Grief & Mourning Archives - Facing Cancer With Grace

My Husband’s Funeral

This week I attended the funeral of a good friend’s wife. It brought back so many memories of my husband’s funeral, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way we express and suppress our emotions. I should preface this post by saying that I am only writing about my experience. After all, there are so many factors that will influence the way you express or suppress your grief. These factors include your culture, religion, family traditions, the messages you received about grief as you grew up, and how expressive you are as an individual. I believe that all of these things combined will affect your behavior and your thought processes under the strain of grief. The Value of Gathering Together Prior to my husband’s funeral, Read more…

How to Celebrate Special Days while Grieving

Something that everyone faces after losing a loved one is the pain of special days without them. Holidays, anniversaries, milestones all come with regularity regardless of whether or not we feel like celebrating them. Often the dread of how we will handle these days is worse than the days themselves. We wonder how we can celebrate anything ever again. In the last 2 months my husband’s birthday and my own, our 10th wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving and Christmas, have all come and gone. I have learned a few things from these experiences that will hopefully help you if you aren’t sure of how to celebrate special days without someone you love. Plan how to celebrate special days ahead of time Rather than avoiding them, think about Read more…

Dealing with Sudden Overwhelming Sadness

At some point, we will all experience it. It’s likely that most of us already have: Overwhelming sadness. How do you deal with it?

Grief in Children

Everyone will experience grief at some time in their life. It’s important to recognize that children grieve, as well. grief in children is often overlooked and misunderstood. Today we will look at grief in children and how we can help them to heal after a loss. “You may associate grief with the death of a loved one, but any loss can cause grief, including the loss of a relationship, your health, your job, or a cherished dream.” (Help Pages.org Grief and Loss) Most people think that grief is something that they’ll deal with when someone they love dies. In truth, the process of grieving begins at the moment you realize you of a loved one has cancer. This is a huge shift in your life Read more…

How Cancer has Changed My Life: Resilience

We’ve been looking at resilience. Part of resilience is being able to look at how you’ve responded to a trial such as cancer. How has it changed you or your life—both for the better and the worse? If you asked me how cancer has changed my life, I might tell you that I smile less. I know that’s not the “right” answer, but it is the honest answer. When Dan was first diagnosed there was a time of despair. It was like the world was ending. In truth, it was just our world, as we knew it, that was ending. Cancer has changed my life We learned to live with it. We adapted, became stronger in many ways. It progressively gots harder but we learned Read more…

Denial and Cancer

In the beginning, we heard everything the doctors said and read all the information on the kind of cancer my husband had. The word “terminal,” kept showing up, but we filtered that out. It didn’t make sense to us. We thought that if they could just blast those cancer cells to the moon with chemo, radiation—anything, then he would be okay. This myth only grew more solidified in our minds with each improved scan. When we saw the treatment was working, we thought there must be a chance he could beat the cancer. We were in denial. Nearly 9 months in, he was NED (no evidence of disease). Did the treatment work? Was his cancer gone? When I asked his doctor about it, directly, she Read more…

The Second Month is Worse than the First

As the second month after my husband died, rolled around, I was having a surprisingly difficult time. So were the girls. There was an unusual amount of irritability between them over trivial things. And we were being thrust into a life that felt foreign to us. Absolutely nothing seemed to be the way it was when Dan was alive. Grief/Loss Groups during the Second Month I joined a couple of grief groups. So far, this hasn’t changed anything, but it is a process, like all things related to grief. And, it has given me an opportunity to meet other people like me who are in a lot of pain and, like me, want to be able to cry with others who need no explanation as Read more…

Grieving: the First Month

everyone grieves differently, but people grieving often have a lot of similar experiences and feelings as they go through the process. This is a snapshot of my first month. The first month after my husband died was awful. I’d just lost my best friend, the person I did everything with, my business partner. We were together 24/7 and we loved every minute of it. Then, suddenly, he was gone. Maybe not so suddenly, since we had 6 1/2 years of cancer before he died, but it was still a shock to my system. Death always is. Trauma There was also a level of trauma that we all experienced, not just from the day of his death, but from all of the days that preceded it, Read more…

Tear Soup : A Book Review

Recently, my sister-in-law gave me a gift, the book “Tear Soup,” by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeLkyn. Many people had recommended it to her as especially helpful for talking about grief with children. So, last night, I read it to my 3 daughters, ages 15, 17, and 20. It gave all of us some time to reflect on what we are all going through in the wake of my husband’s death, without the awkwardness that often accompanies digging deep into your emotions and baring your soul. Meet Grandy The story follows Grandy, an older, “somewhat wise” woman who has suffered a great loss. To deal with this loss, she makes tear soup. Tear soup is a beautiful metaphor for grieving, which is carried through the Read more…

Writing Thank You Cards after a Funeral

My husband, Dan, died on April 26th, and his funeral was held on May 4th. Since then I’ve been tackling the task of writing thank you cards to the people who gave a gift in my husband’s memory or helped us in some way with the funeral. Because there were about 500 people at the funeral, this is a huge undertaking. I thought I would share some thoughts about writing thank you cards after a funeral, as well as a few tips. How long do I have to send my Thank You cards? Etiquette experts say that thank you notes should be sent within 2-3 weeks of the funeral. [1] It’s interesting to note that the timeline for thank yous after a wedding is far Read more…

Category Archives: Grief & Mourning

My Husband’s Funeral

How to Celebrate Special Days while Grieving

Dealing with Sudden Overwhelming Sadness

Grief in Children

How Cancer has Changed My Life: Resilience

Denial and Cancer

The Second Month is Worse than the First

Grieving: the First Month

Tear Soup : A Book Review

Writing Thank You Cards after a Funeral

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