Hi Amanda. I’m dying of cancer at 39. Yes, it’s very sad, thank you. My husband, and love of my life, Jason, is finding himself very much afraid of the crippling grief he expects will follow my death.
This was so beautiful. My uncle died of a heart attack a few days ago and I am currently bearing witness to my aunt's grief. She is in her late sixties and has dementia. So she is continuously forgetting and remembering that he has passed, which is a special sort of hell. When she remembers, and is wracked with grief, I hold her hands and we cry. Then it gently turns into half-remembered stories of their adventures. She describes to me the best she can with her flailing mind how much she loves him, and it feels even more honest and true and visceral because she cant find the right words. As if there simply are no words to describe the depth of their love and her grief. Thanks for helping me make sense of the role I've taken on. ❤❤❤
Oh....man. I'm sorry to hear that you're going through this, but also so ahppy that you can be there as a Sam, as a witness. Sometimes it's just about being the net there to catch the stories as they spill, so that they don't fall on the floor. Listening can be more powerful than adding or advising or counseling or ... anything. It's sometimes the only thing we can give. For those of us (like me) who tend to want to conjure up the perfect words, the perfect comforting expression, the perfect offering, it can be even harder. I'm so glad she's got you. May the coming days be not too hard.
Thank you for your reply, Amanda. I spent another day sitting with her, catching the stories and tears. Many times I reminded myself when I wanted to say just the right thing to make her feel better that the most generous thing I could do was simply be there and listen. Thank you.
Lacey, I am sorry your world is at a wobble right now with the passing of your Uncle.
I am a firm believer of things happening for a reason. I do believe your Uncle left now so that he could be waiting for his lovlie when it is her time, to guide her and relieve the confusion of which she experiences now. She is safe with you, and she will be safe with him again. Be there to listen and let your heart guide you.
I read this as I too am a ‘Jason’ in the most literal sense. My husband has stage 4 cancer, and is slowly dying. I was not, nor ever will be ready to face this fact at age 42, that one day in the future, I will be alone. That I will be navigating my life alone.
Thank you Amanda for choosing to respond to Penny’s letter, and for our sound advice. Thank you to Penny for being vulnerable at a time you could choose to be selfish and thank you Jason, for holding space in a relatable way that seems only few understand.
Thank you, Amanda and Penny. And Jason, too. Diane, I was 42 when the love of my life died, in 2006. Yes, you will be alone, and you will not be ready, and it will hurt so badly that entire days will disappear. The cosmos will have bent around you; it would be freakish and weird if you bore no trace of this impact. So, yes, it sucks. But. And. There will be people who will help you. Somehow, it - the grace of humans sharing of themselves, as we just saw, here, Amanda and Penny - happens. Humans give compassion, especially with this, and you will receive this. Take it. You'll need every breath of it, and you will try to thank everyone and you will never know who did That One Thing, and that's okay. You will not know how it became Tuesday, and that is also okay. Keep drinking water. Try to sleep. (you will not want to because then it will be the end of a day that you were awake that he was still alive, but you will, in fact, have to sleep eventually. that sucks, too)
All these years onward from that meteor strike of death, I offer this: You will still have the pain, that pain that carves into your body and soul that yes you loved him, yes you did, and he mattered more than anything. You will honor him in your pain. You will also honor him in your joy. You will honor him and his memory in all of it. You're not doing it wrong. You're being the person he loved. You're being the embodiment of your love for him. You're allowed to mourn, and to rejoice, and to be fully human to the maximum extent possible for you, always. Walk that path at your feet. Keep walking. Keep breathing. Love. Always, love.
Liz, thank you so much for this. I will save this for the days I need it. I hope to have many more days to come in the future, but for now I understand time is short abs very valuable and cherish each day as it comes. Thank you
If you don’t mind I’m going to speak directly to Penny. Penny I don’t know where you live; I live in LA- you tell your Jason if he ever wants to talk or text or email or scream if he would like to have a total stranger who understands what’s happening best she can to be a witness,tell him I will be here.
I lost my 19-year-old daughter just over three years ago. I live in a different world and nothing will ever be the same. But I am trying to learn how to be here, how to best most purposely live in this old unfamiliar world. Nothing will ever be the same after you go for your Jason either but maybe it can still be something. Something with purpose maybe a little joy.
He figured out how to find the love of his life Penny. I bet you he’ll be OK.
I am another bereaved mother, another member of the club that absolutely nobody wishes to join. I'm based in Vanuatu and have published a few deep dives on bereavement through the lens of consciousness. Here are the links:
Nicola, Margot...thank you both for sharing your stories here, and for being so open. Grief Club is a strange club, isn't it. But I don't think I've ever seen such pure expressions of empathy and understanding than from this particular corner. You guys are amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for responding. It means a lot. Nothing can change the past but...we have this, we have here, now, you, me, us. We'll do what we can do.
Thank you so much for being on this platform, and thank you for hearing us and seeing us. I have learned that I'm no less of a mother for having lost my son; he is here in a different way now, our direct line to heaven.
Your work has helped me through the hard times and inspired me in more ways than I can meaningfully describe. Your comment means the world to me, and I am here to share the love and help it grow.
My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer right about the time that Covid hit and passed away the day after her birthday, last year.
When she became bedbound, her phone was her lifeline and she would call everyone multiple times a day. Twenty, thirty times a day. All hours of the day and night. I couldn't always answer, so she would leave voicemails.
The voicemails were never long. She would say hi, and tell me about the weather or the show she was watching or what color she wanted to dye her hair, or what tattoo she wanted to get.
I saved them all.
And after she passed, when I was missing her terribly, I would play my favorite ones. Just her talking about normal everyday things and her saying she loved me.
So... to help Jason when he is broken hearted and the rest of the people who love you.... record your voice. In a voicemail, or video, a Tick-Tock... wherever.. because hearing you say you love them can get them through some really hard days.
I lost the love of my life to cervical cancer in 2019. The diagnosis was quick, and her death even quicker. Her name was Mary, and she was the finest soul I ever hope to meet.
Amanda, your advice about witnesses is spot-on and brilliant. I had very little of that after Mary died, which made the witnesses I did have feel so much more precious.
I still struggle with the suffering, and as the pain slowly lifts, the loneliness seems to increase. (The pandemic certainly hasn’t helped.) I wish you, Penny, rest and comfort, and I wish Jason all the love and connection he needs to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Thank you for saying it. Loneliness and suffering are so weird, and the pandemic has magnified and stretched the pain - especially in those departments - for pretty much everybody I know. I'm so sorry it's a struggle, but I know that even in the loneliness we are never totally alone. We have our shreds of connection and light where we can find them. Lots of love to you...thank you for Samming.
I hear you about the loneliness. I’ve lost four family members since the beginning of the pandemic, and it sometimes feels as if I’m on a different frequency than everyone around me. I can see them and hear them and interact with them, but is any of it really real?
Hi Mary. Thanks for your comment. I get what you mean about a different frequency. I go through my day and talk with people, interact with them, but it all seems like a movie. There’s no substance to it. I think it was her that gave the whole thing meaning—I was her partner, and I wasn’t ready for that identity to end. I really feel like I don’t know who I’m supposed to be now. Now I just try to love the people around me as best I can, because I don’t know what else to do (and putting love into the world is always a safe bet).
