Grief Chapters

My grief chapters started early. Oddly, I feel they became a major part of my life journal.

Chapter 1.

It started when I was four. My sister, two and a half years younger than I, drowned at the age of 18 months. My mother grieved silently. Dad immersed himself in work on the farm.

Through the years, my younger siblings and I silently feared—then conquered—swimming in lakes and pools.

Grief Chapter 3.

When I was 12, one of my classmates died in a motorcycle/car accident. Everyone in my small farming community was wreathing in sorrow. However, because of my previous experience with loss, I felt less of the grief they were experiencing. It was another grief chapter. I thought: It simply was his time, and he was still here, just in a different way.

As I grew into my teenage years, I missed my sisters’ physical presence. I felt connected to her, even though she was in the spirit world. I spoke to her, wrote to her in my journals and sought answers to those hard-life questions that teens encounter. However, I heard no response.

Grief Chapter 5.

In my mid-thirties, my father-in-law passed of cancer. He had been the closest father-figure I had had over half of my life. My own father was living, yet absent during most of it.

Chapter 7.

Shortly after my father-in-law’s passing, my grief was compounded by a totally different experience with loss. My own small community of ten thousand was devastated by an F4 tornado. It turned us all upside down, damaging 1700 homes. Not only was commerce and home-life altered, but over 17,000 trees died due to the tornado.

There was so much grief. That is what it felt like to me. They, the trees, had died as well.

I feel like my life has been in chapters of loss and grief, followed by a chapter of healing. A ‘recuperation’ chapter if you will, before another ‘grief’ chapter hit.

Chapter 9.

Only eight years later, tornadoes struck again. This time destroying acres of woods surrounding our own home. It was not unlike the previous loss of trees in town, which still were so painful. However, we brought forward what we had learned from the last tornado and my husband and I diligently saved small saplings from the crushing weight of the fallen trees, and cut only those we had to remove.

So too, our lives mended and grew in strength.

Chapter 11.

Four years later, in early spring, my husband was with a dear dear friend snowmobiling.

It was just the two of them in the woods of the north country of Minnesota.
Our friend tragically hit a tree with his sled and died instantly.

My husband carried that loss and grief–alone–for hours because of non-existent cell service–before he was able to share with me the nightmare of what had happened.

He was never the same.

Chapter 13.

Two years later, my own father died in a tragic machine accident. Boxes of old non-existent memories had to be dug into, along with the countless boxes of mucky, dusty, pointless objects that had to be thrown away by the truckloads.

Chapter 14.

Our pre-planned trip to the Black Hills became much more symbolic as an escape to heal, only a month after my fathers’ passing. We headed into the hills, to reflect, regroup, and breath in the fresh air of nature.

On our return trip, near Brookings, South Dakota, I had the weakest motorcycle accident one could encounter. However it caused me to have ACL surgery…And…offered me the opportunity to get myself on track with the typical check-ups one gets around age 50. Unfortunately—or fortunately for me— one of them involved my first colonoscopy. It uncovered ‘stage 3 colon cancer’.

Follow that with a chapter of major life shifts.

Chapter 15.

Six months after my colon surgery, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.

We found ourselves on another and different sort of life shift; chemo, radiation, multiple doctor visits and many more complex surgeries.

Chapter 16.

What else could possibly happen?

Six months later our family home of twenty-five years burned completely to the ground.

Enter grief chapter “Start Over”.

Grief is a learning experience.

I felt I could handle no more, and yet I did.

I survived because I sought the silver linings of every loss we ever encountered.

My mantra at that time was “I faithfully exchange my fears for amazing and abundant results.”. Which I still say to this day, with the additional introspection that life will turn out as it is to be.

Chapter 17.

In the spring of 2017, my husband passed of colon cancer two days before his 59th birthday. Only two years and three months after we moved into our rebuilt home. He took every moment he had and infused our home with love.

I feel it to this day.

You may look at these grief chapters as ones of deep deep sorrow.

Yes. And. I look at them as growth.

For indeed, I have grown. To be more compassionate for those who are grieving. Whether it is an injury, a life, an experience, a home, or a situation that has resulted in any feeling of loss, they all are embedded in pain. It causes us to learn. To be more compassionate. To have empathy for others.

Chapter 19.

As I began to walk down the streets, I would imagine invisible bubbles hovering above peoples’ heads.

Filled with losses I knew nothing about.

We all have feelings of sorrow, anger, suffering, humility, vulnerability, maybe even gratitude, or growth. Maybe not in that order…but we all feel an emotion through any experience of loss or grief.

Chapter 20.

After my husband’s passing, a message was given to me, to be shared—and passed on—to the world. That message became what is now the book ‘Dear One A Message of Love, about Grief, Loss and the Art of Healing’.

Here I am.

Embracing grief and loss as part of my every day gratitude—for living.

Read more about multiple losses: https://www.opentohope.com/multiple-losses-…through-the-pain/