish or dessert of the person who died. If you have more than one child, offer each child the opportunity to make a favorite dish.

10. As a family, consider volunteering your time to a charity in need during the holidays. Often, giving back to others who are also hurting can be very beneficial to grieving children.

11. Donate toys to a charity that helps children. Have your children help you choose and purchase the toys and then wrap them together. Include your children in the delivery of the toys.

12. Attend a holiday memorial celebration as a family. Many communities hold candle lighting events during the holidays. This provides an opportunity for you and your children to honor the memory of your loved one in a community setting. Check with your local hospice to see if they have an upcoming event this holiday season.

Full Review HERE!

Grief in Times of Celebration: The Empty Spot

By: Glen R. Horst MDiv, DMin, BA

Grieving the death of a family member or close friend is hard, exhausting work. This work may be especially difficult during holiday seasons, and other days that are filled with family and community traditions, such as anniversaries, birthdays, and mother’s and father’s days. During these times you may be keenly aware of the empty spot left by the one who has died, whether that death happened recently or years ago.empty chair2

If your loss is recent, you may dread the approach of a holiday and wonder how you and your family will get through it. While others in your family or friendship circle may share your dread, talking about it with them can be difficult. You may believe that mentioning the empty spot that will be present during the holidays will simply deepen your pain and sadness. The tendency to avoid addressing this empty spot is so common that some have compared it to an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.

Other people who expect you to be over your grief and to get on with your life may add to your difficulty. Their excitement and happiness in the holiday season may feel like a mockery of your emptiness and a judgment on your sadness. As you and your family try to face the holiday season, you may feel alone and out of step with your community or culture. However, you are not alone. Many people around you are painfully aware of the empty spots left by death in their own family circles. Each grieving family faces a similar task of finding new ways to live through the holidays.

New ways to live through holidays

When bereavement is recent and grief is fresh, people often talk about “getting through” or “surviving” the holidays. This attitude may continue for years after a significant loss. It acknowledges and expresses the pain and distress of loss that wells up at special times of the year. This deep ache and sadness is normal. Recognizing the grief you and your family feel is the starting point for developing new ways of living through the holidays.

There is no one right way of facing holidays when you and your family are grieving. If those in your family circle can share with each other the feelings that come up before or during the holiday, you can think together about how to approach the holiday differently. Exploring ways of honouring old family traditions while creating new ones can give your family a sense of stability and hope in the midst of loss and change. Finding ways to include the reality of the empty spot, without making it the primary focus of the holiday, can help you to take new steps in the healing of your grief.

As you and your family seek new ways of living through holidays you may want to consider the following suggestions.

Honour your loved one

Consider ways of honouring the memory and continuing presence of your loved one as part of your holiday tradition.

  • Light a candle in a special candleholder at a holiday meal or throughout the holiday season.
  • Mark the empty spot at a holiday meal with a photograph, single flower, or some other memento. This could be particularly helpful within the first year or two after your bereavement.
  • Visit the gravesite and leave a holiday symbol, such as an ornament, ritual object, or personal note.
  • Set up a small memory tree and invite family members to hang remembrances on the branches. A memory bowl or basket may be an appropriate alternative.
  • Write a letter or poem to your loved one in your journal. You may want to read it at a family gathering if others are open to this.
  • Have photo albums or slide shows at hand so that family members can reminisce together. This sharing of memories is likely to be bittersweet and may include both laughter and tears. The sharing of memories and stories can affirm the strength and identity of your family in the midst of your sorrow.
  • In conversation or a prayer, express your gratitude for memories of times shared with your loved one and for family ties and the support of friends. Referring to your loss in such direct ways can be painful, but also very comforting.