Thank you so much for hearing me, Mary. That means a great deal. I’m sorry that you’ve been visited by so much loss. Thank you for the gift of your attention. Often that’s the most valuable thing we have to share.
oh, Howard. I will put your words where I see them first thing every day: " putting love into the world is always a safe bet." Thank you. wishing you peace.
One of my first jobs as a priest was working as an on-call chaplain at a funeral home. My specific job was to do the funerals for people who didn’t have anyone else to do their funerals. These were folks who had been abandoned by the church. My job was forensic in nature because I was having to write eulogies for folks I had never met; I had to get to know them through the people who loved them.
When I would get the call from the funeral director, I would then begin calling family and friends to try and discover who this person was.
One of the very first funerals I ever did, the daughter wouldn’t call me back. I was terrified. The day of the funeral approached, and I had nothing but a very generic piece written up. I figured I would arrive early, try to pry out whatever I could from her the day of, and wing it.
When I got there, the funeral director pointed me in the direction of the daughter. She was a long, stoic-looking woman with silver hair. When I approached her, she immediately said, “Father, just get up there and read verses and say whatever you must but don’t make my mother out to be a saint or cute. Everyone will know you are lying.”
At first, I was mortified. But I sat with that experience for quite some time.
I think it taught more more about grief than almost any other experience before or after it. It taught me that grief must be authentic; we have to be true to who the person really was.
So often, we feel like we must go through the performance of grief and platitudes. It’s almost liturgical. Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat.
Over the years, as I’ve lost people I loved, I’ve observed as others attached themselves to that loss. It was clear they didn’t know them, that their sadness was surface level, and their grief was for show. They didn’t know them, they didn’t love them, and some of them hated those people I loved. But suddenly, you would have thought they were best friends.
I had to find the Sams. The ones who knew, who understood, and as you said… it wasn’t always the ones you expected.
The pandemic has brought on more grief or loss than many of us have ever experienced. I would always end every funeral by saying, “there is no wrong way to experience grief, with the exception of not experiencing it.” I ignored that advice in my own life and let that pain bottle up inside. I was giving so much of myself into helping others with their own sadness and loss I didn’t give myself space to deal with it.
Last year, I finally let it out through my art. But it took me a mind time to get there. It hasn’t been easy, it’s profoundly painful, but it is important.
Thank you for this piece. My heart is with Penny and Jason. If there is anything I can do to help, please reach out.
oh man. this is such a good thing to read (and you're such a great writer, and i've ordered your book, and i cannot wait to read it). this: "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat." because in some senses, grief is a practice, like any other. a daily prayer. chop wood, carry water, mourn friend, make toast. i love you, nathan.
Looking at the comments from Amanda, Henry, and Laura about the rote actions as good or bad. My take is they can be both and neither. They give a framework and tell our body "do this now". Our minds and hearts can run in their circles until they are tired and ready to do something else while the body says "it is time to stand up, kneel down, sit, eat, sleep, cry, wash the face, repeat". Once, the mind will fret with "who is watching" and another time with "what day is this" and another time with "how will I go on? What do I do now? Oh yeah, I sit down, then I kneel, then I stand and go eat..." And one day, the heart realizes it has been a week, a month, a year, and there is still some shape of life.
My own prayers in loss have been wordless, or wordfilled, rage. They have been kneeling on the floor wracked with sobs I thought would tear me apart. They have been emptiness and I had no idea what might ever fill it again. And one day, I stood and lit the candle and it didn't hurt so much. And one day, I stood and said "I'm here, now what". And one day, I finally stood and said "Let's see what is next." And through it all, I stood, I lit the candle, I allowed what was in my heart and head to be and I shared it with the Powers that listened.
It's true that grief is a practice in some sense, but I think you missed the context of Father Monk's "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat."
He's describing these things as rote and shallow, saying "we feel like we must go through the performance of grief". He continues: "Over the years, as I’ve lost people I loved, I’ve observed as others attached themselves to that loss. It was clear they didn’t know them, that their sadness was surface level, and their grief was for show. They didn’t know them, they didn’t love them, and some of them hated those people I loved. But suddenly, you would have thought they were best friends."
He's saying that "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat." is a bad thing, but you apparently think he meant it as a good thing.
Thanks for your clarification! On the other hand, perhaps Amanda's "misreading" is a happy accident (felix culpa!), because it led to her thought that "grief is a practice."
I have also experienced deep loss, however, and I would add that the "practice" of grief does not happen right away -- at first the grief is so overwhelming that it invades every minute of every day. But after time heals that immense initial pain, it could be seen as a practice.
This is a beautiful response. One thing I would add--please be aware of the inconsistent nature of grief. I mean, at first it's pretty consistent and all consuming, in exactly the way you might expect. What becomes harder is when the grief starts to slim down: you think, ok I've dealt with this, I'm ok, and then, BANG! Like a car running a red light and mowing you down, you weren't looking for it, you weren't expecting it, but suddenly you're under it staring up at its crushing weight and thinking, 'fuck.' And it's almost worse *because* it's been easier, because you've lost the grief-muscles you developed when you were carrying it full time.
Disclosure: my partner's daughter was murdered in 2008, and I've watched his grieving process as time has passed (because my grief is different from his, of course it is; losing a kid? FUCK!) And this is what it was like for him. He still gets bitten by the black dog (an image we only use because of Ian Dury's famous "banging nails" line; it gives him a mental image, an almost physical embodiment that allows him some kind of mental action). It's just good to let people know that grief isn't a straight line on the graph from prostrate------>healed. It's what I wish I had known when supporting him.
yes. this is so, so true. it is not a straight line and the unexpected is the usual. you cannot expect that time heals all wounds in the proper order. it just doesn't work like that, time bends. thank you bellezebub
There is so much I recognise in what you say. It's the totally unexpected triggers that can hit the most.
A couple of years after my wife died I was driving home from a meeting in Aberdeen and was listening to Jon and Vangelis CDs. When we'd only been going out a few months we went to see Jon Anderson play a concert in Glasgow and he was one of 'our artists'. But it wasn't the music that hit, it was seeing a road sign to the Lewis Grassic Gibbon centre. We had never been there but I knew that when she was younger that was her favourite author and it just hit to the heart. I had to find somewhere to pullover for a while.
That's exactly the way it is. Like, when we visit her grave, we don't mourn *there*, where you might expect it. We'll be doing something, completely fine, and then maybe that New Radicals song comes on, and he is *done*. Or someone mentions Sean Connery (an in-joke between them.) Or maybe it won't have a nexus at all, it just comes.
Thanks for sharing about your wife; honestly, when I first realized this was how it was, I wondered if it was just us, because of course we don't deal with grief as a society, only as individuals, and especially English society, where this stuff is barely touched with a ten foot pole.
It's interesting that you say "English society" -- the Irish society is different, at least in my experience. I am American; my late husband was Irish -- had moved to the U.S. when he was young, but all of his family were "back in Ireland." When I went there for the second funeral (and to bury him), I remember saying how relieved I was to be in Ireland, where people treated death as a normal part of life, that can be talked about. By contrast, most Americans (not all) were awkward.
