bereavement gifts

Lifelong Learning

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Often when people are dealing with loss, they isolate themselves and focus on their loss and sadness, and the more they do this, the harder it is to focus on anything else. When a feeling like this comes up, it’s time to make a choice to help yourself. Taking good care of you is your most important job.

When I realized that I hadn’t been doing anything, I started writing. I wrote about how I was feeling, and about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Then I started writing letters to my loved ones who had already transitioned. The more I wrote, the better I felt.  I continued to write every day and still do. The first thing I started on my own at that time was teaching others how to write to deal with their grief too.  I had taught writing for 30 years, so that seemed like a natural next step for me.  I enjoyed meeting new people and being able to help them.

I also realized that besides my writing group, I wasn’t talking to anyone or meeting anyone new. This was pre-pandemic. I started writing a list of things I would like to learn. As that list kept growing, I found myself excited about possibilities. I love to create things, so I looked for classes where I could learn something new.  I started with a drawing class at the local arts center, and I fell in love with colored pencils. I enjoyed that so much that I took more classes there: printmaking, jewelry making, advance ceramics skills, wreath making, watercolors and more!

Two places I always wanted to go were Tuscany and Bali. I found that the international ceramics group I belonged to was taking trips to both places, so I signed up for both.  I felt comfortable traveling with this group because the people in the group all shared my love for ceramics, and I loved the opportunity to meet artists in both countries and get to make ceramics to take home in their beautiful studios. I learned much about the countries and their arts before I left and learned much more in the countries.

When the shutdown came with the pandemic, I planted a giant vegetable garden so I would be able to share food with my friends since most of the food in Hawaii is shipped in and we were all were running low on food.  I learned about permaculture gardening and preparing new vegetables I hadn’t tried before, and I felt great about helping others.

I also discovered resources on my computer, like classes to take, classes I could teach, and sources I could learn from like TED Talks, which cover and endless number of fascinating topics. And I read books I never seemed to have time for before and watched movies that I had missed. There is so much information and entertainment in the world, so I found myself learning something new every day.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, taking care of you is your most important job when dealing with grief. Take some time to consider all the things you would love to do.  Make a list and start checking it off.  This can bring you lots of happiness. I would love to hear how you have discovered how to spend your time doing new things you have never done before!

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Bereavement Leave

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Usually, I don’t write about politics and grief, yet this time it would benefit us all to address this situation. I would love to know if any of you had challenges with getting bereavement leave when you needed it. Someone I love got her dream job working for a non-profit.  She worked there for years and was well respected. She loved her job so much that she didn’t use her sick leave or vacation time that she was able to build up over the years. Her husband knew that he was ill, but each time he went to the doctor, they told him to lose weight and he would feel better. No matter what he did, he kept getting bigger until finally a doctor listened to him and discovered that it was his malignant tumor that was gaining the weight.

As his health worsened, my friend started using her vacation time to help care for him. Her employer would not allow her to use her sick leave since she wasn’t sick. She used her vacation time for a week after his death. The organization was unhappy that she took so much time off even though it was time she had earned, so they terminated her employment, her lifetime dream job. She went into a deep depression after losing both her husband and her career to the point that she couldn’t deal with what had happened to her. Ultimately, she died too.

With all that happens in our country, bereavement leave is something we don’t have a good national system to address. Now we have an opportunity to address this. “In mid-August, the U.S. Senate set a process in motion to determine if our losses are important enough to deserve wage and job protections.” https://live-evermore.org/protect-our-jobs-congress/  Please click on this link to see the 16 US Senators who are working on this in committee right now.  They need to hear from you before September 15.  Please contact all of them before this deadline.  Contact information for all of the senators who are working on this is on the web site included above.

If you are reading this, you most likely have experienced the death of a loved one. You know how you felt as your loved one died, and how you felt that first week and probably longer than that week.  We are now in a position to help make it possible for employees to be granted five days of bereavement leave. I encourage you to help make this possible for your fellow grievers.

 

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Untold Stories

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I had the most wonderful experience this last week. My husband Jacques’s son and his wife delivered triplets almost 21 years ago, and though we met them the day they were born, and we have been in contact with them throughout the years, I hadn’t had a chance to know them individually.  One of the triplets, Sydney, graduated from college this spring, so I invited her to come to Maui for a week and stay with me to celebrate. I am so grateful I had the inspiration to do this because our week was magical.

