Living with Loss

  Wyatt It's been over ten years since we said our final goodbye to the human form of our son. Following his death we created a nonprofit organization to help support the Wyatt Lambeth Legacy Welding Scholarship at Lively Technical College. Through this foundation, we granted $500  scholarships to 38 students in the Lively Welding Program and distributed multiple  grinders and Georgia boots.  The scholarships have been a healing salve and each donor, each recipient, and each person who applied for a scholarship was and is a valuable part of our grief journey. Selecting recipients was challenging and we always wished we could give more, could help more. Ultimately, the gift is knowing we do what we can and each person who received a scholarship, a grinder, or a new pair of boots, was one step closer to the future he or she set in motion.  In our hearts we are confident Wyatt would be pleased to help his fellow students in this way.  While we have dissolved the foundation, the schola

My friend died. Its been a few months now, but in the process of grieving, that is not a long time. In my life, I haven't lost a lot of friends, so this path is a bit uneasy for me. Yet, with this loss, as with the others I've experienced, I can't help but first be grateful for the gift of a unique and wonderful life. I miss her laugh, her visits and telephone calls that always began with "hello sweetie." I miss singing at the top of our lungs to old time rock and roll, dressing up at Halloween and driving around at Christmas to look at the lights. This was my friend with whom I shared most of my life, from early childhood to well into my 50s.  My friend with whom I slugged through adolescence, and dared and dreamed a brief bit of our twenties. Ultimately our differences tore us apart and there was a long period of separation of our daily lives. We did not separate ourselves out of hatred or disdain, we simply recognized we had become very different people fr

A little step away from my personal grief journey and a turn toward the current times.  As of today, over 100,000 humans around the world have died due to the worldwide pandemic of Coronavirus or COVID-19. People are isolated. Borders around the globe have closed. Schools are closed. Airlines are grounded. Massive amounts of food sits rotting unable to be distributed. People are hoarding and supply chains are stressed. Businesses have closed. Governments scramble. Hospitals are maxed.  Care centers are incubators of death.  Medical personnel are at higher risk than ever yet we demand more and more from them.  The bodies of the dead are left to rot on the streets, held in morgues, or turned into mass graves. Funerals and memorials are in abeyance. There is neither time nor place for grieving. Isolation is wicked. Tensions can be high and panic pervasive.    Blame begins. Anger festers to hatred.  The fragile nature of our existence unveiled.  But is does

As with many things in our lives, there is a requirement for balance. Life is a bit like the human body, fragile, complex, and unpredictable. We know the story when the balance is off…. It’s generally bad, if not initially… it gets there.  The balancing act of life is encompassing and requires synchronizing various parts to produce a fluid and positive outcome. This all makes sense in the world of doing… but not so much in the world of being.  Of being human, filled with emotion, tossed about by life’s ups and downs.  That balancing act requires us to hurt, to push through the wall of emotion, and to either break through to the other side, or succumb and die.  Think about emotions and their counter-point… With confidence, one must also know fear. With intolerance, one must also know empathy; with joy there is the shadow of sorrow. When the balance is off and one emotion takes the hill, we enter the danger zone. Danger is sinister, it smells vulnerability. Danger creates