Gratitude and the Long Arc of Grief

             I’m sitting in a cemetery in Peru with the dead, thinking about Hope’s journey to a different Peru, sorrow for an entire culture of people, and trying to describe how moved I am by the breadth of her book The AfterGrief. 

Today is the fall equinox and dry leaves are beginning to drop from the trees and rest on graves in central Illinois, which means that October and Halloween will soon be here when we will dress our children up as skeletons and images of the living dead, but we still won’t talk about death.

 

            In her book, Hope Edelman discusses death, grief, and living, and includes so many insights that I won’t try to summarize everything here. My marked-up copy attests to all of her findings about the clarity and complexities of grief that I want to think about more. 

 

Grateful At the Table

On Thanksgiving we gather at many tables, some with family, some with friends. The holiday can be brutal on those who are grieving because it insists that we be thankful, and on the first Thanksgiving after a death, all we may be able to feel is sorrow for the person who died.

 

The traditional things we celebrate on Thanksgiving are food, family, and home. If we haven’t recovered our interest in food, and we don’t have the energy to make our traditional holiday dishes, this option is out. Family means the people we usually gather with, but if they are tired of hearing about our grief, then we have to remain silent and sit on the side of their conversations. If we always spent Thanksgiving at home with the one who died, then anything we do on this day is likely to be a dirge.

 

Of Rings and Hope

My essay on finding gratitude after my beloved died, and my struggle over how long to wear my wedding ring was published this week by Mindful Matter Journal. The onyx box pictured above is the one in the essay.

You can read it at - http://hlst.ee/1GYQxlf

Gratitude

Feeling gratitude after a death is hard. Someone I loved is gone. A life I loved is over. I have no ambitions or dreams. I don’t care about anything or anyone, not even myself.

Even though I know that Evelyn would want me to be happy again, this does not free me up to go dancing or even to enjoy ice cream.

Gratitude is being thankful for what I have, not what I don’t.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *