WHAT DO WE DO WHEN, IN THIS SEASON OF RENEWAL, LIFE STILL FEELS LIKE A LIFE-SENTENCE? HOW DO WE GRIEVE AT A TIME WHEN EVERYTHING (EXCEPT THE PERSON WE LOVED) SEEMS TO BE COMING BACK TO LIFE? Easter. Passover. Spring. The days lengthen, grow warm. Everything seems to come back to life. Everything, that is, except…
HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOUR WIDOWED FRIEND WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW. SHE’D TELL YOU IF SHE COULD. BUT SHE CAN’T. THAT’S PART OF THE PROBLEM. 1. Please understand that right now your widowed friend is not herself. Literally not herself. Most of the constructs of self she had have vanished, some temporarily, some permanently. Everything…
Our beloved partner is no longer on earth. And now it’s the holidays. Sometimes other people, not realizing they’re doing it, ask us to dress grief up in party clothes. We may even ask it of ourselves. But we don’t have to do it. In the fall of 2004, Richard, my friend Kay’s husband and…
IF YOU’VE LOST A PARTNER TO SUICIDE, EXPECT TO REVISIT THAT PECULIARLY GUILT-TAINTED SORROW EVERY TIME A CELEBRITY EXITS LIFE BY HIS OR HER OWN HAND, OR ON THAT DEATH’S ANNIVERSARY. MAYBE IT’S TIME TO GROW SOME COMPASSION, ALL AROUND. Anthony Bourdain’s suicide four years ago hit me hard. Perhaps this was partly because Bourdain…
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE REGULAR PARADIGMS DON’T WORK Most of us, before widowhood was thrust upon us, gave little thought to what that state would actually be like. And when and if we did try to conceive of it, most of us got it wrong. ” … In the version of grief we imagine…
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. It is also the birthday month of the late David Koff, with whom I lived for almost a decade, and who ended his own life. I wrote this exploration of the collateral damage of suicide, six years ago, three years after David’s death. In 2014, I had a new…