Tbf, I'm an ex-pat American, so maybe the differences just *seem* so stark. Otoh, our situation was maybe different: Sam (that name again) was murdered, had her head and breast cut off, and her body was thrown in a wheelie bin. So (and I'm only thinking this right this minute) maybe that made a difference to how ppl responded to our grief; it certainly made a difference to how *we* responded to it. But grief is grief is grief; we don't miss her *more* than if she'd died a natural death, we don't grieve more or harder. I mean, yeah, there's a different element when you realise how shitty humans are sometimes, but that's not the grief bit. But I agree totally with your friend--that first year, if we could have skipped ahead a bit and realised that we wouldn't *always* be lumbering under the weight of cataclysm, but that even when we weren't, it would still drop on us unexpectedly from time to time, would have helped.
I lost my mom more than 20 years ago. Sometimes, I am able to be happy and laugh and share the stories. Other times, the missing her comes so hard and fast and unexpectedly I just gasp and the tears come.
This is something I wrote a couple years ago (2020)
"I wish this could be the end of the first year for you." My dear friend said this to me almost 25 years ago and I had no idea what she meant. Today, I am struck by the fact that I have said it again to another in pain as I have done more times than I can count. Because today I understand loss in a way that was brand new and so unfamiliar then.
Then I was emotionally raw and bleeding from my husband's abrupt exit from our marriage. No discussion, just divorce. I fled to a beloved friend and she nurtured me with tea and tissues and the words above. "I wish this could be the end of the first year for you".
At the beginning of a loss, the future rolls away endlessly bleak and heartrendingly empty. Every holiday and anniversary is a brutal reminder of the absence of the loved one. So many reflexive stretches for the phone and automatic pouring of two cups of tea. The constant reminders and the ingrained habits of seeing the perfect thing and starting to buy it for them...only to realize that there is no point because it cannot be given or received.
The first event comes and the hurt surprises us because who knew that loss could hurt in so many ways. And we get through it. Maybe messy, maybe tidy, maybe loud, maybe invisible, maybe alone, maybe in a crowd. But we wake up the next day and the world has kept turning and we are still riding along. The holidays and anniversaries and birthdays come and each hurts, each feels impossible. And we get through them. And the comes the hardest, most terrifying anniversary of all. And whether it passes so slowly that every minute is a year or vanishes in a few blinks and a flood of tears, the date passes and we have survived it. And a year has passed.
We have survived every milestone date. Our birthday, their birthday, holidays, anniversaries, and the anniversary of the great loss. We have survived each with only hope that we could. Every year after the first, we know that we can go on because we have. We know that laughter or tears or emotional storms or anxiety or anything else the days throw at us, we have gotten through them before and we know we can again.
In hindsight, there are gifts that come with the pain and loss but they don't show themselves as gifts until later. For those getting through the first year (and for those ambushed by really difficult later anniversaries), if it all gets too big and too awful, take it one breath and one heartbeat at a time. You will come through it.
, thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am for the shelter you provided that July with tea and tissues, supportive arms and words, love, and the hard-won wisdom that after the first year, at least we know that we can get through it all.
Written on the 10th anniversary of the passing of my beloved MIL Lorraine and 4 days after the 21st post-passing birthday of my beloved mother Ann.
Wow. This first installment is nothing short of incendiary. I’m blown away by Penny’s leap of faith to ask for help from an untraditional source + Amanda’s compassion. Your ability to use storytelling to make advice feel accessible and manageable instead of a lecture or a prescription is so comforting. To Penny & Jason ; I hope you find an army of Sams.
Thank you, Ellysioux. Am I the only one hearing Björk doing a song called "Army of Sams"....but seriously, thank you. Thank you for being here to read, and saying that. It means the world. xxx A
This is a beautiful response, Amanda, and really resonated with me (and what a wonderfully caring thing to ask, Penny).
My husband died 3 and a half years ago, from a brain tumour, at the age of 36. My grief was, in some ways, different to how I imagined it might be (I don't think better or worse, but different). There was a lot of feeling absolutely unable to move from the sofa, of feeling alien and bewildered in supermarkets, like you described, Amanda.
The 'sams' in my life have been how I have got through it. They've helped me to feel I'm keeping John alive. And as well as the 'sams' who knew us together, people who ask me about John, who ask what he'd think of something, who wish they knew him. One of my 'sams', the best man from our wedding, is now my partner. When our relationship started, I questioned whether it was a terrible idea. I had a dream that doctors told me 'surprise, John's not dead after all!', and I had a hard time in my dream working out what to do with my old life and my new life... In the end of the dream we all three decided to live together (which is basically what we do, metaphorically). That's the best illustration I can think of, of how the support from someone who knows you two together, can help keep someone alive (and they don't have to become a partner, obviously- that's just how it worked out for me).
My other recommendations, to go with Amanda's, for anyone in this situation...(not anywhere near as beautifully expressed...)
I'd massively recommend reading Dr Kathryn mannix's 'with the end in mind'. It helped me so much to prepare for the actual dying process, and I was much more be able to feel like I was there supportively for John because of it.
I've also found Nora McInerny's podcast 'terrible, thanks for asking' and her books/Ted talk very helpful for understanding and processing my grief. It doesn't make grief any easier, but perhaps less scary when you know you're not alone.
I read this quote below from Richard Feynman at John's funeral. John and I did have a hell of a good time.
'It’s hard to explain. If a Martian (who, we’ll imagine, never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures- these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come- it would look to him like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary. Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.
The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference- the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, “But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years.” But that’s crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, “Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?- all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life.
oh zoe, this is so beautiful. and so, so, true. five, fifty? five days? five hundred years? what's the difference? love is love, it sort of transcends time. and i love the idea of you and your sam in a kind of life-death-above-it-all polyamorous relationship with your other partner. you do all live together. love can be expansive that way. it's beautiful. thank you so much for this comment. xx
I am just sitting in my kitchen reading your words and tears run all over my face. I lost my husband Armin, my first love, the father of my son, when i was twenty. Two weeks before my son had his second birthday. He died of cancer at the age of 26. I remember all this fear before he died and the feeling in my whole body. I was so awake to inhale all the moments we got left. There was so much love there. I really find myself in all the feelings you talk about when you lost Anthony. I was so young and so lost and so sad with this two year old boy on my lab. It was so hard to connect with people of my age, because nobody knew how to deal with me.
The most comfort i found was the grandmother of my husband. She was almost 80 by that time. She lost a lot of people already in her life, but i knew she too was not prepared to loose her beloved grandson. But somehow she managed to grief and still be deeply thankful and grateful for the very loving relationship she had with her grandson. We shared our pain, mostly without talking about it. But we did talk a lot about Armin. He was so present in our daily routine and still so present for my son. This helped me a lot. The talking about him, the celebrating his life, the laughing about all the really funny times we had. It made me feel close to him even he was not physically there anymore.
Amanda i wanna deeply thank you for your words.
