Hints for Coping with Grief During the Holidays

Life is never the same after experiencing the death of a loved one and neither can the holidays. However, one can learn to cope with the holidays by:

*Acknowledging the holidays cannot be the same again

*Lowering expectations-the goal is to survive

*Anticipating that emotions will intensify

*Giving yourself permission to feel

*Expressing your feelings

*Planning ahead

*Being flexible, abandon the plan if it doesn't feel right

*Telling others what you need

*Take Care of yourslef

The Why of Suicide

Two teenagers in the Stillwater area died in a suicide pact this week. The questions will forever remain questions for their family and friends. Sometimes we can live into the answers to life's biggest questions, but the questions surfaced from the wake of a loved one's suicide continue to come crashing over one's life.
The whys are disturbing and abrasive, perplexing and confusing. The whys are an unwelcome guest that continues to knock at our door. The door must be opened. The questions must be asked even though the answers may not be found.
There is little comfort in the unanswered questions, but I do find hope in knowing that I am never alone in the asking. People have been asking the difficult questions of life for centuries. Whether one is a believer or not, the unanswerable questions are often addressed to God. I take comfort in knowing that God holds the questions for us. God is with us in the asking and in the waiting for answers.

Ann Weems in Psalms of Lament writes:

O God, explain to me the cruelty of your world!
Make sense of those who make no sense!
Tell me why the faithful are shunned,
and the self-righteous point their fingers!
Tell me why the wounded are wounded,
and sorrow falls on the the shoulder of sorrow!
Tell me why the abuse are abused,
and the victims victimized!
Tell me why the rains come to the drowning,
and aftershocks follow earthquakes.
O God, is this any way to run a world?
O Merciful One, let us rest between tragedies!

Speak to us for we are your people.
Speak to us of hope for the hopeless
and love for the unloved
and homes for the homeless
and dignity for the dying
and respect for the disdained.

Speak to us, O God,
of the Resurrected One!
Speak to us of hope,
for in spite of the tidal wave of tears,
we remember your story of new life!

Tell the world again,
O God of creation!
Tell us that winter will fade,
and spring will wash us anew,
and the world will green again,
and we will be new creations
in the garden of our God.
Free us from these tentacles of sorrow,
and we will fall on our faces,
and worship you,
O God of goodness,
O God of a new green world!

Learn to Dance with a Limp

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It is like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with a limp." Anne Lamott

The South Dakota Prairie

Grief is like the South Dakota prairie, endless.
Stretching in every direction, expansive.
A weather beaten abandoned house sits empty, lonely.
Cows seek shelter from the sun's brutal rays, exposed.
The Badlands, a baked rocky desert, relentless
The Black Hills, a refreshing reprieve.
Then the expansive, endless Wyoming prairie, grief returns.

Soul's Soil Shared

Gardens growing side by side
incarnate beauty with brilliant brightness
sharing color in life's shades of grey.
Powerful, positive, presence,
like a sunflower seeking suckling sun's rays,
calling forth life's light.

Gardens growing side by side.
Yours, well tilled with nurturing toil, in fed soil.
Nutrient sucking weeds discerning destructive,
pulled, giving life's light to budding blossoms uncovered.

Gardens growing side by side.
Mine, pale comparison,
with wild weeds deceptive.
I, from you,wise weeding woman,
learned to be an earth tender.
Pulling, old rooted weeds.
Discovering, my garden's beauty beneath,
like wild flowers under the forest's blanket.

Gardens growing side by side.
Sharing plots, poised and planted.
God the Gardener,"Grace."
Fed in freindship,
watered in Word,
growing in splendor.

Gardens growing side by side.
Yours, now, transplanted.
Love lingers,fertilizing my soul's soil,
with your eternal beauty.

Words worth pondering

A friend shared this thought with me after her brother died. They are the words of A. Powell Davies from his book, Prayers for Healing.
"When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as part of life. Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says it is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. but anguiish, like ecstasy is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too is a door to life. Here, also, is a deepening of meaning-and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, conquering of the wilderness and in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning all is well."

Caregiving, The Paradox

Caregiving, it gives life.
Compassion shared,
patience granted,
empathy bestowed.

Life is given.
In hearing other's stories we are invited onto sacred ground.
Life is honored.
While engaging others, we encounter God.
Life is drained.
Caregiving, the paradox, it drains life.
Powerless to stop it, death comes defying our efforts.
Helpless to fix it, the pain of grief consumes.
Grief drains, questions plague, energy flees.

Life is paradox, death the teacher.
to celebrate simplicity,
to live the questions,
to embrace the essence.

Death, friend and foe, helps me,
to focus on the essentials;
faith, family, friends
to honor the Holy within and without
to cherish the gifts of living and loving