 

Respect your limits

Respect your limits and take care of yourself emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

  • Simplify your holiday plans.
    Discuss with your family what is most important and most enjoyable in your past holiday traditions. Think together about how to reshape these in light of the gaps left by your loved one’s death. Roles will have to be shifted, and changes in time, place, and kinds of activities may need to be made. You and your family may feel off balance, but working together to re-create your holiday rituals can help your family discover its resiliency.
  • Exercise in a way that fits for you.
    This may be as simple as going for a daily walk or bike ride, but could include visits to a fitness centre or an exercise routine in your home. Grief often depletes your energy and makes you feel lethargic. Intentional exercise can help you be healthier for responding to the challenges of grief.
  • Maintain or return to a nutritious diet.
    Holiday meals are often a time of indulgence. You may be tempted to compensate for the sorrow you carry with overeating or excessive alcohol. On the other hand, you may experience a lack of appetite and a disinterest in the festivities surrounding food and drink. Avoid judging yourself for either over-indulgence or lack of participation. Use your energy instead to return to a diet that you know works well for your mind and body.
  • Keep yourself centred.
    Take time to be by yourself. Meditate in ways that are familiar and that have proven helpful to calm and centre you. Reflect on the meaning of this holiday and on how its meaning has changed in light of your loss. Contemplate new insights that are emerging. Pace yourself so that you have time to process what you are feeling.

 

Connect with the outside world

Consider some of these ways in which to remain connected with the world.

  • Accept social invitations and attend social events.
    You may feel you just want to be alone during a holiday season. You may feel out of step with the season and apologetic that you cannot share in its mood. However, contact with your friends can help you deal with the loneliness and sense of isolation that frequently accompany grief. Use your judgment to decide which social events and occasions may be helpful. Give yourself permission to cancel at the last minute or to leave early.
  • Care for others.
    Your sorrow may sensitize you to the suffering or needs of others. Reaching out to others with care can be surprisingly strengthening and healing. Consider these suggestions:
    Give a gift to a charity in memory of your loved.
    Visit a nursing home or volunteer at a soup kitchen.
    Do a small act of kindness for a neighbour or friend.
    Call or email a lonely acquaintance.
  • Participate in community events.
    If religious faith is part of your life, attend a worship service in your faith community. If you do not consider yourself religious, look for community events that capture the meaning of the holiday for you. Events that connect you to the larger meaning of the holiday can give you both inner strength and a sense of community.
  • Attend sessions on coping with grief during the holidays.
    Check whether a local funeral home or hospice and palliative care group in your area offer sessions on coping with grief during the holidays. Such sessions will help you realize you are not alone in what you are feeling and give you new ways to handle holiday traditions after losing a loved one.

 

The importance of taking charge

Loss and grief are unwelcome intruders into family life. They threaten your family’s identity and common experience. When grief is recent and strong, you and your family members may feel disoriented or lost. This is a time to be gentle with yourself and with each other. However, it is also a time to take charge of what you can. This can help you find new ways of continuing traditions and rituals that have been meaningful in the past, and to work together in creating new ones. The suggestions in this article may help you in these tasks. While they have focused on holidays and holiday seasons, they can be adapted for other significant days in family life, such as birthdays and anniversaries.

Meaningful rituals and traditions can help you and your family to do your grief work. They provide opportunities to:

  • connect to the past and to what seems lost;
  • develop a new sense of yourself and a new identity as a family as you change your attachments to your loved one;
  • give your loved one a new place in your family that marks the movement from being a living participant to someone who is present in spirit.

As you try out new ways of living through holidays, reflect on what is meaningful and what does not work. There may be some trial and error involved in this time of change. Discussion with other family members will help you to find hopeful ways into the future.

Even when there are empty spots holidays can still be special times.

Complete Article HERE!

Colorado woman helps families cope by crafting baby burial gowns out of wedding dresses

By Alexandra Zaslow

Sandi Fasano has been there for over 60 families during a time of pain — a pain she knows all too well.

After losing two grandchildren to stillbirth in the past few years, she decided she wanted to help families going through similar tragedies using her lifelong skills as a seamstress.

“I’m a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother,” Fasano, who is 66 and lives outside Denver, told TODAY.com. “I struggled to help ease my children’s pain, but it did inspire me to turn it into something that would be able to help the next family.”

Sandi Fasano
Sandi Fasano creating an angel gown

So about six months ago, she took to Facebook with an idea she hoped might help grieving couples find healing: use recycled wedding dresses to create beautiful infant burial gowns.

Fasano learned to sew doll clothes as a child. As a teen, she designed her own clothes and later, when she became a mother, made outfits for her four children.

Within days of the Facebook post, she was receiving lace, ribbon and fabric from donors both locally and as far away as England.

Angel Gown

In August, Front Range Angel Gowns was born.

“What started out as a little project has now become way bigger than I expected,” Fasano said. “Once I saw all the beautiful threads and fabrics that were coming in, I had to keep going.”

Fasano’s effort is one of several aimed at turning old wedding dresses into burial gowns for babies. The NICU Helping Hands’ Angel Gown program offers similar services to bereaved families across the U.S., Canada and even in Australia.

Angel Gowns2

Fasano now has 20 volunteers helping her pick up gowns and take them apart. On her website, she offers instructions for donating wedding dresses and other materials as well as links for volunteer seamstresses and tailors to apply. The group can make anywhere from eight to 36 outfits from of one dress.

The company donates completed gowns to local hospitals and mortuaries in Colorado, and is in the process of trying to become a non-profit so she can expand to other states.

Angel Gowns3

A few families have called Fasano directly to ask for a dress for their sweet angel who didn’t get a chance to live.

“I recently met a grandmother whose daughter just lost a baby, and after I handed her the gown, we just hugged for a long time,” Fasano said. “There are no words to use.”

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In some cases, she includes something extra she hopes will bring comfort: two little hats.

A note with them reads, “One for your baby to wear and one for you to hold near.”

“These families are dressing their babies for the first and last time,” Fasano said. “I’m glad I can be there to help them through this difficult time.”

Complete Article HERE!

7 MORE Women Funeral Professionals You Should Know About

By Rochelle Rietow

We have to say… the ladies of the funeral profession have been killin’ it this year. (No pun intended.) From the amazing women who led the educational conferences at NFDA 2015 to some seriously exciting career advancements that will make an overall positive impact on the industry… we have never been more proud of the talented women that we work alongside.

Earlier this year, we wrote a blog post highlighting 8 Women Funeral Professionals You Should Know About, and we were blown away by the positive feedback we received. Women and men from all across the profession logged on to give these ladies a much-deserved congratulations, and to nominate many other hard-working women in the funeral profession who deserve to have their passion showcased to the world.

So… we’re back with round two! Here are seven more women in the funeral profession who have been working hard to educate, celebrate and bring passion to this industry. Thank you for all that you do!

1. Jana Haldenwang

Jana L. HaldenwangEarlier this year when we asked our readers to share some of the most notable women in this profession, Jana was one of the first names mentioned… and with good reason! Not only is Jana a licensed funeral director, she is also a certified bereavement facilitator from the American Academy of Bereavement and the president of the Tri-County Funeral Directors Association.

“[She’s] a huge figure in Central NY. Has guided many an apprentice, and has contributed so many hours to volunteer organizations like Rotary, as well as to the NYSFDA,” wrote her nominator. “I believe she has made a huge difference through teaching compassion, generosity, tolerance and creativity to all she has taken under her guidance.”

2. Kristan McNames

Kristan McNamesIt’s no secret that we here at funeralOne are a big fan of Kristan McNames – we publish her super educational and informative guest posts whenever we get the chance! But, when Kristan isn’t sharing her expertise on the funeralOne blog, she is finding time to be a funeral director, a business owner, a wife and a mom.

After tiring of the corporate funeral world, Kristan opened Grace Funeral and Cremation Services in 2009 with her husband Bob, who is also a funeral director. Their goal was to throw out the corporate sales targets that had infiltrated their world, and instead, put the focus back on making services memorable for families. “A funeral can either bring peace and comfort to a family, or it can add to their burden.  It’s our job to make it meaningful and special for the families that choose us,” she writes. They have been doing just that ever since.

