grief
Losing a family member is one of the most traumatic life events; Families must support one another to endure the five stages of grief and get through it together.
The Funeral
It’s cold and windy today and I really don’t have the time for this. My father looks like death as he lay in his casket, whatever death is supposed to look like. His face is so white. His hair looks askew, regardless of the poor attempt to tame it by combing it back. I hate wearing high heels and where the hell is my sister? The lines on his face look like deep valleys crammed with years of tough living. Embedded in there so deep I can’t see where the lines end and where his face begins. His fingers are crippled, and his body is frail. I don’t want to touch him, but I do.
By Renee More4 years ago in Families
My Polka-dot Princess Boots
I’m turning 60. My Dad died last month. And my dog ate my favorite boots. Let’s start with the boots. Those boots of mine had an auspicious beginning. I found them in a little shop when we were in between movies at Toronto After Dark, a horror/sci-fi film festival. I write horror, so I was already in my element, but then I discovered the boots. I was over the moon. They were buttery-soft combat boots with chains and ribbons for laces.
By Catherine Kenwell4 years ago in Families
Three Things
The ten nights which followed the passing of my Dad were black. Not bleak. Black. There were no dreams, or at least no dreams that I could recall having when I woke each morning. I slept strangely well most nights, but the usual vivid dreams just before waking were absent.
By Michael Halloran4 years ago in Families
I am a motherless daughter.. Top Story - November 2021.
My mother is alive, living out her life as an alcoholic and drug addict in her mid-50s. She has been an addict since she was in the 10th grade when she dropped out. She had been drinking hard liquor and taking hard drugs my entire childhood into adolescence. I only ever remember her on something. That was my last memory of her, up until she kicked me out and changed the house locks while I was 16 and pregnant.
By Jaded Savior Blog4 years ago in Families
Grief
Yellow. Yellow eyes, yellow face and yellow body. The first time I had seen my father in over 4 years is forever ingrained in my mind. I had received a frantic phone call from my Uncle with the news of my father's inevitable passing. A week after I had rushed to my father, he passed away at home under hospice care.
By Hannah Dennis4 years ago in Families
Fire
She stood now, finally alone at the casket. Looking down at the small shriveled creature in the satin lined box, she felt no sense of relation. Mother....? It did not truly look anything like her mother. Actually, it more resembled the old woman at the grocery store they had gone to, long ago, in another place.
By Shannon Kantorowski4 years ago in Families
My Father, the Enigma. Top Story - November 2021.
Two years ago, my father died. Technically speaking, his passing was sudden -- but if you ask me, he had been impatiently waiting for his final breath from the very second his mother had taken hers. He made it two years and one day short of her birthday, and I’m convinced he left so abruptly because he couldn’t bring himself to sit through one more of her birthdays without her. Cancer was what eventually took him, and true to form it was a very rare, aggressive, and difficult-to-detect manifestation of the disease -- only something obscure would do, after all, for the man who repeatedly claimed his diabetes was not real and, instead, must have actually been something that science had not yet discovered.
By Kristy Ockunzzi-Kmit4 years ago in Families
The Elephant
The elephant stood tall, unashamed and bold. It stared me in the eyes without flinching, without blinking. I became fully aware that I was locked in a stare down contest so I casually looked away as if I was unaware of its intentions. It was too strong, too magnanimous to even try to stare down. I tried to divert my attention. I distracted the thoughts and directed the conversation toward the weather. That is always a good, solid easy path. Certainly not the rage filled mine field of religion and politics. A calm peaceful middle ground where even if you disagree on it, no one is that passionate about it to blow up, stomp out and lose touch. “It looks like rain again today”, I said with a confidence that was built on the foundation of the dark rain clouds overhead and the low crackle of thunder in the distance.
By Michael Nash4 years ago in Families