Jason & Penny i send you all my love for the way you have ahead of you.
oh anna - thank you so much for this comment. i hope this whole exercise makes us all better sams - better versions of ourselves like your grandmother who can show up to aid the grieving then they most need it. all these stories - they make a difference. thank you so much for sharing. xxx a
I don't think I've got the strength or courage to wear the one that says "my son died, that's why I'm like this"....not just yet! Thank you Amanda for opening this conversation. I can only send my love to Penny and Jason, and hope Jason finds his Sam. X
Finding the people who will be there for Jason in the After is a wonderful way to help him because Amanda is right, you have no idea who can emotionally be there in the trenches when you’re grieving and it’s often not the folks you would expect to be there.
I lost my husband suddenly in 2020 at 47 and it’s been helpful for me to find support from fellow young widows/ers. When Jason is ready, we’ll also be there for him over at Club Wid. We’re a support group for young widows: widowsclubmembership@gmail.com
This is so beautiful, y'know, I imagined that things like this might exist and could have googled and pasted, but it's so much more meaningful coming from you. It's real, then. Thank you. You're in my heart right now.
Dear Askezan, I hope you don’t mind that I write to the support group you gave. My husband died of melanoma cancer 6 months ago, at 52. Less than 12 months after my father died of cancer. It’s been shit. :(
Justine, I’m sorry for your losses. Please do email. It’s a good group of people and it’s been helpful. In addition to the online forum, there are weekly zoom calls, which, for me, made the biggest difference.
Oh, this brought me to absolute tears. I lost the person I loved a little over twelve years ago, when I was just 19 and she was two weeks and change away from eighteen, and this brought back so much of that. I wish I'd had this all those years ago, because it really spoke to my heart.
Ours was an online friendship (though we met in person several times, at the end) and almost nobody in my "real" life knew about it--or wanted to. I wish I had people I could talk to about her. She shaped so much of my teenage years--and grieving her obliterated my early adulthood.
I know I'm being so selfish in talking about myself here, but that's just to say how hard this hits and how deeply I feel it. <3
Your sharing is not selfish. Those who have suffered the loss of an uncommon love, one neither spouse nor family, can find understanding in your words.
Grief is grief. Amanda created this to be a community where we can support each other with whatever is happening. Loss of our loved ones changes us, always, and the grief doesn't just stop because the page on the calendar changes.
I am sorry you lost your dear one. I am sorry you faced it alone. I hope that you can find a way forward that includes that love and accepts the shape in your life that she left. I hope you can find love and joy again.
Thank YOU. It was a pleasure writing it. I love this community so much, and the heart everyone brings to stuff like this. I couldn't do this kinda project without knowing you were all out there catching it.
Amanda, thank you. I am currently writing an essay about the imminent death of my father, who I have been grieving preemptively for nearly 15 years as he wanders the doorstep of death. There is much beauty and richness here. My relationship with my father is extraordinarily complex which is to say, I have forgiven everything and because I have forgiven I find that I often have nothing left to say. Even my silence is part of the grief. I have walked the knowing, the sobbing, the urgency and the circulating at the foot of the bed. I find myself thirsting for the relief of knowing his suffering is over. At the same time, I am surprised at the paradox of his cancer - it is voracious and glacial. Sometimes I have become so numb to it that I wonder if I have simply run out of love for him. Your words and reminder about grief being a measure of love healed me a little - the reminder that my long grieving and my anticipation of the grief to come when he does pass, means in fact - I do love him. And myself. He is dying and there is a part of me that is also dying with him. At the same time, there is also a new part of me being born - and while I will do my best to impart the lessons I learned from knowing my father, this new part of me will also be free from it. That gives me hope.
For Penny - how strong your love must be that you are able to think of Jason with such concern and empathy. I think you see a trueness of people when they are suffering and that your trueness is your love and concern for him is beautiful to witness.
dear tash - my god, you're an incredible writer. i hope you share the final essay over here with us...i would love to read it. and i'm thinking of you, as you go through all this. "voracious and glacial"....you said it. love to you. xxx
I feel that I know you and I know your father and I can smell the soup of the body while your words nourish my spirit. You have defined the transformative magic we all need to do with our parents and ourselves. Thank you so much.
And for your own experience - I am sorry that the path of grief has been so long. I hope that with the realizations you have had, that you can become more aware of the love. I hope that you are able to draw comfort from the memories and the choices you are consciously making. And I hope when the time finally does come, that your father's passage is gentle.
Thank you for taking the time to read it! It almost felt like an imposition to post my work on a thread of so many rich stories and under the blanket of Amanda's beautiful response.. but now I'm glad I did. I'm glad it spoke to you and took you somewhere.
Dearest Penny and Jason. You are going through something that is indescribable to others in terms of how you both may be feeling at any given moment and I want you to know that I see you. Unfortunately, I can relate to you all too well in this experience. My husband was the love of my life, my best friend, my ride or die life partner and he died two years ago of cancer just a month after his 40th birthday. We were lucky enough to have witnesses of our life and our love around us when he died and Amanda is so on point that having those witnesses really does help. After my husband died, I found it hard to be around or spend time with anyone who wasn’t with us while he was sick and dying because it felt like nobody really understood. Our community that surrounded us, stayed with us, cooked meals for us, held us in their hearts and arms as we faced down death and grief together are the only people I felt could relate to me after my he was gone. It felt like we had gone to war together. I can tell you that the grief will be paralyzing and crippling at times. I still feel the breath catch in my chest in the most painful way when a random memory occurs, or I hear a song or I smell certain things that belonged to him. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this. As far as grief goes, feel it and don’t back away from it, really fully let yourself feel, it’s ok. It will be painful, sometimes grief feels more emotionally painful than you ever knew was possible. What nobody tells you is how physically painful grief can be; it’s like your soul, or whatever resides in the depths of our bodies, aches so deeply that you feel like you can’t endure it. My best advice is to connect as deeply as you can with one another while you can. Walk through it together facing one another, holding one another, and never look away from one another so Jason will have that connection and profound love to carry forward with him and keep him strong. It’s the love that keeps us going. The love here from Amanda and this community is beautiful and makes me feel privileged to be witness to. You are loved. Penny and Jason, I will keep you in my heart. xx
p.s. Edited to add, thank you for sharing and letting us all share with you, Penny and Jason.
This was so beautiful. My uncle died of a heart attack a few days ago and I am currently bearing witness to my aunt's grief. She is in her late sixties and has dementia. So she is continuously forgetting and remembering that he has passed, which is a special sort of hell. When she remembers, and is wracked with grief, I hold her hands and we cry. Then it gently turns into half-remembered stories of their adventures. She describes to me the best she can with her flailing mind how much she loves him, and it feels even more honest and true and visceral because she cant find the right words. As if there simply are no words to describe the depth of their love and her grief. Thanks for helping me make sense of the role I've taken on. ❤❤❤
Dear Lacey.
Oh....man. I'm sorry to hear that you're going through this, but also so ahppy that you can be there as a Sam, as a witness. Sometimes it's just about being the net there to catch the stories as they spill, so that they don't fall on the floor. Listening can be more powerful than adding or advising or counseling or ... anything. It's sometimes the only thing we can give. For those of us (like me) who tend to want to conjure up the perfect words, the perfect comforting expression, the perfect offering, it can be even harder. I'm so glad she's got you. May the coming days be not too hard.