3. Elleanor Davis Starks

Elleanor Davis StarksAnother phenomenal nominee that we received after publishing our last Women In The Funeral Profession blog was Elleanor Davis Starks. In 1993, Elleanor founded 100 Black Women of Funeral Service, Inc. ﹘ a network for black women and minorities in the professional funeral service industry. This hallmark organization has since grown to include scholarships, awards and powerful luncheons where women can gather together to discuss important topics in the profession and help one another find success.

“It is very important that women stand out in this profession,” Elleanor writes. “We come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and backgrounds. We should be proud of each other’s successes. Women are some of the best embalmers and funeral directors, and we keep the families coming back.  I am proud of my sisters. If you don’t have a woman in your firm you are missing something really special.”

4. Caroline McGill

Caroline McGillAs a blogger, I am constantly looking for educational and interesting takes on the funeral profession – both to inspire me and to share with our own readers. One of my favorite people to turn to when I am looking to be inspired is Caroline McGill. In addition to being a licensed funeral director and embalmer in Charleston, Caroline also runs a personal blog where she writes about her experiences in the profession.

One of my favorite excerpts: “There aren’t many things about death that are beautiful, but it is my job as a funeral professional to make more of them come into being. Preparing the body, washing hair, buttoning shirts, tying ties, painting nails, positioning in the casket…. All of it to be sure the good memories are talked about, laughed about, and held onto for just a little while longer … As you open your hymnal to “How Great Thou Art,” we stand in the back and sing along because we know it by heart. And it is beautiful.”

Needless to say, Caroline’s blog is worth the read.

5. Stephanie Longmuir

Stephanie LongmuirAs we mentioned earlier, one of the areas in which women have especially excelled this year is through leadership in continuing education sessions. One of my favorite events at NFDA 2015 last month was Stephanie Longmuir’s session on the important role that funeral celebrants play in a funeral service.

Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Stephanie has lead hundreds of funeral services over the years, from four people to four hundred, from simple graveside committals to extravagant all day memorials, from a motorcade of 100 motorcycles to a moment of silent tribute in a park, and more. As a celebrant, her focus is on providing a funeral service that reflects the wishes, beliefs, values and cultural background of the family and their loved one, so they may find some comfort in the process. She is truly a ceremony specialist with a thorough background in the history of ritual, ceremony and funeral traditions, and the education that she is providing other funeral directors who are looking to become celebrants is invaluable.

(Ps. Be on the lookout for an exclusive post from Stephanie on the topic of funeral celebrants – coming soon to the funeralOne blog!)

6. Amy Fulton

amy_fultonThere are few people in this profession who are doing more powerful or impactful work than the people who are teaching the funeral directors of the future. Amy Fulton is one of those people. Currently an embalmer at Service Corporation International (SCI), as well as an educator at AAS Dallas Institute of Funeral Service, Amy’s personal mission is to restore the value of the embalming and presentation of the deceased to all families, including those wishing cremation.

According to the student who nominated Amy in our last post, “Amy Fulton, who is currently our practical embalming teacher at Dallas Institute of Funeral Service … is great and we learn so much from her. She is a great role model and is teaching many females to be the best embalmers we can be.”

7. Jessica Fowler

Jessica FowlerAnother woman funeral blogger that we can’t be inspired enough by is Jessica Fowler. Jessica is the Public Relations Specialist and Staff Writer at ASD – Answering Service for Directors. In the span of 10+ years, she has answered the calls of funeral homes nationwide, fielding more than 350,000 calls and 16,000 first calls. She’s also been featured in several trade publications, sharing her expertise on funeral trends, technology, communication and business planning.

With this impressive experience under her belt, it’s safe to say that Jessica has a strong pulse on what’s happening in the profession – both from a funeral professional’s perspective, and from their families.