She had never been to Hawaii before, so we did some of the usual things people do when they come to visit like go snorkeling, walk on the beach, go to a luau, and go to Mama’s Fish House for a delicious meal. And the rest of the time we spent visiting and getting to know each other. She attended my Writing Together Through Grief Zoom meeting and my Intention Setting Group on Zoom with me. She also got to attend my Produce Share that I do once a week so share the bounty of our gardens with neighbors. We went to Farmer’s Market together and bought some plants that we planted when we got home. We helped my friend Sharon feed her ten new puppies supplemental feedings. She is very creative, so I taught her how to weave including setting up my loom, measuring yarn, all the way to a finished project she could take home.  And because her Grandpa was half Italian and we had a tradition of making pasta from scratch for holidays, I taught her how to make pasta.

All these adventures were great, but what I enjoyed most was telling her stories of her Grandpa’s life. She was very young when he died, so she didn’t really get to know him. I told her everything I could think of starting with driving from San Francisco, where we were for my son’s wedding, to Los Angles on the day they were born. Her Grandpa was so excited! I shared how well respected her Grandpa was in the field of Ethics and Philosophy, what a talented singer and actor he was, how happy he was, and how he loved his life.

One evening she asked if I had pictures I could show her, so as we went through a big box, every picture inspired another story for me to tell her. One of my favorite stories was from a picture of her Grandpa standing with Mung, the man who had translated Jacques’s Ethics book into Chinese. Mung was visiting us from China because he wanted to meet the man who wrote the book that was used at the Institute of Philosophy in Beijing to help establish China’s ethical system after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Jacques was holding his book in Chinese, and Mung was holding the book in English. Sydney had learned Chinese in high school, so I had given her the Chinese book when she graduated. She went on to graduate from college with a double major in Chinese and World Cultural Studies.

We went through the pictures for hours with each picture bringing more memories.  I told her to take any of the pictures she wanted home with her, and she was thrilled. We also noticed Jacques’ sparkling smile in almost every picture. We were so happy together! I am grateful that I got to share all these memories with her, so her Grandpa now became a loving memory in her heart too.

Be sure to share your memories with your loved ones while you can.

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Unheard

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Do you feel alone sometimes?  Maybe is seems that no matter how many times you say something, people just aren’t hearing you? This is not unusual, and you aren’t alone.  Often when we are grieving, we just don’t feel the strength we need to keep fighting the same battle. When this happens, we usually must keep trying until someone hears. I have a big example from my life.

Many years ago, I started having problems with my knee which was painful and swollen and a challenge to deal with. I went to different doctors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, physical therapists, and surgeons. One surgeon finally told me that I had a torn meniscus that he could repair it and I would be cured, after more physical therapy. After the surgery, he told me my meniscus was not torn but the lining of my knee looked like thick red shag carpet and that he didn’t know why it looked like that. Recovery from the surgery was tough because my whole leg swelled so much that my skin split.

Years went on with no relief. I took lots of anti-inflammatory drugs, but to little avail. I learned to not sit on the floor ever, to walk slowly, and to just put up with the pain. I always mentioned it to whatever doctor or therapist I saw. I had cortisone shots in my knee and more physical therapy, but it continued to get worse. Finally, the swelling was so bad that I could not pull pants up over my knee. I researched and found who was supposed to be the best doctor to deal with knees. He decided to drain the fluid from my swollen knee to provide relief. What he pulled from my knee was not the clear yellow synovial fluid he expected, and he sent me to a general surgeon.

The new surgeon had an MRI done that indicated lots of blood free in my knee. As I told him my history, he stopped me when I said red shag carpet.  He told me that the combination of what the MRI showed and the description I told him of the carpet, he told me that he was almost certain that I had Pigmented Villanodular Synovitis. His surgery confirmed his diagnosis. He said that hopefully that the surgery and some radiation treatment would do much to lessen the symptoms, but he wasn’t sure, and since it could lead to amputation, he sent me to an oncologist.

Fortunately, I had a dear friend who was an oncologist. He also was brilliant and loved to learn new things, so he read everything he could find that had been written on the diagnosis, which didn’t take him long because at that point, not much research has been done. He was, however, able to calculate the amount of radiation I required to deal anything left of what was left of the giant cell tumors that had resided in my knee for so long. I did the radiation, did more physical therapy, and I am much better though I still have pain and am unsteady walking.

Why did I tell you this long story? Because it took me years of reaching out for help with little results.  That often happens to people who are grieving. They most commonly try to deal with grief in isolation, not wanting others to see how broken they feel. Or they don’t feel like talking to anyone else at all. When they do come to a point where they would like to ask for help, they are unsure of where to go, so frequently they delay getting support and suffer more alone.

My advice is to keep searching. Keep asking. Eventually someone will say “I know just who you should see.” Or you will read some books dealing with grief, from self-help type books to fiction that deals with people grieving. And hopefully you will talk to friends who have also dealt or are dealing with loss.

