Grief is very much a part of our lives. We usually think of grief as happening after the death of a Loved One but grief can also be brought on by changes, losses and transitions that are unrelated to death. Generally we just press on hoping time will take care of whatever we’re feeling without ever facing it head on. It is the piling up of this unresolved grief that often haunts us and I think keeps us from being as supportive as we can be to both ourselves and others.

Grief is usually thought of as being sad or crying but, with many years of grief experience under my belt, I have found that grief encompasses a much wider range of emotions, including impatience and anger. This range of emotions – including sadness – come and go and come again, often without warning. And while we tend to push it away, I’d like to offer you a new way to look at it.

My husband and I could not have imagined when we met in 4th grade the curve-balls we would be thrown on our journey together. The weight of our losses and struggles can be overwhelming but our youngest, living son is truly a blessing and a balm.

Bonnie, Charlie, Dean, Nancy, Morley. My close cousin, my mom’s fiancé, my dad, my grandma, my grandpa, respectively. I lost these five near and dear people to me in 7 years, so, I am well-versed in grief and experiencing close losses.

One of the cruelest things about life is the loss of our parents. Maybe you weren’t as close to your parents as I was, but it still is a loss. It is a loss in that there is no longer hope that the relationship(s) could improve, or disagreements be resolved. Or maybe it is a loss because they never got to meet your children and so, they couldn’t fulfill the role of doting grandparent or help you with childcare as they had promised. Perhaps you had a fight or disagreement and they died before you had a chance to make it right.

My whole world was shattered in an instant by the accidental death of my brother at the age of 15. I felt that I couldn’t live my life fully because my brother wasn’t given the opportunity to live his life. I was left to create a new identity without him! I started living on the sidelines of my life because if I became too close to someone, they would leave me or die. I rarely showed up fully to participate with people or in events.

When I lost my brother, Michael in 2004, while he was serving as a flight medic in Iraq, I found only one book on sibling loss. It was in that book where I was introduced to the term “forgotten mourners”, referencing people who have lost a sibling. This is said in part because most support goes towards their parents when a sibling dies. The parents are dealing with most peoples’ worst nightmare, the loss of a child. Even the surviving siblings themselves are often focused on helping their parents. The type of support received is most often in others asking how one’s mom, or parents, are doing, but rarely on how the surviving sibling themselves are doing.

It has been six hundred-fifty-seven days and two hours, since my entire world as I knew it, completely shattered. Shattered, fell apart, blew up, destroyed, wrecked. On this day, February 27, 2022, at 5:27 pm, the love of my life, my heart and soul, my beautiful 23-year-old daughter, Kelsie’s heart beat for the last time. My worst nightmare, every parent’s worst nightmare, was now reality.

My wife, Julie, and I had been enjoying the festivities at a holiday party in 2019 when suddenly a clear and intrusive thought shook me: “Kenny is dead.” I felt uneasy, to the point where someone asked me if I was doing okay but I dismissed the intrusive thought I had as not urgent or imminent and politely said, “I’m fine.”

April 24th, 2022, 5:30am the phone rings. My wife and I assume it’s a prank call or wrong number and hang up. It rings again. We pick it up and hear those words like some sort of horror movie: Your daughter has been in a serious car accident. Packing up from our Hilton Head weekend away, we begin to rush home but within ten minutes, we received the next call: she did not make it.

Whether it is your first Hanukkah or Christmas without your Loved One, or there have been many, one of the hardest things about the holidays is seeing their empty chair. During our grief journeys you may find that the grief changes and grows in different directions year to year. Our Beloved Dad died three days after Christmas. The first year after his death I was okay putting up all the usual decorations and making our house full of Christmas everything. The second year after he died, I could barely bring myself to look at anything that had to do with Christmas or take out the decorations, let alone decorate or have a tree.

As we get older, holidays are a mixed blessing. As a child, we looked upon these special days with great anticipation and awe. We would count the days until we had that huge turkey dinner for Thanksgiving or ham dinner on Easter. You would get to see all your relatives that the family chose to celebrate with which might have meant they would travel to visit or you would travel to the family Matriarch’s house.

One of the best ways to work through grief is to work on a project that can benefit your whole family, or the group of people who are also mourning the loss of your Loved One is to create something that honors the person and brings fun, laughter, memories and tears.

The start of a new year can be an emotional time. We may think about all the Loved Ones who we have lost over the past year and prior years, or start to list who we are worried about losing in the coming year.