Love...
Amanda
Thank you for your reply, Amanda. I spent another day sitting with her, catching the stories and tears. Many times I reminded myself when I wanted to say just the right thing to make her feel better that the most generous thing I could do was simply be there and listen. Thank you.
Lacey, I am sorry your world is at a wobble right now with the passing of your Uncle.
I am a firm believer of things happening for a reason. I do believe your Uncle left now so that he could be waiting for his lovlie when it is her time, to guide her and relieve the confusion of which she experiences now. She is safe with you, and she will be safe with him again. Be there to listen and let your heart guide you.
Sending love and light! 🧡
I read this as I too am a ‘Jason’ in the most literal sense. My husband has stage 4 cancer, and is slowly dying. I was not, nor ever will be ready to face this fact at age 42, that one day in the future, I will be alone. That I will be navigating my life alone.
Thank you Amanda for choosing to respond to Penny’s letter, and for our sound advice. Thank you to Penny for being vulnerable at a time you could choose to be selfish and thank you Jason, for holding space in a relatable way that seems only few understand.
Thank you, Amanda and Penny. And Jason, too. Diane, I was 42 when the love of my life died, in 2006. Yes, you will be alone, and you will not be ready, and it will hurt so badly that entire days will disappear. The cosmos will have bent around you; it would be freakish and weird if you bore no trace of this impact. So, yes, it sucks. But. And. There will be people who will help you. Somehow, it - the grace of humans sharing of themselves, as we just saw, here, Amanda and Penny - happens. Humans give compassion, especially with this, and you will receive this. Take it. You'll need every breath of it, and you will try to thank everyone and you will never know who did That One Thing, and that's okay. You will not know how it became Tuesday, and that is also okay. Keep drinking water. Try to sleep. (you will not want to because then it will be the end of a day that you were awake that he was still alive, but you will, in fact, have to sleep eventually. that sucks, too)
All these years onward from that meteor strike of death, I offer this: You will still have the pain, that pain that carves into your body and soul that yes you loved him, yes you did, and he mattered more than anything. You will honor him in your pain. You will also honor him in your joy. You will honor him and his memory in all of it. You're not doing it wrong. You're being the person he loved. You're being the embodiment of your love for him. You're allowed to mourn, and to rejoice, and to be fully human to the maximum extent possible for you, always. Walk that path at your feet. Keep walking. Keep breathing. Love. Always, love.
Liz, thank you so much for this. I will save this for the days I need it. I hope to have many more days to come in the future, but for now I understand time is short abs very valuable and cherish each day as it comes. Thank you
Brave soul, thank you for sharing. <3
Dear Amanda,
If you don’t mind I’m going to speak directly to Penny. Penny I don’t know where you live; I live in LA- you tell your Jason if he ever wants to talk or text or email or scream if he would like to have a total stranger who understands what’s happening best she can to be a witness,tell him I will be here.
I lost my 19-year-old daughter just over three years ago. I live in a different world and nothing will ever be the same. But I am trying to learn how to be here, how to best most purposely live in this old unfamiliar world. Nothing will ever be the same after you go for your Jason either but maybe it can still be something. Something with purpose maybe a little joy.
He figured out how to find the love of his life Penny. I bet you he’ll be OK.
Buckets of love to the both of you
Margot
Findawayhome@gmail.com
PS thanks Amanda
Love you, Margot.
I am another bereaved mother, another member of the club that absolutely nobody wishes to join. I'm based in Vanuatu and have published a few deep dives on bereavement through the lens of consciousness. Here are the links:
https://surrendernow.substack.com/p/this-post-is-full-of-triggers
https://surrendernow.substack.com/p/bereavement-and-storytelling
https://surrendernow.substack.com/p/letting-go-and-moving-on
I truly hope they speak to you and I really appreciate your willingness to connect with the family in this letter.
In peace,
Nicola
Nicola, Margot...thank you both for sharing your stories here, and for being so open. Grief Club is a strange club, isn't it. But I don't think I've ever seen such pure expressions of empathy and understanding than from this particular corner. You guys are amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for responding. It means a lot. Nothing can change the past but...we have this, we have here, now, you, me, us. We'll do what we can do.
xxx Amanda
Love you Amanda!
Thank you so much for being on this platform, and thank you for hearing us and seeing us. I have learned that I'm no less of a mother for having lost my son; he is here in a different way now, our direct line to heaven.
Your work has helped me through the hard times and inspired me in more ways than I can meaningfully describe. Your comment means the world to me, and I am here to share the love and help it grow.
Aroha 🙏♥️
Hello Amanda. Hello Penny.
My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer right about the time that Covid hit and passed away the day after her birthday, last year.
When she became bedbound, her phone was her lifeline and she would call everyone multiple times a day. Twenty, thirty times a day. All hours of the day and night. I couldn't always answer, so she would leave voicemails.
The voicemails were never long. She would say hi, and tell me about the weather or the show she was watching or what color she wanted to dye her hair, or what tattoo she wanted to get.
I saved them all.
And after she passed, when I was missing her terribly, I would play my favorite ones. Just her talking about normal everyday things and her saying she loved me.
So... to help Jason when he is broken hearted and the rest of the people who love you.... record your voice. In a voicemail, or video, a Tick-Tock... wherever.. because hearing you say you love them can get them through some really hard days.
Wow. My mom died the day after her birthday too. December 2019. Just before pandemic. She had just turned 70.
It was my mom's 70th as well
Hi Amanda. Hi Penny.
I lost the love of my life to cervical cancer in 2019. The diagnosis was quick, and her death even quicker. Her name was Mary, and she was the finest soul I ever hope to meet.
Amanda, your advice about witnesses is spot-on and brilliant. I had very little of that after Mary died, which made the witnesses I did have feel so much more precious.
I still struggle with the suffering, and as the pain slowly lifts, the loneliness seems to increase. (The pandemic certainly hasn’t helped.) I wish you, Penny, rest and comfort, and I wish Jason all the love and connection he needs to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Love to you both,
Howard
Dear Howard,
Thank you for saying it. Loneliness and suffering are so weird, and the pandemic has magnified and stretched the pain - especially in those departments - for pretty much everybody I know. I'm so sorry it's a struggle, but I know that even in the loneliness we are never totally alone. We have our shreds of connection and light where we can find them. Lots of love to you...thank you for Samming.
x
Amanda
Thank you Amanda. Love to you and yours.
Hi Howard,
I hear you about the loneliness. I’ve lost four family members since the beginning of the pandemic, and it sometimes feels as if I’m on a different frequency than everyone around me. I can see them and hear them and interact with them, but is any of it really real?
I wish you comfort and connection also.
- a different Mary
Hi Mary. Thanks for your comment. I get what you mean about a different frequency. I go through my day and talk with people, interact with them, but it all seems like a movie. There’s no substance to it. I think it was her that gave the whole thing meaning—I was her partner, and I wasn’t ready for that identity to end. I really feel like I don’t know who I’m supposed to be now. Now I just try to love the people around me as best I can, because I don’t know what else to do (and putting love into the world is always a safe bet).
