Elizabeth Brady

Elizabeth's son Mack died suddenly on New Year's Eve 2012. Elizabeth teaches at Penn State and her essays on learning to live with loss can also be read on The Compassionate Friends, Modern Loss, and Motherwell. She has participated on the panel "A Flower Picked Too Soon" at several national Compassionate Friends conferences. Elizabeth served on the content advisory board for the Public Television documentary "Speaking Grief" that seeks to help us all get better at grief. (speakinggrief.org) Elizabeth's collection of essays "Oil for Your Lantern: Sharing Light After the Death of a Child" was published in November 2024 with Sunbury Press.

Articles:

Merry Go Round and Round: Rhythms of Grief

Merry Go Round My mom made it a priority to take me and my siblings to the Smithsonian to visit the touring exhibits that came through the D.C. museums. I am the eldest of four, and amidst our collective moans and groans over another trek downtown from the suburbs in her diesel station wagon, my mom promised a ride or two on the lone carousel on the National Mall as a treat. I loved the carousel; I remember when it was installed in 1981. We were delighted by what seemed a whimsical addition to the stately mall. A blue and […]

About Your Room: Letting Go of a Son’s Belongings

Dismantling the Room Your blue camo backpack hung on the back of your desk chair with your Pittsburgh Penguins baseball cap on top of it for eight years. It was as you left it on the last day of school before the Christmas holidays in 2012. It was September 2020; I was in your room with a mug of dark roast and my phone. We had decided to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs. The installers were coming the next day and I was on deadline. Both Dad and Iz were out of town. The task of dismantling your room came […]

Re-imagining the Advent Candles

Re-imagining the Advent Candles During the season of Advent 2003, I was eight months pregnant with our son Mack, who was born January 16, 2004. Our daughter, Izzy, had just turned six and was dressed as an angel. She had just participated in the Christmas Eve children’s pageant at our church. She leaned against me drawing on a Little Episcopalians notepad. Gold tinsel from her halo tickled my nose, and we smiled at each other when Mack moved inside me and she could feel him through my dress. “That is so weird, Mamma!” she giggled and my husband, Christian, smiled. […]

Eight New Year’s Eves Ago

There is a collective sigh of relief as we ring in 2021, and yet there is also mounting loss and unattended grief. For those of us who have been learning to live newly after the death of our own loves, we know that healing will take time and attention. Our own son Mack died 8 years ago today, two weeks shy of his ninth birthday. It still takes my breath away. How I long to see his teddy bear eyes and laugh together on the couch. I sense his joyful presence. I picture him running, his long legs stretched out, […]

‘Speaking Grief’

On Tuesday, May 5, Speaking Grief aired on WPSU and other public television stations across the country. The aim of the documentary is to “create a more grief-aware society by validating the experience of grievers and helping to guide those who wish to support them.” It seems an opportune time to reach out, to speak into the collective loss we are experiencing. But, like all of the transformational experiences in our lives: marriage, parenting, aging, illness, injury, divorce, and death; grief is at once collective and yet distinctly personal. And, perhaps it is this ambiguous space, this collective and yet […]

Advent: A Visit in the Darkest Hours

During the season of Advent 2003, I was eight months pregnant with Mack. Iz had just turned six and was dressed as an angel having participated in the Christmas Eve children’s pageant at our church. She leaned against me drawing on a notepad, the gold tinsel from her halo tickled my nose, and we smiled at each other when Mack moved and she could feel him through my dress. “That is so weird, Mamma!” she giggled. Advent is the four weeks ahead of Christmas, which will be familiar to those from a liturgical church background. In the Episcopal church, the […]

A Funeral, a Wedding, Graduations and One Unwanted Guest

It has been six and a half years since our son, Mack, died suddenly on New Year’s Eve 2012, just shy of his ninth birthday. As the many of us who learn to live newly after loss, we take it on as a part of our lives and learn to carry Mack with us through life. So, as we entered this spring season of passages including a funeral, a wedding, and a handful of graduations, I was surprised by my fatigue. I have learned enough over the years to recognize when something is calling for my attention. In some ways […]

Keep the Door to Your Soul Open

I was given a pocket size daily devotional after Mack died called “Healing After Loss” written by Martha Whitmore Hickman, who was also a bereaved parent. I carried it in my purse for two years until the binding weakened, the cover fell off, and each page was dotted with notes and stained with my tears. One of the daily reflections was actually credited to her own grandmother, who had also lost a child. She wrote, “Keep the door to your soul open” to your loved one. This notion struck me and I copied it down in my own journal. I had begun to experience a variety of dreams, visions, […]

The Downstairs Thief

I had a vivid dream shortly after Mack, our son, died. I walked into our house through the front door and immediately realized that we had been robbed. I made my way tentatively through each familiar room surveying overturned furniture, shattered lamps. I noted the computers were taken, and the silver. But something inside assured me that they didn’t make it upstairs. On New Year’s Eve 2012, we cancelled our plans to meet another family at the First Night celebrations because Mack had what we thought was the flu and we were looking forward to a quiet evening by the […]

Día de Muertos: Eat, Speak, and Remember

The Oxford English dictionary defines “remember” as to “have in or be able to bring one’s mind an awareness of someone or something from the past.” I have thought a lot about remembering or memory since our son Mack died on New Year’s Eve 2012, two weeks shy of his 9th birthday. Often a memory of a moment between us will bubble up unbidden and in the early days of mourning these would pierce me as a reminder of what I had lost. As the years have unfolded, I have come to relish those moments and even invite them. Recently, […]

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