Category: Grief

What stories am I looking for?

submit your story

1. Stories from people of color

I see that suicide and addiction affects all races. Whether you are African American, Indian or Latino or something else, I’d like to hear how stigma is in your cultural community.

2. Stories from the LGBTQ community

Suicide rates are high in this community and I’d like those who identify as LGTBQ to contribute

3. Speaking opportunities to diverse places of worship

Always looking for opportunities at places of worship and I have one coming up soon. But I feel our outreach is lacking in certain cultural communities.

4. Stories from veterans

It’s a … Read more...

I could never survive that

Surviving in memory of Charles Aubrey Rogers, 20, who died by suicide. Two years old in this picture.

Grief sits on your heart

settles in your limbs

roars in your ears

and takes you to your knees.

You can’t imagine surviving

or moving forward again

how does anyone do this?

live without their child?

One hour at a time

then one day at a time

then one week at a time

then each month after that.

You step forward and then back

ride a journey of uncertainty

until you learn to live with grief

and your melancholy days.

Let loved … Read more...

The world didn’t stop

When we were suffering from Charles’ addiction, the world kept turning.

When he died by suicide, the world kept turning then, too.

I was moving at the speed of slug after his death and everything seemed to whiz by so quickly. Was I in slow motion? Or was everyone else moving in fast motion? I was in a world that was entirely different from the one everyone else was moving in.

Would I ever catch up? Would anyone ever want to be around me? Or would I be a cruel reminder of a life gone bad? Would anyone ever invite … Read more...

Happy f–ing mother’s day

I got my mother’s day hives last week. With the help of Benadryl, it’s cleared up. Weird I get all these rashes during grieving season. And then they go away after the June fifth death anniversary. Poof! They vanish.

That first year, Mother’s Day hit me like a ton of bricks. That title expresses exactly how I felt. I felt bitter and resentment and I was pissed at the world. “Go on, go celebrate all your living children,” I wanted to scream.

I wanted to be mad at someone but there was no one to be angry with. … Read more...

The tree before and after

There is a tree near the Nickel Bridge and Byrd Park in Richmond. After a storm in June of 2016, it looked ragged, and broken. All the trees around it had leaves and branches.

This one looked singed by lightning– alone and naked. Among it’s grove mates, it had been devastated. It had a few branches but they were stripped of foliage and it had a curious formation at the top. A heart. I could not even imagine how lightning could carve a sculpture like that out of the top of a tree.

It looked dead. In fact, I thought … Read more...

What did I do with Charles’ ashes?

So my husband and I wanted something funky to hold Charles’ ashes. We finally picked them up from the funeral home on his birthday. Well, my husband did. And we chose this basket online from Etsy on the far left–with the tassels. I sort of copied what Tamara did for Logan. She got a nifty, creative basket for Logan’s ashes and I liked that idea.

The ashes barely fit in there. The whole thing is stuffed. But we got them in there with some determination and patience.

I do have two children and Richard had sent me a recent headshot … Read more...

Need some help from parents who’ve lost a child

I’d like to do a post on a VERY emotionally naked subject–intimacy and sex after death of a child.

All will be completely anonymous

This discussion is a pretty hot topic.

I have two ways you can share with me. And I really need your input because others really want to understand what happens and I am sure it’s different with different couples.

Losing a child often changes what happens in the bedroom. How long did it take to rekindle intimacy? Did you as a couple differ? How long ago did you lose your child and how? Was intimacy stressful … Read more...

I ache I miss you so much

Dear Charles,

Nothing new here. Nothing earth shattering.  No new revelations.  Just that raw, ugly momma grief.

There’s no new way to frame it or say it.

Images of you flash through my brain like a slide show. Snippets of your life play like an old movie–scenes from when you were a baby, a toddler, a 10 year old, a teen, and since it’s your birthday month, scenes from all those parties and broken piñatas.

And finally, that image of you as “Saturday Charles.” You with that buffalo plaid shirt you loved. That giant grin and your boundless … Read more...

Bake me a cake?

So next week I am in Preventure training for two days, Wed April 25 and 26. Planning that now although I do that poorly. (I am a lousy event planner). This is a personality-targeted life skills training program for 8th grade and up that has shown to identify 90% of at-risk kids and reduces drug and alcohol use in schools by up to 80%. That following Saturday is our biggest fundraising event of the year. So to say next week is crowded would be an understatement.

So Thursday, April 26 is Charles’ birthday.

And I was wondering if someone … Read more...

And my grieving season begins

This is Charles’ birthday month. My baby would have been 23 on the twenty sixth of this month. Then there’s mother’s day in May, the death anniversary June 5. This is my grieving season.

Already, I have the grief rash peaking from under my eyebrow. I’m short tempered and weepier. My heart aches and I’m staring off into space in a trance more often than usual.

Many of his friends have graduated from college, some of them are already applying to graduate school. I still have them stuck at 20 sometimes–shocked when I realize they had the audacity to grow … Read more...

To shrine or not to shrine?

Relatives and friends of those who have lost a child have asked me about whether someone should or should not have a shrine in memory of their child who died.

Some have told me their daughter-in-law, for example, has created a memorial in their home and that it makes them “uncomfortable.”

I say if it helps you cope with a loss this insurmountable, have that memorial shelf or shrine. Don’t let anyone grief shame you out of it. It’s your home and if it makes someone else uncomfortable, that is not your problem. It’s theirs.

I don’t give a rat’s … Read more...

Are we normal people any more?

I am often out somewhere, going to the grocery or drug store, doing normal people things but feeling I’m not normal any more.

Today, we were driving back from visiting my parents in North Carolina and I watched parents in Chick-fil-A with their kids. I remember when we did those things with our own kids. Stopped to eat on the way to vacation somewhere. We asked if they needed to use the bathroom, if they’d washed their hands, what did they want to eat.

I look at some of the t-shirts the parents are wearing emblazoned with home-made logos in … Read more...

How is grief like nesting dolls?

by Susan Casey, MSW, MFA

Rocky

Four years ago, on a day made for lovers, a day when chocolate hearts nestled in red heart-shaped boxes are given out in abundance, my younger brother’s heart stopped beating. His wife and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter stood outside of ICU, hands pressed against the window, in a Hong Kong hospital, watching as Rocky slipped out of this world and into the next. Alone in a foreign country, they had no one but each other to cling onto.

The life-altering call came in at 3:30 in the afternoon, as I sat at my desk, preparing for … Read more...

Was I a failure as a mother?

When my child killed himself, the first thing I thought about– when I could, in fact, think– was that he left because of something I didn’t do right. How crummy a mother was I that my child checked out on me? I saw it as a failure at the one job that meant most to me in the world, ushering my child to successful adulthood.

When I look back and start to beat myself up, something that doesn’t happen as often as it once did, I have to remember I didn’t know then what I know now. And I can’t … Read more...

How grief drove me to be clutter free

by Tamara Harvey Braswell

I know this is a strange subject for a mom who lost her only son to a car crash. How could anyone think about “clutter,” much less write about it in the same blog post about her deceased child? Read on.

It started with the kitchen chairs.

Grief gets you in all sorts of way. It can take a life of its own and in the beginning Grief is unrelenting and out of control. It comes in many forms. Anger is one of Grief’s many sidekicks.

Less than a month after my 19-year-old son Logan died, … Read more...