Thank you so much for hearing me, Mary. That means a great deal. I’m sorry that you’ve been visited by so much loss. Thank you for the gift of your attention. Often that’s the most valuable thing we have to share.
—Howard
oh, Howard. I will put your words where I see them first thing every day: " putting love into the world is always a safe bet." Thank you. wishing you peace.
One of my first jobs as a priest was working as an on-call chaplain at a funeral home. My specific job was to do the funerals for people who didn’t have anyone else to do their funerals. These were folks who had been abandoned by the church. My job was forensic in nature because I was having to write eulogies for folks I had never met; I had to get to know them through the people who loved them.
When I would get the call from the funeral director, I would then begin calling family and friends to try and discover who this person was.
One of the very first funerals I ever did, the daughter wouldn’t call me back. I was terrified. The day of the funeral approached, and I had nothing but a very generic piece written up. I figured I would arrive early, try to pry out whatever I could from her the day of, and wing it.
When I got there, the funeral director pointed me in the direction of the daughter. She was a long, stoic-looking woman with silver hair. When I approached her, she immediately said, “Father, just get up there and read verses and say whatever you must but don’t make my mother out to be a saint or cute. Everyone will know you are lying.”
At first, I was mortified. But I sat with that experience for quite some time.
I think it taught more more about grief than almost any other experience before or after it. It taught me that grief must be authentic; we have to be true to who the person really was.
So often, we feel like we must go through the performance of grief and platitudes. It’s almost liturgical. Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat.
Over the years, as I’ve lost people I loved, I’ve observed as others attached themselves to that loss. It was clear they didn’t know them, that their sadness was surface level, and their grief was for show. They didn’t know them, they didn’t love them, and some of them hated those people I loved. But suddenly, you would have thought they were best friends.
I had to find the Sams. The ones who knew, who understood, and as you said… it wasn’t always the ones you expected.
The pandemic has brought on more grief or loss than many of us have ever experienced. I would always end every funeral by saying, “there is no wrong way to experience grief, with the exception of not experiencing it.” I ignored that advice in my own life and let that pain bottle up inside. I was giving so much of myself into helping others with their own sadness and loss I didn’t give myself space to deal with it.
Last year, I finally let it out through my art. But it took me a mind time to get there. It hasn’t been easy, it’s profoundly painful, but it is important.
Thank you for this piece. My heart is with Penny and Jason. If there is anything I can do to help, please reach out.
oh man. this is such a good thing to read (and you're such a great writer, and i've ordered your book, and i cannot wait to read it). this: "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat." because in some senses, grief is a practice, like any other. a daily prayer. chop wood, carry water, mourn friend, make toast. i love you, nathan.
Looking at the comments from Amanda, Henry, and Laura about the rote actions as good or bad. My take is they can be both and neither. They give a framework and tell our body "do this now". Our minds and hearts can run in their circles until they are tired and ready to do something else while the body says "it is time to stand up, kneel down, sit, eat, sleep, cry, wash the face, repeat". Once, the mind will fret with "who is watching" and another time with "what day is this" and another time with "how will I go on? What do I do now? Oh yeah, I sit down, then I kneel, then I stand and go eat..." And one day, the heart realizes it has been a week, a month, a year, and there is still some shape of life.
My own prayers in loss have been wordless, or wordfilled, rage. They have been kneeling on the floor wracked with sobs I thought would tear me apart. They have been emptiness and I had no idea what might ever fill it again. And one day, I stood and lit the candle and it didn't hurt so much. And one day, I stood and said "I'm here, now what". And one day, I finally stood and said "Let's see what is next." And through it all, I stood, I lit the candle, I allowed what was in my heart and head to be and I shared it with the Powers that listened.
It's true that grief is a practice in some sense, but I think you missed the context of Father Monk's "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat."
He's describing these things as rote and shallow, saying "we feel like we must go through the performance of grief". He continues: "Over the years, as I’ve lost people I loved, I’ve observed as others attached themselves to that loss. It was clear they didn’t know them, that their sadness was surface level, and their grief was for show. They didn’t know them, they didn’t love them, and some of them hated those people I loved. But suddenly, you would have thought they were best friends."
He's saying that "Stand up, sit down, kneel: repeat." is a bad thing, but you apparently think he meant it as a good thing.
Thanks for your clarification! On the other hand, perhaps Amanda's "misreading" is a happy accident (felix culpa!), because it led to her thought that "grief is a practice."
I have also experienced deep loss, however, and I would add that the "practice" of grief does not happen right away -- at first the grief is so overwhelming that it invades every minute of every day. But after time heals that immense initial pain, it could be seen as a practice.
This is a beautiful response. One thing I would add--please be aware of the inconsistent nature of grief. I mean, at first it's pretty consistent and all consuming, in exactly the way you might expect. What becomes harder is when the grief starts to slim down: you think, ok I've dealt with this, I'm ok, and then, BANG! Like a car running a red light and mowing you down, you weren't looking for it, you weren't expecting it, but suddenly you're under it staring up at its crushing weight and thinking, 'fuck.' And it's almost worse *because* it's been easier, because you've lost the grief-muscles you developed when you were carrying it full time.
Disclosure: my partner's daughter was murdered in 2008, and I've watched his grieving process as time has passed (because my grief is different from his, of course it is; losing a kid? FUCK!) And this is what it was like for him. He still gets bitten by the black dog (an image we only use because of Ian Dury's famous "banging nails" line; it gives him a mental image, an almost physical embodiment that allows him some kind of mental action). It's just good to let people know that grief isn't a straight line on the graph from prostrate------>healed. It's what I wish I had known when supporting him.
yes. this is so, so true. it is not a straight line and the unexpected is the usual. you cannot expect that time heals all wounds in the proper order. it just doesn't work like that, time bends. thank you bellezebub
.
There is so much I recognise in what you say. It's the totally unexpected triggers that can hit the most.
A couple of years after my wife died I was driving home from a meeting in Aberdeen and was listening to Jon and Vangelis CDs. When we'd only been going out a few months we went to see Jon Anderson play a concert in Glasgow and he was one of 'our artists'. But it wasn't the music that hit, it was seeing a road sign to the Lewis Grassic Gibbon centre. We had never been there but I knew that when she was younger that was her favourite author and it just hit to the heart. I had to find somewhere to pullover for a while.
That's exactly the way it is. Like, when we visit her grave, we don't mourn *there*, where you might expect it. We'll be doing something, completely fine, and then maybe that New Radicals song comes on, and he is *done*. Or someone mentions Sean Connery (an in-joke between them.) Or maybe it won't have a nexus at all, it just comes.
Thanks for sharing about your wife; honestly, when I first realized this was how it was, I wondered if it was just us, because of course we don't deal with grief as a society, only as individuals, and especially English society, where this stuff is barely touched with a ten foot pole.
It's interesting that you say "English society" -- the Irish society is different, at least in my experience. I am American; my late husband was Irish -- had moved to the U.S. when he was young, but all of his family were "back in Ireland." When I went there for the second funeral (and to bury him), I remember saying how relieved I was to be in Ireland, where people treated death as a normal part of life, that can be talked about. By contrast, most Americans (not all) were awkward.
