Death of a Spouse

His Death Shattered Me — How Spouse Loss Affects Us Physically

Friday, August 29, 2008

When Steve died several years ago, I felt so lost… He’d been diagnosed six month earlier, but for each of those days, I kept expecting (and praying) that a miracle would happen, that he’d bounce back as he’d always done when he’d encountered acute health crises earlier, and that soon we’d be back on our path, living our dreams. His death shattered me — I felt as if I’d been jolted with thousands of amps of electricity, as if all the connections in my brain had been disconnected. My body felt like it was falling apart. I was convinced that […]

Special Topics, Your Grief

Showing Humanness: How Healthcare Professionals Can Help Families with Ill Children

By David Browning How can healthcare professionals be most helpful when they encounter families in which a child is terminally ill? The modernist approach to medicine places practitioners, especially physicians, firmly in the position of expert. This approach may be quite useful and necessary from the standpoint of making available specialized professional expertise. But it can be counterproductive when the patients and families seek to engage on a human-to-human level. This human-to-human form of contact is best facilitated by the stance of  learner,  in which the practitioner gets to know the children and families by honoring their expertise in telling […]

Other Losses, Special Topics, Your Grief

Dealing With the Death of a Boyfriend

Monday, August 25, 2008

A website visitor has this question for author Comfort Shields: Q: I saw that the author C. Comfort Shields will be on your radio program next week. I am grateful for this and can’t wait to tune in. I spent years searching for a book specifically written about surviving a partner’s (in my case, it was my boyfriend, too) suicide and can’t begin to tell you the relief that Shields’ book, Surviving Ben’s Suicide, has brought me since reading it a couple months ago. In Ms. Shields’ memoir, she talked about how cruel people often were when she told them […]

Death of a Spouse, Special Topics, Your Grief

Life Is About Adapting to Change

Sunday, August 24, 2008

The one thing that certain in this life, aside death and taxes, is change. Businesses have to change to survive. Markets, attitudes, tastes, and buying habits of customers are constantly in flux. If a business doesn’t adapt to shifting market conditions and offer its customers what they want, it goes out of business. At halftime, football teams must adapt their offence and defense based on what they’ve seen from the opposing team or else they’ll lose the game. Our own lives are constantly in flux. Every day brings changes we have to deal with. Most of the changes we deal […]

Death of a Spouse

A Companion on Your Grief Journey

Monday, August 18, 2008

I became a widow when Steve, my husband of 20 years, died from esophageal cancer. With one daughter in college and the other finishing up high school, along with a new, highly demanding job, I felt so unequipped to deal with all the emotions, feelings, and tangible aspects of grief. When we lose someone we love, especially a spouse, whether it was expected (for example, after a long illness), or unexpected (such as after a tragic accident or sudden illness), there really doesn’t seem to be much of a roadmap we can follow to negotiate the twists and turns ahead. […]

Special Topics, Your Grief

10 Things People Should Know About Grief

1. Grief is the last “living connection” to a loved one who has died. So when you expect someone to “get over” their grief, you are expecting them to move on from a loved one. Others should think it in terms of their own loved ones; think of it in terms and the shock of losing someone they cannot imagine living without. People who are grieving cannot move on just because others want them to. They inch forward as they are able to do so, and to some degree will always grieve their loss. 2. Since grief is a last […]

Special Topics

Everything is Gone In House Fire, Now What Do We Do?

Friday, August 15, 2008

Tina H., Houston, Texas, asks: Our house burned down with everything we own in it. I feel like I’ve been orphaned. No surviving photos of our children or our parents. No LPs or CDs or cassettes. Our computers were fried. Our books burned up. Everyone says, “Praise God that no one was hurt.” But I can’t see it. How can I get over this? Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley respond: It is very tough to have a house fire that takes everything. One of our listeners’ house burned down a few years ago due to faulty Christmas lights. No one […]