After my first husband to die transitioned, I didn’t try much of anything. In my lonely cocoon, there was no room for someone to join me. I was lonely, but I mostly hid from anyone who could comfort me. I gradually did what my mother would have said by “pulling myself up by my bootstraps.” Though I never was for sure what that meant, I did start to take care of myself anyway I could figure.  When my second husband to die transitioned, things were so different. I had experience to help me. I had learned much about what I didn’t want to do, so I started again.

I wrote much with just me as an audience about how I was feeling and wondering what I could be doing. And I read much, every grief book I could find. And I was finding much that wasn’t helpful, but some that was. Since my writing was helping me, I started teaching my writing techniques to others who were dealing with grief and loss.  The more we talked together, the better we all felt. And I am still teaching people how to write to deal with grief.

And the unexpected gift that came to me in all this process was that I learned that just because I have had much loss in my life doesn’t mean that I have too always be sad. I learned the value of a smile shared with someone, even a stranger.  I learned that it feels good to share conversations and laugh. I learned that I could take good care of myself. And I do.

Learning all this has allowed me to smile again regularly and to reach out to help anyone I can along the way. My intention it to provide comfort support, love, and happiness to anyone I touch who is dealing with grief. I am here to help you.

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

 

Gifts of Love

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I was talking with Dr VJ Raju this morning. He was telling me about the tradition of celebrating the death of a loved one each year after the death. He said for his mother, he plants 100 trees every year.  This gift not only honors here, but it also helps our planet especially now with all the major fires that are destroying trees with devastating effects. This made me think about how important gifts are when honoring someone or demonstrating love.

I always used to send flowers, but when I thought about how soon the flowers die, that seems to me a reminder of the loss of the loved one. I still like to send flowers for happy occasions, but if I send flowers because of a loss, now I send a living plant that will last lots longer.

When Jacques died, we set up a scholarship fund for students to go to the school of arts that we had founded years before. We requested that in lieu of flowers, that donation be made to that fund. So many people told me that they were happy that they could contribute to something that Jacques loved so much and that it benefitted children.

When I published my book, Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief, I realized that it would be a perfect gift for someone dealing with loss, and it does costs lots less than flowers! I addition to that, the book can bring the receiver comfort and support for months or even years. Many people have sone this and let me know how much they appreciated something that they could give that provides comfort and support.

Other thoughtful gifts could be a warm comforter that could be snuggled with accompanied by some tea. A journal is another thoughtful gift maybe with some ideas you write that your friend could use to write about when they are challenged getting started. I have created a set of 52 cards, and I send them to the person I seek to comfort, one each week for a year. I have done this several times and the receivers have told me how much the cards meant to them especially when they feel like people have forgotten what they are dealing with. Another idea would be to put on your schedule contacting this person each week for a year. This could be a phone call, a text, an email, or a card, or any combination of all these things.

Whatever you give for a gift for someone bereaved, by thoughtful, and make it something that will last. Grief doesn’t end after the first weeks, and thoughtful gifts can support for a while.

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Grief and Celebration

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I was talking to my new friend Stavros this morning. He is Greek and grew up in Greece. He shared his first experience of a celebration after death, and said it was such a positive experience.  Everyone was laughing and talking about the fun they had throughout their lives with the dearly departed. Stavros grew up without fear of death because of this early experience.

This reminded me of Dia de los Muertos, a celebration in Mexico where the belief is that the souls of the deceased loved ones return on November 1 of every year where their families and friends can celebrate their lives. This colorful celebration is filled with food and laughter.

When my husband Jacques died, his celebration was at our theatre.  He had loved to sing and act there. His good friend Mike Huey put together a performance based on the play Our Town and filled with music and loving tributes from friends.

My husband Ron died at our home in Maui. Hawaii.  Our friend Shena put together a gathering where friends and family sang, did spoken word, and shared fond memories. This was put facilitated by Kimokea, an honored Hawaiian Kupuna, who dressed in his cultural grab and only spoke Hawaiian for the ceremony. The we all got into canoes and paddled out into the ocean to scatter Ron’s ashes and the flowers that those attending brought from their yards.

As a child, all the funerals I attended were so sad. Lots of black clothing and tears. I always at in the back, away from the open casket that I didn’t want to look into.  I wanted instead to remember my grandmother’s hugs and my grandfather’s caring for me. I am so relieved that as I have reached this point in my life that those around me have been choosing the lightness and joy of tributes, performances, and love for our celebrations now.

How does your culture celebrate the passing of loved ones?  What memories do you have of the celebrations of life you have attended for your loved ones? I am writing some wishes for my celebration, but honestly, my hope is that those whose love me will celebrate in the way they would most like to remember me. What is your hope?

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.