Tbf, I'm an ex-pat American, so maybe the differences just *seem* so stark. Otoh, our situation was maybe different: Sam (that name again) was murdered, had her head and breast cut off, and her body was thrown in a wheelie bin. So (and I'm only thinking this right this minute) maybe that made a difference to how ppl responded to our grief; it certainly made a difference to how *we* responded to it. But grief is grief is grief; we don't miss her *more* than if she'd died a natural death, we don't grieve more or harder. I mean, yeah, there's a different element when you realise how shitty humans are sometimes, but that's not the grief bit. But I agree totally with your friend--that first year, if we could have skipped ahead a bit and realised that we wouldn't *always* be lumbering under the weight of cataclysm, but that even when we weren't, it would still drop on us unexpectedly from time to time, would have helped.
I lost my mom more than 20 years ago. Sometimes, I am able to be happy and laugh and share the stories. Other times, the missing her comes so hard and fast and unexpectedly I just gasp and the tears come.
This is something I wrote a couple years ago (2020)
"I wish this could be the end of the first year for you." My dear friend said this to me almost 25 years ago and I had no idea what she meant. Today, I am struck by the fact that I have said it again to another in pain as I have done more times than I can count. Because today I understand loss in a way that was brand new and so unfamiliar then.
Then I was emotionally raw and bleeding from my husband's abrupt exit from our marriage. No discussion, just divorce. I fled to a beloved friend and she nurtured me with tea and tissues and the words above. "I wish this could be the end of the first year for you".
At the beginning of a loss, the future rolls away endlessly bleak and heartrendingly empty. Every holiday and anniversary is a brutal reminder of the absence of the loved one. So many reflexive stretches for the phone and automatic pouring of two cups of tea. The constant reminders and the ingrained habits of seeing the perfect thing and starting to buy it for them...only to realize that there is no point because it cannot be given or received.
The first event comes and the hurt surprises us because who knew that loss could hurt in so many ways. And we get through it. Maybe messy, maybe tidy, maybe loud, maybe invisible, maybe alone, maybe in a crowd. But we wake up the next day and the world has kept turning and we are still riding along. The holidays and anniversaries and birthdays come and each hurts, each feels impossible. And we get through them. And the comes the hardest, most terrifying anniversary of all. And whether it passes so slowly that every minute is a year or vanishes in a few blinks and a flood of tears, the date passes and we have survived it. And a year has passed.
We have survived every milestone date. Our birthday, their birthday, holidays, anniversaries, and the anniversary of the great loss. We have survived each with only hope that we could. Every year after the first, we know that we can go on because we have. We know that laughter or tears or emotional storms or anxiety or anything else the days throw at us, we have gotten through them before and we know we can again.
In hindsight, there are gifts that come with the pain and loss but they don't show themselves as gifts until later. For those getting through the first year (and for those ambushed by really difficult later anniversaries), if it all gets too big and too awful, take it one breath and one heartbeat at a time. You will come through it.
, thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am for the shelter you provided that July with tea and tissues, supportive arms and words, love, and the hard-won wisdom that after the first year, at least we know that we can get through it all.
Written on the 10th anniversary of the passing of my beloved MIL Lorraine and 4 days after the 21st post-passing birthday of my beloved mother Ann.
Wow. This first installment is nothing short of incendiary. I’m blown away by Penny’s leap of faith to ask for help from an untraditional source + Amanda’s compassion. Your ability to use storytelling to make advice feel accessible and manageable instead of a lecture or a prescription is so comforting. To Penny & Jason ; I hope you find an army of Sams.
Thank you, Ellysioux. Am I the only one hearing Björk doing a song called "Army of Sams"....but seriously, thank you. Thank you for being here to read, and saying that. It means the world. xxx A
I just had a million ideas for the music video.
This is a beautiful response, Amanda, and really resonated with me (and what a wonderfully caring thing to ask, Penny).
My husband died 3 and a half years ago, from a brain tumour, at the age of 36. My grief was, in some ways, different to how I imagined it might be (I don't think better or worse, but different). There was a lot of feeling absolutely unable to move from the sofa, of feeling alien and bewildered in supermarkets, like you described, Amanda.
The 'sams' in my life have been how I have got through it. They've helped me to feel I'm keeping John alive. And as well as the 'sams' who knew us together, people who ask me about John, who ask what he'd think of something, who wish they knew him. One of my 'sams', the best man from our wedding, is now my partner. When our relationship started, I questioned whether it was a terrible idea. I had a dream that doctors told me 'surprise, John's not dead after all!', and I had a hard time in my dream working out what to do with my old life and my new life... In the end of the dream we all three decided to live together (which is basically what we do, metaphorically). That's the best illustration I can think of, of how the support from someone who knows you two together, can help keep someone alive (and they don't have to become a partner, obviously- that's just how it worked out for me).
My other recommendations, to go with Amanda's, for anyone in this situation...(not anywhere near as beautifully expressed...)
I'd massively recommend reading Dr Kathryn mannix's 'with the end in mind'. It helped me so much to prepare for the actual dying process, and I was much more be able to feel like I was there supportively for John because of it.
I've also found Nora McInerny's podcast 'terrible, thanks for asking' and her books/Ted talk very helpful for understanding and processing my grief. It doesn't make grief any easier, but perhaps less scary when you know you're not alone.
I read this quote below from Richard Feynman at John's funeral. John and I did have a hell of a good time.
'It’s hard to explain. If a Martian (who, we’ll imagine, never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures- these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come- it would look to him like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary. Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.
The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference- the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, “But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years.” But that’s crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, “Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?- all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life.
We had a hell of a good time together.'
oh zoe, this is so beautiful. and so, so, true. five, fifty? five days? five hundred years? what's the difference? love is love, it sort of transcends time. and i love the idea of you and your sam in a kind of life-death-above-it-all polyamorous relationship with your other partner. you do all live together. love can be expansive that way. it's beautiful. thank you so much for this comment. xx
I am just sitting in my kitchen reading your words and tears run all over my face. I lost my husband Armin, my first love, the father of my son, when i was twenty. Two weeks before my son had his second birthday. He died of cancer at the age of 26. I remember all this fear before he died and the feeling in my whole body. I was so awake to inhale all the moments we got left. There was so much love there. I really find myself in all the feelings you talk about when you lost Anthony. I was so young and so lost and so sad with this two year old boy on my lab. It was so hard to connect with people of my age, because nobody knew how to deal with me.
The most comfort i found was the grandmother of my husband. She was almost 80 by that time. She lost a lot of people already in her life, but i knew she too was not prepared to loose her beloved grandson. But somehow she managed to grief and still be deeply thankful and grateful for the very loving relationship she had with her grandson. We shared our pain, mostly without talking about it. But we did talk a lot about Armin. He was so present in our daily routine and still so present for my son. This helped me a lot. The talking about him, the celebrating his life, the laughing about all the really funny times we had. It made me feel close to him even he was not physically there anymore.
Amanda i wanna deeply thank you for your words.
