Wellness Matters LLC

None of us is exempt from the experience of painful grief following the death of a loved one. Anticipatory grief can be just as difficult. How does one react when the word “terminal” is pronounced? What is the role of the caregiver? What roles do faith and prayer play? Here is a guide to understanding it all.Discovering the balance between grief and acceptance is never easy, but it can be a time of immense rewards. In the end, every experience counts for something and there is much value in walking the journey together.

The following are exerpts from the book . . .

“I believe that sorrows can be borne far easier if we are able to put them into some sort of a narrative or tell a story about them. So compelling or not, I knew that I needed to write about what my mother and I had experienced in the journey we walked together. After she died, it was a way of gathering my thoughts, certainly as a catharsis and a way to heal, but also as a way of passing on the legacy this one woman left behind.”

“The human condition is necessarily permeated with change and mystery. Even in the fourth century, the monk Macarius wrote that improvement in spirituality is ” a matter of falling and getting up again, building something up and then being knocked down again.“ Being human after all, we are more vulnerable than we might like to be, and although it is certainly very good to seek ways in which we can stretch our imaginations and aim at all we can possibly be, we also very much need to accept what is simply there from the beginning. It is my belief that if we accept the undeniable connection we have with our Creator, if we can get in touch with our spiritual nature, we can find solace and strength and comfort.

“And yet, this is not only a woman’s story, for who amongst us has not had to face the death of a loved one, or if we have not must need to do so at some point in time? Surely, my mother’s dying is not unique. Facing death is one of the most universal of all conditions in that sense and one of the most common experiences we all share. But it is precisely this universality that makes our understanding of our humaness most obvious. We need someone to walk with us and to say, ‘Yes, I understand.’ We need someone to stop and wait a while with us, perhaps commiserating and offering, ‘Yes, I, too, have been there in that dark place.’ For it is right there, in the midst of the commonality of it all, that we are able to grow in compassion for one another and come to know the true meaning of community. It is what binds us all together.”