Jason & Penny i send you all my love for the way you have ahead of you.
annA
oh anna - thank you so much for this comment. i hope this whole exercise makes us all better sams - better versions of ourselves like your grandmother who can show up to aid the grieving then they most need it. all these stories - they make a difference. thank you so much for sharing. xxx a
This bought tears to my eyes. Penny, I hope you can read this and know that we are sending our love to you.
On a somewhat lighter note: There is an insta call Grief Me Alone (https://www.instagram.com/grievemealone/) with awesome merch, just like Amanda suggested, where you can get a T-shirt about grief. (https://www.bonfire.com/store/grieve-me-alone/) Yes please normalise grief. We need to.
Oh WOW. IT EXISTS.
I don't think I've got the strength or courage to wear the one that says "my son died, that's why I'm like this"....not just yet! Thank you Amanda for opening this conversation. I can only send my love to Penny and Jason, and hope Jason finds his Sam. X
Finding the people who will be there for Jason in the After is a wonderful way to help him because Amanda is right, you have no idea who can emotionally be there in the trenches when you’re grieving and it’s often not the folks you would expect to be there.
I lost my husband suddenly in 2020 at 47 and it’s been helpful for me to find support from fellow young widows/ers. When Jason is ready, we’ll also be there for him over at Club Wid. We’re a support group for young widows: widowsclubmembership@gmail.com
Dear Askezan...
This is so beautiful, y'know, I imagined that things like this might exist and could have googled and pasted, but it's so much more meaningful coming from you. It's real, then. Thank you. You're in my heart right now.
x
Amanda
Dear Askezan, I hope you don’t mind that I write to the support group you gave. My husband died of melanoma cancer 6 months ago, at 52. Less than 12 months after my father died of cancer. It’s been shit. :(
Justine, I’m sorry for your losses. Please do email. It’s a good group of people and it’s been helpful. In addition to the online forum, there are weekly zoom calls, which, for me, made the biggest difference.
Oh, this brought me to absolute tears. I lost the person I loved a little over twelve years ago, when I was just 19 and she was two weeks and change away from eighteen, and this brought back so much of that. I wish I'd had this all those years ago, because it really spoke to my heart.
Ours was an online friendship (though we met in person several times, at the end) and almost nobody in my "real" life knew about it--or wanted to. I wish I had people I could talk to about her. She shaped so much of my teenage years--and grieving her obliterated my early adulthood.
I know I'm being so selfish in talking about myself here, but that's just to say how hard this hits and how deeply I feel it. <3
Your sharing is not selfish. Those who have suffered the loss of an uncommon love, one neither spouse nor family, can find understanding in your words.
Hey, Zach -- it is real and it's beautiful. It must have been so hard facing this at such a young age. Sending lots of love and healing to you.
Grief is grief. Amanda created this to be a community where we can support each other with whatever is happening. Loss of our loved ones changes us, always, and the grief doesn't just stop because the page on the calendar changes.
I am sorry you lost your dear one. I am sorry you faced it alone. I hope that you can find a way forward that includes that love and accepts the shape in your life that she left. I hope you can find love and joy again.
Your letter to Penny is one of the most beautiful I've ever read. I shed tears too and felt your love and the love of the community. Thank you.
Dear Denise...
Thank YOU. It was a pleasure writing it. I love this community so much, and the heart everyone brings to stuff like this. I couldn't do this kinda project without knowing you were all out there catching it.
xx
Amanda
Amanda, thank you. I am currently writing an essay about the imminent death of my father, who I have been grieving preemptively for nearly 15 years as he wanders the doorstep of death. There is much beauty and richness here. My relationship with my father is extraordinarily complex which is to say, I have forgiven everything and because I have forgiven I find that I often have nothing left to say. Even my silence is part of the grief. I have walked the knowing, the sobbing, the urgency and the circulating at the foot of the bed. I find myself thirsting for the relief of knowing his suffering is over. At the same time, I am surprised at the paradox of his cancer - it is voracious and glacial. Sometimes I have become so numb to it that I wonder if I have simply run out of love for him. Your words and reminder about grief being a measure of love healed me a little - the reminder that my long grieving and my anticipation of the grief to come when he does pass, means in fact - I do love him. And myself. He is dying and there is a part of me that is also dying with him. At the same time, there is also a new part of me being born - and while I will do my best to impart the lessons I learned from knowing my father, this new part of me will also be free from it. That gives me hope.
For Penny - how strong your love must be that you are able to think of Jason with such concern and empathy. I think you see a trueness of people when they are suffering and that your trueness is your love and concern for him is beautiful to witness.
dear tash - my god, you're an incredible writer. i hope you share the final essay over here with us...i would love to read it. and i'm thinking of you, as you go through all this. "voracious and glacial"....you said it. love to you. xxx
Thank you for the invitation to share it and for the kind words. I am a writer who is ever practising. But here is my essay - birthed into the world. https://sundaykitchenletter.substack.com/p/a-piwakawaka-at-the-kitchen-door
Oh Tash. That is exquisite.
I feel that I know you and I know your father and I can smell the soup of the body while your words nourish my spirit. You have defined the transformative magic we all need to do with our parents and ourselves. Thank you so much.
And for your own experience - I am sorry that the path of grief has been so long. I hope that with the realizations you have had, that you can become more aware of the love. I hope that you are able to draw comfort from the memories and the choices you are consciously making. And I hope when the time finally does come, that your father's passage is gentle.
Thank you for taking the time to read it! It almost felt like an imposition to post my work on a thread of so many rich stories and under the blanket of Amanda's beautiful response.. but now I'm glad I did. I'm glad it spoke to you and took you somewhere.
x
Dearest Penny and Jason. You are going through something that is indescribable to others in terms of how you both may be feeling at any given moment and I want you to know that I see you. Unfortunately, I can relate to you all too well in this experience. My husband was the love of my life, my best friend, my ride or die life partner and he died two years ago of cancer just a month after his 40th birthday. We were lucky enough to have witnesses of our life and our love around us when he died and Amanda is so on point that having those witnesses really does help. After my husband died, I found it hard to be around or spend time with anyone who wasn’t with us while he was sick and dying because it felt like nobody really understood. Our community that surrounded us, stayed with us, cooked meals for us, held us in their hearts and arms as we faced down death and grief together are the only people I felt could relate to me after my he was gone. It felt like we had gone to war together. I can tell you that the grief will be paralyzing and crippling at times. I still feel the breath catch in my chest in the most painful way when a random memory occurs, or I hear a song or I smell certain things that belonged to him. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this. As far as grief goes, feel it and don’t back away from it, really fully let yourself feel, it’s ok. It will be painful, sometimes grief feels more emotionally painful than you ever knew was possible. What nobody tells you is how physically painful grief can be; it’s like your soul, or whatever resides in the depths of our bodies, aches so deeply that you feel like you can’t endure it. My best advice is to connect as deeply as you can with one another while you can. Walk through it together facing one another, holding one another, and never look away from one another so Jason will have that connection and profound love to carry forward with him and keep him strong. It’s the love that keeps us going. The love here from Amanda and this community is beautiful and makes me feel privileged to be witness to. You are loved. Penny and Jason, I will keep you in my heart. xx
p.s. Edited to add, thank you for sharing and letting us all share with you, Penny and Jason.